Play is disappearing in elementary classrooms. While struggling to meet the demands of the Common Core, many kitchen sets, puppets and sand tables collect dust. Sigh. We know our learners need these experiences but how do we fit it all in?
With careful planning, modeling, and demonstration, co-teachers can provide young learners with opportunities that facilitate language acquisition and literacy skills through non-threatening, developmentally appropriate play.
We believe play is an integral part of the socio-emotional, physical, and cognitive development of children. Moreover, English learners (ELs) benefit from the role of play in language acquisition:
For children who are learning English, self-directed play establishes an informal, non-threatening atmosphere that is one of the most valuable ways of learning. When children are engaged in the process of play, they usually care very little about an end product. They are free to figure out what they want to do and when they want to do it. They engage in spontaneous activity. In other words, children are in control.
-Burton and Edwards
This year, my kindergarten co-teacher and I (Jamie) scheduled our Integrated English as a New Language (ENL) block during playtime to maximize the benefit of language and literacy development through developmentally appropriate play.
My co-teacher plans opportunities for our kindergarten students to play during the school day. At the beginning of the year she set up play areas with the guidance of Debbie Diller’s Spaces and Places: Designing classrooms for literacy, and organized her schedule to ensure play happens each and every day!
My co-teacher plans opportunities for our kindergarten students to play during the school day. At the beginning of the year she set up play areas with the guidance of Debbie Diller’s Spaces and Places: Designing classrooms for literacy, and organized her schedule to ensure play happens each and every day!
She schedules literacy through play in the form of “Choice Time” during the first 40 minutes of the day. Once students unpack their backpacks and sign up for lunch they head over to the shelves to choose toys and materials. These bins contain matchbox cars, Legos, blocks, Play-doh, Tinker Toys and art materials.
This is not superficial play, but play with a purpose. In the report, Crisis in Kindergarten, Miller and Almon explain, "Kindergartners need a balance of child-initiated play in the presence of engaged teachers and more focused experiential learning guided by teachers."
Some students opt to role-play! With books and pointers they are teachers and moms and dads reading to their children.
This is not superficial play, but play with a purpose. In the report, Crisis in Kindergarten, Miller and Almon explain, "Kindergartners need a balance of child-initiated play in the presence of engaged teachers and more focused experiential learning guided by teachers."
We allow four students to each play area, to ensure they have enough materials to share and to keep down the noise level in the classroom. Following language from Responsive Classroom we teach students how to build friendships and navigate conflict. Students are shown how to care for toys and clean them up once playtime has ended. We also use role play to explore skillful communication. These charts are a few examples of student-initiated problem solving that are referred to often during playtime.
During playtime, we observe students at their work—building, role-playing, creating, problem-solving, reading, and writing. We join children in their play-— demonstrating, talking, and recording their language. This is a powerful time when we can expand their language through vocabulary development and teach them the purpose and power of the written word. We embrace a functional approach to language, focusing on how people —INCLUDING 5 YEAR OLDS—use real language for real purposes.
A typical "playdate" might sound something like this:
Student A: (Pointing to a ramp his group made out of blocks)...and this part goes down for the car. The car goes down this.
Teacher: Oh, the ramp? The car can zoom down the ramp to get down. How about we build another ramp on this side?
Student B: I want to make a ramp on my castle!
Teacher: What a cool idea. We can write down how we did it, and you can follow the directions tomorrow during playtime.
Following this exchange, I'd pull the small group of students aside and use shared writing or interactive writing to write the procedure for building a ramp. I often take photos to capture their creations and use them to guide us during writing instruction.
From these play experiences, we've generated recounts, procedures, reports, opinions and other informational texts. The key is to get down on the carpet and put your best listening ears on. When I play with students, I keep a menu of literacy and language objectives in mind. These objectives are dictated by the genre of writing and the needs of my students. If I hear students arguing over which doll is the best, I'm thinking opinion writing! If I observe two students talking about losing their first tooth...recount! It's all about engaging with the kids and listening expectantly for opportunities to create texts that matter to the students and have a purpose in their world.
Here's a few Shared Writing examples our students generated from their play experiences.
| Recount |
Information Procedural(Play-doh discovery!) |
We also use Interactive Writing to compose texts. During Interactive Writing, the teacher and student share the pen. This approach allows us to teach and reinforce early literacy skills in context.
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| Opinion |
For more information on Shared and Interactive Writing, check out:
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| Interactive Writing |
Check out www.allianceforchildhood.org and www.imaginationplayground.com for more information about the importance of play in schools.
Teaching literacy through play? Comment below and let us know about the amazing things happening in your classrooms!
Teaching literacy through play? Comment below and let us know about the amazing things happening in your classrooms!
