Article 4 Summary
The Assignment
Summarize the article by answering the three questions listed below. Each question should have an answer that has a minimum of 7 sentences. Please make sure you read the statement on Plagiarism. Also, do not copy and paste the article – that is plagiarism. Title must be included
Article: Make -Believe Play Jan2012 Make -Believe Play Jan2012 – Alternative Formats
(If you have difficulty accessing this pdf, contact your instructor for assistance)
- What is the main focus of the article? What knowledge did you gain? What was the author’s purpose?
- What is PRoPELS and how does it impact dramatic play? Choose 2 aspects of PRoPELS and discuss how they impact young children’s play.
- How do you plan to use the ideas and strategies with children in the classroom? What activities could you implement with the strategies/ideas from paragraph 2?
Grading Criteria
Maximum points are given when length of 3 paragraphs,minimum of 7 sentences in each, is met and content summarizes key strategies to use with young children and families. Title must be included
20 points – Three paragraphs are included, each paragraph has a minimum of seven sentences
20 points – First paragraph summarizes the main focus of the article
30 points – Second paragraph summarizes three strategies from the article
30 points – Third paragraph gives specific strategies/ideas you will use when working with young children.
Points are deducted for errors in grammar and spelling. Also noted is clarity of the summary and students comprehension of the content.
Resources
Article: Make -Believe Play Jan2012 Make -Believe Play Jan2012 – Alternative Formats
Assessing and Scaffolding
Make-Believe Play
Deborah J. Leong and Elena Bodrova
It is the third week that Ms. Sotto’s preschool classroom has been turned into an airport. The literacy center is a ticket counter, with a travel agency complete with child-made passports, tickets, and travel brochures. In the block area the children have constructed a walk-through X-ray scanner from cardboard boxes. A smaller box with openings on both ends functions as the screening device for carry-on luggage. There is an airplane cockpit made out of a big piece of cardboard with child-drawn instruments, an upside-down egg carton for a keyboard, and a paper plate that functions as the steering wheel. Sophia tells her friend Vince that she is going on a trip and that she is going to forget to take out her water bottle. Then she won’t be able to get through security. Vince says he is going to go to Puerto Rico where his grandmother lives. Sophia puts on her backpack and stands in line behind Vince. Finally it’s her turn. “Where are you going?” asks Tanya, the child behind the counter. “I’m goin’ to Puerto Rico too.” “OK. Here’s your passport and your ticket to Puerto Rico. Your flight leaves at 77 o’clock.” Tanya hands two pieces of torn construction paper to Sophia. Sophia goes to another center and takes off her shoes. She puts them in a basket with her backpack, then pushes the basket through the scanner. Amir, who is the security guard, waits until Sophia walks through the X-ray
, then waves a paper towel roll wand over her head. “OK,” he says, “you can go now.” Another security guard, Milda, is standing with Sophia’s backpack, holding the bottle of water that Sophia “forgot” to take out of her backpack. “This is more than three ounces!” “Oh, I forgot. I’ll put it in my cubby,” says Sophia as she takes the bottle and runs to her cubby. Her next stop is the passenger lounge.
hat is happening in Ms. Sotto’s classroom is an example of what most early childhood educators mean when they talk about make-believe play—a fantasy world created by children where
their imagination soars, their language expands, and their social skills develop. Unfortunately, play observed in many early childhood classrooms
Deborah J. Leong, PhD, is director of the Tools of the Mind project. She is professor emerita of cognitive and developmental psychology at the Metropolitan State College of Denver. dleong2@mindspring.com
Elena Bodrova, PhD, is a principal researcher at Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning in Denver, Colorado. She is a coauthor of Tools of the Mind: The Vygotskian Approach to Early Childhood Education with Deborah Leong and of NAEYC’s Basics of Assessment: A Primer for Early Childhood Educators with Oralie McAfee and Deborah Leong. ebodrova@mcrel.org
® 2, 3, 4
rarely reaches this level; often children act out a series of simple and stereotypical scripts with little or no interac tion with their peers. Research provides more and more evidence of the positive effects that well-developed play has on various areas of child development, such as chil dren’s social skills, emerging mathematical ability, mastery of early literacy concepts, and self-regulation (see Singer, Golinkoff, & Hirsh-Pasek 2006). It is also becoming increas ingly clear that without adult support, the play of many children is destined to never reach this fully developed sta tus. Teaching children to play has to be as intentional and systematic as teaching literacy or math and at the same time must take a form very different from adult-initiated practices often used to teach these content-related skills.
