The suggestions in this section focus most specifically on the incorporation of dramatic play centers developed from common family and work activities of the children's community such as "going grocery shopping" or "visiting the doctor's office". Centers developed from such common experiences offer many opportunities for the incorporation of reading, writing, listening, and speaking tasks. They can also support awareness and practice of equitable relationships and inclusive language.



















"When I taught pre-school, I often used large fridge and stove boxes to make dramatic play centers. The children became involved in painting, deciding where windows should go, deciding the items we needed, etc. This strategy created a sense of ownership, accomplishment, and a high level of interest in the centers."
- a Saskatchewan teacher

Strategies and Activities

Supporting Children in Viewing Themselves as Readers and Writers

Incorporating Literacy into Social Dramatic Play

The following activities provide suggestions for use of social dramatic play centers as a means to strengthen oral language while providing opportunities for reading and writing.

Objectives

The activities described in this section are particularly useful in supporting development of the following English Language Arts objectives (Emerging Phase).

Students will:

• demonstrate emerging desire to express their ideas to teachers and peers in informal settings through speech, drawing, and print efforts.
• demonstrate awareness that print and symbols in their environments convey meaning.
• develop increasing abilities to attempt and practice reading behaviours.
• demonstrate increasing abilities to convey ideas using drawings, scribbles, symbols, letters, and/or letter-like shapes.
• demonstrate increasing abilities to write for a variety of purposes and audiences.

• Fiction and nonfiction books related to the current focus of the center
• Other reading materials related to the focus such as newspapers, magazines, menus, maps, forms, or charts
• Writing materials of all kinds selected for their relationship to the focus.

1. Plan a focus for a social dramatic play center. A House Center is often a good place to start because it incorporates activities common to most children. Other centers in which a range of similar types of literacy materials could be added include a grocery store, post office, fire or police station, school, or library³¹. Ideas for new centers can come from the social studies, science, or health education curricula, a current event, or a book that captured the imagination of several children. Encourage children to suggest ideas for a new center as well.

   The focus for Social Dramatic Play Centers needs to be selected with sensitivity to the following: economic circumstances and cultural backgrounds of children in your class, and the portrayal of gender roles and abilities/disabilities. You want your focus and the play that results from it to create community and strengthen self-esteem in relation to gender, culture, and family background. Watch for teachable moments and appropriate and inclusive materials to support these goals.

2. The provision of appropriate literacy materials is crucial to the success of the center. Suggestions for such materials are developed more fully in the chart on page 120. The chart shows examples of literacy materials for four of the many types of centers that could be developed.
3. Introduce each new social dramatic play center with a story, film, or field trip related to the focus of the center. Children need ideas for things to do, things to talk about, and things to make and to write while in the center. Stories, videos, or field trips extend their ideas about how adults would behave in the place the center represents.
4. Collect other books, poems, songs, chants, videos, etc. related to the focus and have some of these on display in or close to the center.
5. Ask children for ideas about how to set up the center and for furniture and other materials that should be in it. Discuss ways to make or represent materials, furniture, or vehicles that are not available or feasible for classroom use. Set up the center with some of the furniture, materials, and other props and allow space to add to the center as children have new ideas.
6. Add the literacy materials (books, notepads, pens, etc.) to the center and introduce ways to use them through your interactions with the children using the center or through demonstrations of their use at Morning Meeting or Circle Time.

   For example, you might: Visit the House Center, pretend to take a phone call while you are there and write a message down on the notepad for one of the children in the center visit the House Center and talk about the need to go shopping for groceries and begin thinking out loud, and writing a list of things to buy ask children during the Morning Meeting what kinds of things they think would be needed in order to take a trip on a bus, train, or airplane. Suggest some materials they could use to make tickets.

7. Continue to read books, view films, or videos related to the center and add new signs and other literacy materials to the center as long as children's interest is sustained.
8. Choose words related to the center for word study activities such as segmenting words or classifying them by their initial consonants.
9. Add words related to the center to your Word Wall (see page 122 for a description of this strategy).

   Join in the center play from time to time to extend children's vocabulary in relation to the center focus or to demonstrate use of the literacy materials. Do this by acting as if you were one of the players. Have fun but don't stay too long!

   Variations

   Dependent upon the space and materials you have available, and the particular theme of interest, social dramatic play could also take place in the following centers³²:

   • the sand or water table
   • the small manipulatives center where the theme is incorporated with the use of materials such as Lego, tabletop blocks, and small figurines
   • the block center

     Building and Constructing (Teacher's Planner), from The Scholastic Early Childhood Workshop Series (1996), shows how to integrate storybooks and a range of language and literacy activities into thematic block play.

   • "make it" or creative center where children develop the materials for play by constructing train stations, restaurants, and other buildings from boxes, cardboard, paints, tape, felt markers, etc. In this variation, children can use small figurines to "people" their center or make people from cardboard and other materials.
   Suggestions for Older Students³³

   In addition to Social Dramatic Play Centers, Dramatic Play or Role Dramas³⁴ that extend students' experiences beyond the familiar are good foci for students in grades two and three (e.g., Crossing the Desert, Travels in Space).

   Accuracy in Children's Writing of Signs and Labels

   Children in the Emerging Phase of literacy need support and encouragement in order to develop a sense of themselves as capable writers, and of writing as useful for a variety of life purposes. Writing for real purposes within social dramatic play helps to develop both of these beliefs. However, emergent literacy learners will often make use of invented spelling and letter-like approximations in their early attempts at writing. This creates a dilemma for teachers in relation to the provision of good language models within classroom environmental print. It may also be a concern to parents who visit your classroom. Explain to parents why children's approximations of writing behaviours need to be supported. Assure them that in your class discussions:

   • you draw children's attention to the need for accuracy for the purposes of communicating clearly with others
   • you will be supporting the development of correct spelling and printing as children progress to further stages of their literacy development.

   You might also explain that most of the other environmental print in your room provides good language models as does your daily language arts instruction.