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While it may seem that during playtime your child is just having fun, they are actually learning a lot from both you and other children, specifically through sociodramatic play and expressive language.
While it may seem that during playtime your child is just having fun, they are actually learning a lot from both you and other children, specifically through sociodramatic play and expressive language.
Sociodramatic Play
Sociodramatic Play
What is it?
What is it?
- When children take on fictional roles and act out different scenarios, they are learning how to represent complex ideas with diverse words.
- Children play pretend before they learn how to read, and their practice of developing characters and narratives helps them become better readers later on.
- Playing pretend with your child introduces them to more complex words and situations. This can be a great way to develop their early reading skills.
What Qualifies as Sociodramatic Play and Why?
What Qualifies as Sociodramatic Play and Why?
Sometimes sociodramatic play is called pretend play, symbolic play, or imitative play; however, these names all refer to the same kind of play.
Some key components found in sociodramatic play:
- Reenacting everyday experiences, especially those that involve interaction with literacy-related objects
- Think flipping through books, holding pens, journals, and other related items.
- Engaging in imaginative, creative, and original play scenarios. To further strengthen this aspect of play, it is recommended to base these creative scenarios off of previous knowledge gained from books.
- For example, acting out a scenario in which kids are on another planet that they learned about previously in a book or movie.
- Retelling and reenacting sections of movies, stories, books, or anything of this nature to other people (both children and adults).
- Incorporation of music is also a way to link literacy and play in a fun way!
- Singing nursery rhymes such as Mary Had a Little Lamb or B-I-N-G-O provide a means through which children can begin to use their literary skills in ways other than simply reading text.
When combined, these various aspects of sociodramatic play result in a fun way to help children further their literacy skills. These practices allow children to interpret how different types of texts and literary devices are used across many contexts, and gives them the skills to apply what they’ve learned to various circumstances.
An Important Part of Play: Props!
An Important Part of Play: Props!
- Props can be children’s books, pencils, paper, desk, envelopes, newspapers.
- Early interactions with books will help them understand the basics of reading:
- How we hold books
- Whether we read from left to right or right to left
- That we turn pages when we’ve read all the text on the page
[For further information on emergent literacy, click here!]
Why is Sociodramatic Play Important?
Why is Sociodramatic Play Important?
- Sociodramatic play strengthens the cognitive skills necessary for your child to begin reading.
- You may have noticed that when children engage in pretend play, they narrate what they’re doing.
- This strengthens their inner dialogue.
- Inner dialogue leads to learning and symbol-making which lead to knowledge about words, language, and print.
- Once young children develop their own assumptions and knowledge about the written language, they begin to use this knowledge actively in their play and imaginary worlds.
Encourage Sociodramatic Play During Shared Reading
Encourage Sociodramatic Play During Shared Reading
- Make reading a fun and engaging social activity between you and your child
- Read frequently to your child
- Have your child hold the book and flip the pages
- Incorporate literary props into your child’s daily life
- Encourage your children to act out scenarios they learned about in books or movies
Learning Through Peers
Learning Through Peers
What are receptive and expressive language abilities? Why are they important?
What are receptive and expressive language abilities? Why are they important?
- Receptive language is how many concepts or words a child understands when spoken or read to them
- Expressive language is how many concepts or words a child can communicate
- Receptive and expressive language are terms that help us know how a child's language abilities are developing because understanding and producing language are two different skills.
How do peers affect each other's receptive and expressive language?
How do peers affect each other's receptive and expressive language?
- Children start Pre-K with different experiences and therefore different receptive and expressive language abilities
- Part of learning language is learning from peers with different language abilities because they help each other raise their expressive language abilities
- Children with lower expressive language ability benefit from interactions between peers with higher expressive language ability
- For children to successfully learn receptive and expressive language skills from each other, they have to want to learn from their interactions. A supportive classroom environment can help to ensure that children feel comfortable talking and learning from each other. Teachers are important in facilitating these peer-to-peer interactions!
What is important for learning language in Pre-K classrooms?
What is important for learning language in Pre-K classrooms?
- Peer-to-peer interactions are an important part of learning language and predicts later reading success
- For children to learn language most effectively from their peers, Pre-K classrooms should:
- Have children with mixed language abilities
- Balance between teacher-to-child interaction and child-to-child interaction to give children time to learn from their peers
- This is important because traditional Pre-K classrooms emphasize constructive teacher-to-child interactions. While teacher-to-child interactions are important for child development, they should be balanced with child-to-child interactions.
- Create an emotionally supportive environment
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