A study examined low-socioeconomic status (SES) urban children's ways of interpreting traditional skills-based literacy instruction in kindergarten and first grade. Subjects, 35 randomly selected children from three inner-city schools, were tested for entering and end-of-first-grade knowledge of six domains of written language. Subjects' scores on two standardized achievement tests were also collected. Twelve children were randomly selected from the sample for close observation over 2 years in their classrooms. Qualitative and quantitative analysis revealed four patterns of success/nonsuccess in literacy development within the classroom context: (1) the "independent explorer" children who began kindergarten with the "big picture" of written language and successfully interpreted the skills-based instruction while engaging in numerous self-directed explorations of print; (2) the "curriculum dependent" children who did not have the "big picture" of written language from the start and exhibited major mismatches between their understandings and those required by the curriculum; (3) the "passive nonweavers" who failed to actively construct relationships between the many skill activities required of them; and (4) the "deferring learner" who moved from a knowledgeable, active stance to a passive one after confronting mismatches between her knowledge of print and the curriculum. (Six tables of data are included; 40 references are attached.) (RS)