Promoting Literacy Through Dramatic Play
Steffen Saifer, Education Specialist, Region X Head Start TASC, Portland State University, Portland, Oregon
Dramatic play provides excellent opportunities for teachers to encourage the emerging literacy skills of Head Start children. Strategies range from simply adding pads of paper and pens to the "fast food restaurant" or the "hospital," or to developing a carefully planned intervention such as a "library" dramatic play center with individual library cards, signs for different sections, card catalogs (with picture and words), a check-out system, rubber stamps, overdue notices, and more.
In any dramatic play situation teachers can help promote literacy by helping children in very specific ways. Some examples are making signs that the children need (such as "People Working" during house building dramatic play), helping children write their names or friends' names (to identify X-rays or medical charts during doctor's or dentist's office dramatic play), or reading mail that is sent during post office dramatic play.
It is always best to arrange a field trip to visit the real place before setting up a dramatic play center (children learn most effectively by moving from the concrete to the abstract, and from the global to the specific). While there, help the children see all the ways writing and reading can be used to communicate with others, remember things, learn, etc. Then plan the dramatic play center with the children. When you write down their ideas and help organize the children and their tasks to put together the dramatic play area, you are effectively modeling and promoting literacy.
Examples of dramatic play ideas from some Head Start classrooms include:
Pizza Shop and Delivery: Stock with pizza cartons, play dough (for the pizza and toppings), aprons,hats, toy phones, plastic pizza cutters, spatulas, order pads, pens, play money, pretend checks and credit cards, calculators or cash registers, and cars made with hollow blocks from which the children take orders, deliver to pizza, take money,make change, sign checks, etc.
The whole room can be transformed and involved as the pizza gets delivered to the home, they "drive" in the block area, make the pizza at the play dough table, pour drinks at the water play table, and more. Teachers will promote literacy by modeling and helping the children to write orders, calling the orders out to the cooks (reading), and asking questions or commenting to deepen children's engagement and add complexity to the play, such as comments and questions like,"I think you have a customer waiting,""I would like to order a large cheese pizza and three cans of juice," "Perhaps you can write it down on this pad," and "Would you like to be the cook or a delivery person?"Auto Repair Shop: Stock with well washed oil cans, tolls, clean car parts, small tires, tire gauges, steering wheels, rubber hoses, jumper cables, nuts and bolts, clamps, calculators or cash registers, play money, play checks and credit cards, order forms, receipts, pens, cans, and tow trucks made from hollow blocks and cardboard boxes, and magazines and chairs for the waiting room. The children tow cars, drive cars to be repaired, write down orders, give numbers, repair cars,"write" bills, pick up the cars, pay bills, fill out insurance forms, etc. As with Pizza Shop and Delivery, teachers can promote literacy by active involvement in the play acting by taking on specific, non-leadership roles(i.e., customer).
When children write to communicate, pretend to read, or imitate ways that adults write and read, literacy development is effectively encouraged. This is not "pre-reading" or "pre-writing," but actual reading and writing that is appropriate for preschool aged children.