A Vygotskian approach to scaffolding play
True to the saying that everything new is the “well-forgot ten old,” the answer to today’s challenges comes from the past—from theories of play developed in the last century by Lev Vygotsky and his student Daniel Elkonin. These theories, along with the work done by students of Vygotsky and Elkonin, are the foundation of the approach to scaffold ing play we (the authors) currently use in our work with teachers in early childhood classrooms.
In Vygotsky (1977) and Elkonin’s (2005) view, make believe play reaches its highest level of development in the preschool and kindergarten years. However, this fully developed or “mature” form of play does not emerge over night. In fact, its earliest prerequisites develop in infancy, as babies learn to imitate other people’s actions and begin to communicate by using gestures and vocalizations. Mastering language and forming emotional bonds with their caregivers both prepare infants to learn from adults who are their first “play mentors.” It is important to make sure that infants have ample opportunities to engage in playful interactions with adults during which they can practice their first pretend
In this sense a simple peek-a-boo game with an adult carries more educational value than any “smart toy” one gives to a child to play with alone. Toddlers take more steps toward developing mature make believe play as they move from mastering simple acts of put ting on their clothes or brushing their hair to applying these acts to their dolls and stuffed animals; sometimes they even attempt to turn their pets into play partners. This is the time when adult play mentoring and—even better—toddler’s participation in play with older children can change play from being “toy oriented” to “people oriented.” As Daniel Elkonin (1978, 187) put it, “A child starts with feeding herself with a spoon; then she uses the spoon to feed everyone; then she uses the spoon to feed her doll; and finally feeds the doll pretending to be the ‘mommy’ who feeds her ‘daugh ter’” (trans. by Bodrova). At this later stage, the play is no longer about the spoon and not even about a specific doll—it is about the relationship between mother and daughter.
Reaching preschool age does not guarantee, however, that a child’s play stops being toy oriented. In fact, too many pre schoolers continue to engage in play that would be appropri ate for a 2-year-old but is something that 4-year-olds should have long outgrown. To help teachers support higher levels of play in these children, we have developed an approach to assessing and scaffolding play—PRoPELS—that focuses on its most critical elements (Bodrova & Leong 2007).
Minding one’s p’s and r’s when
playing
PRoPELS is an acronym that stands for the most critical elements of children’s play that can be assessed and scaf folded by the adults.
—children’s ability to think about play in advance of
playing
children play—including the actions, language, and emotional expressions that are associated with a specific role
—the objects (real, symbolic, and imaginary) chil
dren use in play
frame—play that lasts for long stretches
Research provides more and more evidence of the positive effects that well-developed play has on various areas of child development, such as children’s social skills, emerging mathematical ability, mastery of early literacy concepts, and self-regulation.
- f time: within one play session for an hour or longer
- r extending over several play sessions and over sev- eral days
-
Language —what children say to develop a scenario or
coordinate the actions of different players as well as speech associated with a particular role -
Scenario —what children act out, including the sequence
f scripts and interactions between roles
Using PRoPELS to assess play gives teachers an idea of how mature play is in their classrooms. On the continuum from most immature to most mature, children’s make-believe play goes through five stages, with all of its elements (outlined above in the acronym PRoPELS) developing and expanding: • The earliest stage—first scripts—is best described in terms of object-oriented pretend actions, such as a child playing with toy cars while making “vroom vroom” sounds. • An example of the next stage—roles in action—would be a child walking back and forth in high heels and, when asked, labeling her actions as playing “mommy.” • More mature play appears by stage 3—roles with rules and beginning
Children begin to coordinate their pretend actions with their play partners, making sure that these pretend actions go with the roles chosen by each of the players. When children are at this stage, it is common to hear them correcting each other’s behaviors when the behaviors are not in line with the roles the children are playing. For example, a child might comment if the patient starts playing with the doctor’s stethoscope or the sales associate walks off wearing shoes she was about to sell to a customer. • An example of stage 4 play is found in the opening vignette describing the airport play in Ms. Sotto’s room. Children en gage in multiple pretend actions, all being consistent with the roles they are playing while acting out complex scenarios.
• Finally, at stage 5, planning and negotiating pretend actions starts to take more time than actually carrying them out. It is at this stage that children sometimes play multiple roles without actually having physical partners as they both “direct” and “act out” these roles with stuffed animals or even imaginary partners.
The table below summarizes the changes in the PRoPELS elements across different stages of
What “PRoPELS” play to new heights?
