ABSTRACT
Kindergarten classrooms at the close of the 20th century are places where young children
eagerly splash dripping lines of bright red and yellow tempera paint with thick brushes on
easel paper in art centers, pencil in crooked lines of random letters intended to represent
their names on sign-up sheets for a turn in sociodramatic play centers, and fill computer
screens with a jumble of letters, numbers, squiggles, images, animation clips, and sound
effects in computer centers. In each instance, children are using informal tools of
expression and available symbol systems to make meaning for various purposes. From a
semiotic perspective, symbol systems may include various collections or sets of related
communicative and cultural expressions (Eco, 1976, 1990; Gillan, 1982; Goodman, 1976;
Lemke, 1993). Thus, sets of symbols employed by children in today’s classrooms might
consist of oral language, print, icons, scanned images, music, graphs, or numbers. From
the perspective of emergent literacy, young children in schools are engaged in learning
about the functions and forms of various symbol systems within a classroom culture that
values and supports both their independent and socially constructed explorations.
Sociolinguists (such as Wells, 1986) propose that young children are viewed as meaning
