Dramatic Play In The Classroom
Example from the text
Classroom Observation
What is dramatic play?
- On page 80 in the textbook, they gave an example of a preschool class that transformed their classroom into a pizza parlor
- Ms. Weiss starts her class every morning by asking the children what they had for dinner the night before. Maggie was super excited to tell the class about her pizza parlor experience. Once she began telling her experience the rest of the students began shouting about their experiences too. Ms. Weiss had a fantastic idea. "Let's turn our classroom into a pizza parlor!" The kids were ecstatic. The next day Ms. Weiss brought in cardboard (for pizza crust), felt (for pizza toppings), note pads (for taking orders), paper, pencils and markers for making signs and menus'. She helped the children make fake money and discount coupons. She also brought in real coupons from the newspaper and also real pizza boxes and cookbooks. Ms. Weiss let the children decide what they want the name to be and what they want on the menu. One boy yelled "We have to have pepperoni on our pizza, it's my favorite!" Another boy quickly wrote down the letter "p" followed by scribbles and said "It's on the menu now!"
- On February 17th and 24th, we observed Ms.Burdett's kindergarten classroom at Duzine Elementary School
- Ms.Burdett has been teaching for over 30 years and she initially studied puppetry in college and eventually realized her passion for teaching
- Because of her passion for theater and puppetry, her classroom is enriched with dramatic play center activities
- Dramatic play is an advanced form of play in which children take on roles and act out make-believe stories and situations.
- Dramatic play is used to encourage young children's literacy development
- This type of play - also called sociodramatic, make-believe, pretend, or imaginative play - reaches its peak between the ages of four and seven
Dramatic Play's Potential
Application Question 4
Benefits of linking literacy and play
"Time for choice time!"
- To take full advantage of dramatic play's potential as a medium for language development, attention needs to be given to three factors:
- 1) The settings in which play occurs
- 2) The amount of time allocated for play activities
- 3) The type of teacher involvement in play episodes
- For today's activity, you will be creating and performing your very own puppet show with a partner!
- The most obvious benefit of linking literacy and play is that play can provide motivation for literacy learning
- A second benefit is that adding print-related props to play areas results in significant increases in the amount of literacy activity during play
- In addition, literacy-enriched play settings provide children with opportunities to learn important concepts about print (including functional print and environmental print)
Visit an eary childhood classroom and observe children interacting in a dramatic play center. Notice the theme that the children are acting and the roles that they're playing. Record examples of both meta-play language and pretend language.
Dramatic Play is key
Language Used In Dramatic Play
Puppet Shows used in Dramatic Play
- During choice time, two of Ms.Burdett's students chose to plan and perform a puppet show for the class
- Once started, language must be used to act out the story, keep the dramatization heading in the right direction, and reenergize the play if it is becoming repetitious and boring
- Children must use two different types of language to accomplish these tasks:
- 1) Metaplay language: comments about play itself ("I'll be the mommy")
- 2) Pretend language: comments that are appropriate for the roles that children have taken in dramatic play (A child pretending to be a baby might say "wah")
- In addition to promoting language aquistion, dramatic play encourages children to:
- (1) Help each other learn academic skills and content
- (2) Make friends
- (3) Develop important social skillls
- Peer-peer interaction is especially important for bilingual children
- For these reasons, dramatic play centers need to be a prominent feature in early childhood classrooms