Writing at the Cooperative Playschool :: The Cooperative Playschool

Writing at the Cooperative Playschool

posted by Bien

06.04.08

At the Cooperative Playschool children have the freedom to explore and discover through creative play a sense of what their world is all about. Activities and play areas are structured in ways that allow for social interaction, creative expression, and thoughtful investigations. One particular area of development that is enriched through play and teacher guidance is the children's emerging skill with writing.

Children become writers mostly through discovery. Learning to write is a gradual developmental process, much like learning to talk, during which children discover and then revise different strategies for producing print.

Research shows that when creative play areas are rich with print and when real-life props are provided for the children to use, children's awareness and use of print is enhanced. At the Co-op, play areas and various activities throughout the year provide opportunities for children to make discoveries about writing. The post office is supplied with paper and envelopes, rubber stamps and ink pads, pens, pencils, markers, mail slots, and a mail carrier's bag. If you are working at the Co-op on a day when the post office is open, notice the variety of activities that go on there. Children talk about what or to whom they are writing. They stamp, staple, fold, seal, and deliver important messages.

In January when the Big Room becomes a scaled-down supermarket, shoppers fill the market, shopping lists in hand, buying a variety of authentic groceries in boxes and cans. Children make advertisements from magazines and newspapers to hang up in the store. Parents may find that on their next trip to the grocery store, their youngster will want to take his or her own shopping list.

On many mornings an impromptu office is set up complete with telephones, note pads, and markers. Children may be seen answering the phone, writing messages, and discussing appointments with one another.

The kitchen area may become a restaurant where children order their favorite meals from a menu and waiters write down their requests.

Besides integrating writing in creative play scenarios, the teachers use other techniques that stimulate children's awareness of writing. They are adept at eliciting imaginative, almost magical, descriptions from children about their pictures. Children may draw while listening to music and capture the rhythm in their pictures that can lead to a story. Other storytelling ideas that grow out of drawing are Upside-Down Day pictures, What if… stories, snow pictures, nighttime pictures, and underwater pictures, to name a few. The teachers and children compose stories using rubber stamps on themes such as Halloween and Fairy Tales. When spoken language is written down and then later read back to the child just as he or she said it, meaningful connections between speech and print are made.

Children play at writing on their own. At first, this may be pictures, lines, squiggles, or loops. Changes will occur as children adapt new information from their discoveries. For children, playful writing is a valuable building block in the developmental process of discovering how to write. At the Co-op, children have the opportunity to discover ideas about writing through creative play and adult example.

(Written by Mary Righter, Reading Specialist with the Central Intermediate Unit and former Cooperative Playschool parent.)

Filed under Curriculum, Stories