2/4/2019

How to Support the Development of Early Literacy Skills Through Play

Today’s youngest students are often expected to be able to read by the end of kindergarten. This amounts to a sea change in comparison to previous years, when first grade was considered the typical year for reading skills to take hold. In 2016, researchers from the University of Virginia published the results of a longitudinal study done with 2,500 kindergarten and first-grade teachers. In 1998, just before the federal No Child Left Behind law was passed, slightly more than one-third of the surveyed teachers thought children should learn to read in kindergarten. By 2010, that number had jumped to 80 percent, thanks in part to the law's new emphasis on accountability and standardized testing.

In 2010, many of the surveyed teachers—64 percent—also believed that preschool should function as kindergarten preparation, with kids learning the alphabet and other explicit academic skills before they reach an elementary school setting. This adds up to increased pressure on early childhood educators, wrote New York University-Steinhardt researcher Cassie Wuest in a policy piece published online. Wuest posited that the expanding emphasis on measurable early literacy skills, such as letter recognition and print concepts, may be encouraging more teachers to focus on direct instruction, with lessons centered on explicit, adult-led activities designed to bring about specific outcomes. However, she argued, play also remains a vital way for children to gain important skills that affords teachers “many opportunities to aid children’s literacy development.”

Embedding literacy in play

One way for teachers to do this involves purposeful classroom design. More specifically, Wuest highlighted a concept called the “literacy-embedded play center,” or LEPC, which weaves literacy lessons and activities into classroom play areas, naturally drawing in children through imagination-rich environments. A helpful example of this comes from two Central Washington University professors, Dr. Janet Spybrook and Dr. Sharryn Larsen Walker. Spybrook and Larsen Walker imagined a preschool veterinary clinic wherein children pretend to take care of animals while constructing schedules, talking on the phone with pet owners, and otherwise practicing emerging literacy skills. The center would include books about animals, as well as other visual prompts that can not only boost children’s use of language but make the classroom a more inclusive place for students whose first language is not English, for example.

Dramatic play centers that have literacy prompts and lessons woven throughout are seen by many early childhood advocates as a beneficial way to help young children learn important skills. For instance, a kitchen- or restaurant-themed play area could include many examples of “functional print,” wrote V. Susan Bennett-Armistead in her book, Literacy-Building Play in Preschool. Items such as “menus, shelf-signs, coupons, and labeled food containers,” along with plenty of writing materials, give young children the chance to “interact with print” in ways that mimic the world around them—and this, according to Bennett-Armistead, leads to “greater literacy competencies.” Citing the research of others, the author noted that the possibilities for setting up such play areas are endless, and this type of approach can help reach many different kinds of children who will ideally be inspired to “include text in their lives, not just in their play.”

Deploying guided play

Such a structured yet play-based approach undoubtedly qualifies as “guided play,” which is defined by University of Pennsylvania researcher Deena Weisberg as a “form of play where children explore within an environment that has been prepared by adults and/or with guidance from adults.” Weisberg runs the Cognition and Development lab at her university, where she says the “fields of developmental and learning science have really just begun to scratch the surface” when it comes to understanding the value of guided play. In Weisberg’s view, a key element of guided play is that it is child-directed, with adults playing the role of informed and interested observers. Like Wuest, Weisberg cited research that showed direct instruction for young children is less effective than guided play, which allows for greater autonomy and creative freedom.

Support for understanding what guided play is and how it can both mirror and expand on children’s natural tendencies for growth and exploration appears to be on the rise. Indeed, National Public Radio education reporter Cory Turner noted in 2018 that the people behind Sesame Street put together a new children’s show for the first time in years—and it's built upon the concepts of guided play. According to Turner, each episode of Esme & Roy is created around specific “learning goals” under the direction of Rosemary Truglio, the curriculum and content lead for the Sesame Workshop. Truglio, who has decried the overly academic environment of some current early childhood education settings, is supportive of the idea that learning and play are not in opposition to one another. As quoted by Turner, Truglio believes that play “can provide the platform to learn … content goals, in addition to very important social-emotional goals, as well as health goals.”

Finding the sweet spot

There seems to be a sweet spot wherein learning environments for young children can be both play-oriented and content-rich. Too little emphasis on emerging literacy skills might leave children unprepared for further academic tasks, while too much back-to-basics direct instruction might disengage children from their own learning. This is the central concern covered in a 2017 article by Suzanne Bouffard, a developmental psychologist who wrote a book about the importance of high-quality preschool classrooms. After spending two years observing preschool settings around the country, Bouffard noted that marginalized children—often children of color living in poverty—are more likely to receive “skill and drill instruction” designed to help them “catch up” to their more privileged peers. However, this is a deficit-based approach that might emphasize having kids memorize a “random list of words” over helping them gain what Bouffard characterized as knowledge economy skills, such as “curiosity, creativity, and critical thinking.”

Fortunately, there are many resources available to guide teachers and administrators in creating “literacy-rich 21st century classrooms” that do not leave learning to chance; instead, they build upon identifiable goals while still emphasizing hands-on, student-directed activities, including play. This might just lead to a middle ground of sorts, where emerging literacy skills are purposefully and creatively embedded into the everyday lives of both teacher and student.