The idea that we need to teach young children how to play is not a new one; until recently, however, it has been primarily discussed in terms of enhancing or facilitating play that has already reached a certain level of develop
| 1. First Scripts | 2. Roles in Action | 3. Roles with Rules and Begin- ning Scenarios | 4. Mature Roles, Planned Scenarios, and Symbolic Props | 5. Dramatization, Themes, Multiple Director’s Play | Multiple Roles, and |
| Does not plan during play. | Plans roles; actions are named prior to | Plans each scenario in advance. | Plans elaborate scenarios, and | themes, complex roles. | |
| Spends more than acting out | time planning the scenario. | ||||
| Does not have roles. | Acts first and then decides on roles. No | Has roles with rules that can be violated. | Has complex, multiple roles. | Can play more at a time. Roles | than one role have social |
| rules are revealed. | relationships. | ||||
| Plays with objects as objects. | Plays with objects as props. Actions with a | Needs a prop for the role. | Chooses symbolic and pretend props. | Can pretend ally have a prop. | rather than actu- Does not |
| prop result in a role. | need a prop to Objects can have | stay in the role. roles. | |||
| Explores objects, but not play | Creates scenarios that last a few | Creates scenarios that last 10–15 | Creates scenarios that last 60 minutes or lon- | Creates scenarios day and over | that last all several days. |
| minutes. | ger. With support, can create scenarios that last over several days. | Play can be restarted. | interrupted and | ||
| Uses little language. | Uses language to describe actions. | Uses language to describe roles and | Uses language the scenario, | to delineate roles, and action. | |
| actions. Uses role speech. | Book language into role speech. | is incorporated | |||
| Does not create a scenario. Can | Creates a scenario that is stereotypical, | Plays familiar scripts fully. Accepts | Plays a series of coor- dinated scenarios that | Plays a series scenarios that | of coordinated change in |
| copy what the teacher does and | with limited behav- iors. Can incorpo- | new script ideas. | change in response to previous ones or | response to the desires of | previous ones or players. Uses |
| says or will fol- low the teacher’s | rate modeled roles and actions into | the desires of players. Describes unfolding | themes from literature. | stories and | |
| directions if script is simple and repetitive. | play, with support. | scenario, roles, and actions. | |||
| 30 | Young | Children • January 2012 |
Five Stages in a Child’s Make-Believe Play
© Julia Luckenbill
ment. Explicit play instruction is often limited to the con text of special education. While children with language delays or emotional disorders are thought to benefit from play interventions, children without such delays or disor ders are usually expected to develop play skills on their own. This approach, while valid in the past, can no longer be adopted if we want all young children to develop mature play. Massive changes in the culture of childhood—such as the disappearance of multiage play groups, the increase in time children spend in adult-directed activities after school, and so on—mean that, for many young children, early childhood settings are the only place where they have the opportunity to learn how to play.
t is important to note, however, that learning how to play in the classroom will not look the same as learning to play within the informal neighborhood peer groups of yesterday. In the past, most play occurred in multi
age groups in which younger children could learn from older “play experts,” practice their play skills with peers of the same age, and then pass their knowledge on to other “play novices.” Under those conditions, even preschool ers could act out elaborate and imaginative scenarios like castles or space travel, because the play skills of older children would buoy their own skills. In today’s early child hood settings, children are almost always segregated by age and have to interact with play partners who are as inex perienced as they are. As a result, many of the play skills that children learned in the past by observing and imitating their older playmates now have to be taught directly by teachers or learned from behaviors that teachers model. In addition, unlike the unstructured play of the past that often lasted for hours or days, playtime in today’s early childhood classroom is limited and rarely exceeds one or two hours. This means that to achieve rapid progress in the quality of play, play scaffolding in the classroom needs to be designed to strategically target its most critical compo nents: children’s play Planning, their ability to take on and maintain Roles, use of Props, Extended time frame, chil dren’s use of Language, and the quality of play Scenarios. In mature play, all of these discrete components are inter twined. However, we have found that at different levels of play, children will have more difficulty with one aspect or another. Using PRoPELS is best when you first observe chil dren’s play without intervening. After assessing the level of children’s independent play, you can then decide what kind of scaffolding is the most appropriate. By highlighting the different areas in which you as the teacher can scaffold, you can be more efficient in providing scaffolds that sup port a given child or group of children.
Many of the play skills that children learned in the past by observing and imitating their older playmates now have to be taught directly by teachers or learned from behaviors that teachers model.
Scaffolding children’s play Planning. Elkonin (1978) identified planning as one of the features of mature play, describing play of older children as consisting mostly of lengthy discussions of who is going to do what and how, followed by brief periods of acting out. As with other com ponents of play, role and scenario planning can benefit from adult scaffolding. The teacher can start by asking children what they want to play or what they want to be, encourag ing them to discuss the choice of the roles with their peers. Later, the teacher can ask children about more specific de tails of their future play scenarios, including what props they might need or whether they need to assume a different role.
