“In play a child is always above his average age, above his daily behavior; in play it is as though he were a head taller than himself,” renowned child psychologist Lev Vygotsky once observed.[i]
Erin Bailey, Ed.D.
Vice President, Literacy Programs & Research, Reading Is Fundamental
Play is powerful and transformative. Vygotsky is referring to dramatic play where children role play a real-life scenario, such as ordering food at a restaurant or visiting a doctor’s office. Many of us can remember gathering our office supplies, pulling over the chalk board, and setting up a classroom in the basement to “play teacher.” This imaginative exploration of play not only opened our minds to what we wanted to be when we grew up, but developed our language skills and supported us in making connections between speech and print.
Play develops higher order thinking
From family homes to school buildings, we’ve long known the important role of play for children. The use of dramatic play centers is commonplace in preschool and kindergarten classrooms.
I love walking into my own children’s classrooms and seeing kids busy at the woodworking bench or getting ready to check out at the ice cream shop. In these preschool rooms, the joy is evident and, organically, children are developing higher order thinking skills, such as predicting, problem-solving, and comparing and contrasting.
Yet, time for play in early childhood settings has been reduced in favor of teacher-directed, skill-based instruction. The trend toward these types of scripted, teacher-directed exercises is not nearly as beneficial as a play-based method, only supporting children’s lower order thinking, such as memorizing basic facts.
A clear example of how this plays out can be seen in Tennessee, which initiated a state-funded PreK program for low-income families (TN-VPK) with this type of teacher-directed instruction. While the initial results were encouraging, as the researchers continued to follow this group, they found these results disappeared by the end of kindergarten, and by sixth grade, the children had worse academic achievements, higher rates of disciplinary infractions, lower rates of attendance, and high rates of special education services.
What was causing this promising program to flounder? Researchers believe that the PreK program spent too much time on skill-based instruction and did not develop the type of self-regulation and natural curiosity that would ensue through play-based approaches.[ii]
While cuts to playtime for all children are concerning, it’s particularly alarming that cuts for playtime are more severe for children from under-resourced communities. A survey of kindergarten teachers in Massachusetts found that 33% of teachers of students from low-income families had no time at all scheduled for play, compared with only 3% of schools with students from high-income families.[iii]
Add books, boost learning
Regardless of economic factors, the latest data shows we need to find innovative and effective methodologies to drive reading proficiency. Recent National Assessment of Educational Progress 2022 scores show that only 33% of fourth graders are reading proficiently. It’s evident: kids need play, and when paired with the power of a book, the effects are multiplied.
These playful approaches have even more positive impacts when directly connected with storybooks read aloud by the teacher. The language in the book can support the language in the play.
For example, one study found that when children engaged in a dramatic play center, 76% of their play episodes followed story structure, which helps children progress in their ability to understand and develop narratives.[iv] This is because when children engage in dramatic play, they are given the opportunity to imagine a setting (e.g., doctor’s office), characters (e.g., doctor and patient), and plot (e.g., patient is sick).
Additionally, connecting storybooks with dramatic play coupled with adult guidance has large effects on vocabulary gains[v] as well as kindergarten readiness and fourth grade word decoding and reading comprehension.[vi] The research is clear that play-based learning has strong implications for children’s literacy and invites adults to find a balance between creating play environments that are conducive to literacy learning while still allowing play to be an art of childhood.
Play-based resources
Reading Is Fundamental (RIF) supports the importance of play-based learning in a child’s reading journey. That is why it recently launched an online destination for Early Childhood Education.
This free online destination provides teachers and families with the ideas and resources to create storybook-based dramatic play centers in classrooms and in homes to foster the link between literacy and play, as well as provides resources to support other early literacy skills, such as listening, speaking, and writing.
References
[i] Vygotsky, Lev S. 1967. “Play and Its Role in the Mental Development of the Child.” Soviet Psychology 5:6–18.
[ii] Durkin, K., Lipsey, M. W., Farran, D. C., & Wiesen, S. E. (2022). Effects of a statewide pre-kindergarten program on children’s achievement and behavior through sixth grade. Developmental Psychology, 58, 470–484.
[iii] Fowler, R.C. (2018). The disappearance of child-directed activities and teachers’ autonomy from Massachusetts’ kindergartens. Jamaica Plain, MA: Defending the Early Years.
[iv] Eckler, J.A., & Weininger, O. (1989). Structural parallels between pretend play and narratives. Developmental Psychology, 25(5), 736–743.
[v] Toub, T.S., Hassinger-Das, B., Nesbitt, K.T., Ilgaz, H., Weisberg, D.S., Hirsh-Pasek,K., Dickinson, D.K. (2018). The language of play: Developing preschool vocabulary through play following shared book-reading. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 45(4), 1–17.
[vi] Neuman, S.B., & Roskos, K. (1993). Access to print for children of poverty: Differential effects of adult mediation and literacy-enriched play settings on environmental and functional print tasks. American Educational Research Journal, 30(1), 95–122.