By making planning a necessary step in play, the teacher directs children’s attention to the specifics of their roles and to the existence of rules associated with them. Many arguments that happen during play are over the fact that two children have chosen the same role or because the prop associated with that role is being used by another child. Planning prior to children going to the center can help prevent potential conflicts. Children can talk about the
possible conflict instead of fighting over the prop. Planning allows children to discuss what might happen if there are two people who want to be truck drivers and only one truck.
Having children agree to take turns before going to the center teaches social problem-solving strategies and starts the play off with positive interactions.
The planning process can take place orally, but if chil dren represent their plans in drawing or pretend writing, this process produces even greater benefits. First, as children engage in drawing, they are able to focus on their future play for a longer period of time, thus thinking over more details of their pretend scenarios. Second, having a tangible reminder helps children to regulate their own and their partners’ behaviors; if a child has a picture of a veteri narian with her name on it, it becomes harder for another child to usurp this role. It also makes it easier for the teacher to troubleshoot possible conflicts and to engage children in brainstorming solutions. If two children want to be veterinarians, the teacher can introduce different kinds of veterinarians, such as the ones who take care of pets and those who treat large animals.
Planning also occurs during play when children change the scenario, the props, and the roles. Mature players discuss what is going to happen prior to it happening. For example, children might discuss what will happen at the fire station now that the fire is out. What other problems might happen? Children at the higher levels of play are able to plan on the fly, discuss possible directions for the scenarios, incorporate the ideas of the different players involved, and create props to match the changes in the play.
Scaffolding development and maintaining play Roles
and rules. As Elkonin (1978) points out, the focus of mature
play is the social roles and relationship between people—something that children cannot learn by simply observing adult behaviors. Therefore, to promote mature play, teachers need to explain the purpose of these behaviors, their sequence, the cause-and-effect rela tionships between different behaviors, and so on. For example, a teacher may explain that a customer in a restaurant cannot simply go to the kitchen and get a pizza—first he needs to give his order to a waiter. The waiter will take the order to a chef, and only
Having children agree to take turns before going to the center teaches social problem-solving strategies and starts the play off with positive interactions.
then will the customer be served the pizza. It also helps to discuss with the children what happens if the normal sequence of events gets disrupted; a chef who has not waited for the waiter to bring him a specific order may cook something different from what the customer wants to eat.
The rules that hold make-believe play together are not arbitrary but are based on the logic of real-life situations. Therefore, not knowing how these life scripts unfold will keep children from practicing self-regulated behaviors by following these rules. Helping children learn about scripts, and the rules that these scripts follow, calls for greater involvement by early childhood teachers in children’s play than most teachers are used to. However, for most children this involvement needs to last for a relatively short time: soon they are able to use models provided by the teachers to build their own roles and rules, requiring only occasional adult support.
Scaffolding the use of Props in a symbolic way. Many
young children today grow up using mostly realistic toys and having limited or no experience with using open-ended materials (for example, a rock, stick, or paper plate) in play. This makes it difficult for them to develop a broad range of symbolic substitutions associated with higher levels of make-believe play. For these children, teachers need to model how to use props in a symbolic way, gradu ally expanding the repertoire of different uses for the same object. Over the period of several months, teachers can introduce more unstructured and multifunctional props while at the same time removing some overly realistic ones, such as plastic fried eggs. Older preschoolers and kinder gartners can start making their own props, while teachers can show younger preschoolers how to make minimal changes in the existing props to change their purpose. For example, a teacher can say, “Look at this big toy dog. We used it as the Big Bad Wolf when we played fairy tales. Do you think we can use it as the dalmatian in the fire station we are building now? What can we do to make this dog look like a dalmatian?”
Scaffolding the use of Language in play. An important
part of adult scaffolding is monitoring children’s language to make sure it is used in the service of play. For example, an adult’s language should change to match the new ways props are used: the same paper plate that is a steering wheel in a fire truck today was a pretend pizza in the play restaurant last week. Since the appearance of the prop has not changed, the new name given to the paper plate is the only way the players will know that now it is being used in a new way. Assigning new names to the play props as these are used in new functions helps children master the symbolic nature of words, leading to children’s eventual realization of the unique relationship that exists between words and the objects they signify. This emergence of meta linguistic awareness is associated with children’s mastery of written language.
Language also touches some of the other elements of play described in PRoPELS. Adult scaffolding is needed to help children engage in “role speech,” that is, using vocabu lary, sentence structure, and intonation that fit a specific role. Teachers first introduce children to the ways people doing different jobs talk to each other during book reading or on a field trip. For example, children would learn that a 911 operator tries to reassure the person calling that the fire truck will arrive soon by saying, “Help is on the way.” As the play unfolds, children may also need to be reminded of new vocabulary words they can use when play ing a particular role. One way to do this is for a teacher to temporarily assume a secondary role, such as a customer or a patient, and make requests that prompt the children playing the leading roles of chefs, doctors, or vets to use these new words. For example, if the play in the pretend restaurant gets a little stale, a teacher can freshen it up by pretending to place a call to make a reservation. This would be a perfect opportunity to inquire about today’s specials, the hours when the restaurant is open, whether kids’ meals are available, and so on.
Scaffolding development of play Scenarios that can
unfold over Extended periods of time. A play scenario is what many people call the theme of play. It is the story line that the children are acting out. Children explore the social interactions of their roles through the play scenario. What happens when you go to the doctor’s office? Your baby might be sick or you might have a broken leg. What will you say to the doctor? What will he or she do to help you? Mature players have scenarios that evolve and change as they play, hence the importance of extended periods of time. Scaffolding play scenarios has several components. First, children often lack background knowledge to build their scenarios. Even to play “family dinner” or “grocery store,” which all children are expected to be familiar with, requires knowledge of the setting, roles, and actions associated with these scenarios. To build background knowledge about less familiar topics, teachers use field trips, guest speakers, and books and videos. To promote mature play, the choice of places to take children on a field trip and the choice of books and videos need to be guided by how well these activities and tools will help children to learn about people and their activities.
When field trips or books center on objects or animals, such as a trip to the zoo or a book on dinosaurs, very little of their content gets reenacted in mature make-believe play. However, if a teacher supplements a book on dinosaurs with additional videos and books portraying the work of paleontologists, children are more likely to start playing pretend scenarios, such as museum or dinosaur dig, and incorporate new concepts in their conversations.
Sometimes even a very suc cessful field trip may not provide enough information for children to transfer what they saw on this trip to their play in the classroom. In these cases teachers have to support play by modeling pretend actions and role speech more explicitly, for example, role playing and practicing some of the pretend actions with children. For most children such intensive “play practice” is needed for only a limited time. Other children, such as children with special needs, can benefit from more extensive play practice with their peers.
Conclusion
Mature make-believe play is an important and unique context, providing opportunities to learn not afforded by other classroom activities. It should not be considered something extra that can be cut to accommodate more time for aca demic skills, nor should it be used as a means of adding “entertainment value” for inherently boring and decontextualized drills. Instead, play should be preserved and nurtured as one of the “uniquely ‘preschool’” (in the words of Vygotsky’s colleague and student Alexander Zaporozhets) activities that provide the most beneficial context for children’s development:
Optimal educational opportunities for a young child to reach his or her potential and to develop in a harmonious fashion are not created by accel erated ultra-early instruction aimed at shortening
the childhood period—that would prematurely turn a toddler into a preschooler and a preschooler into a first-grader. What is needed is just the opposite—expansion and enrichment of the content in the activities that are uniquely “preschool”: from play to painting to interactions with peers and adults. (Zaporozhets 1986, 88)
References
Bodrova, E., & D.J. Leong. 2007. Tools of the Mind: The Vygotskian
Approach to Early Childhood Education. 2nd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education/Merrill.
Elkonin, D.B. 1978. Psychologija igry [The Psychology of Play]. Moscow:
Pedagogika.
Elkonin, D.B. 2005. “Chapter 1: The Subject of Our Research: The Devel oped Form of Play.” Journal of Russian and East European Psychology 45 (1): 22–48.
Singer, D., R. Golinkoff, & K. Hirsh Pasek, eds. 2006. Play = Learning:
Play should be preserved and nurtured as one of the “uniquely preschool” activities that provide the most beneficial context for children’s development.
How Play Motivates and Enhances Children’s Cognitive and Social Emotional Growth. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Vygotsky, L.S. 1977. “Play and Its
Role in the Mental Development of the Child.” In Soviet Developmental Psychology, ed. M. Cole, 76–99. White Plains, NY: M.E. Sharpe.
Zaporozhets, A.V. 1986. Izbrannye
psychologicheskie trudy [Selected Works in Psychology]. Moscow: Pedagogika.
Copyright © 2012 by the National Associa tion for the Education of Young Children. See Permissions and Reprints online at www.naeyc.org/yc/permissions.