Dramatic Play in Literacy

Dramatic play is when children each have a  role that they act out. This is a very important part of learning for preschoolers. It allows children to leave the norms of reality, be someone or something that they are not, and act out in dramatized situations. This supports the children's developmental skills and helps them to better understand how the world works.

Dramatic play can also be incorporated into literacy. This bring the benefits of literacy and the benefits of dramatic play together into one aspect of learning for children. In this type of literacy, the teacher and the students will have a shared reading experience. This is when the teacher is reading aloud to the students, and the students are actively engaged and participating in the story. The type of story chosen for dramatic play is very important. One example of a vital characteristic of a book for a shared reading experience is repetition. If a book have repetition, it is easy for the children to catch on and be able to join in with the reader, which in turn keeps them more engaged in the story.

Creating roles for the children to play to go along with the book is a great way to create dramatic play in a read aloud. The students can each be given a role as a character, and wear bibs with the character's picture on it to identify who is what character. One book that this activity can be easily incorporated is the book The Mitten by Jan Brett.

For this book, each child can represent a different animal in the book, and any extra children can represent the mitten. As the story is read allowed, the child who is representing the animal on the current page will be acknowledged and have to fit into the "mitten." This makes the story much more interactive and interesting to the students.

Another way to get children involved in the story is by having them represent an aspect of the book for example in the book The Jacket I Wear in the Snow by Shirley Neitzel. 

The students are able to stand for the different articles of clothing in this book by having a printed out word of the article of clothing as well as an actual piece of the clothing. Then when the clothes are said in the story the student who represents the clothing can stand up. With this books great use of repetition, this kind of activity can be very enjoyable for children. After reading this aloud in the class, the teacher can keep the book in the classroom and provide all of the clothes hat are in the book in the dramatic play area. This allows for children to continue to explore this book and make up their own unique way of using dramatic play with the story.

Dramatic play through literacy can ignite interests in the children that they may not normally have, while also being in collaboration with not only the teacher but the peers in the classroom. This can greatly increase the enjoyment through story-telling, and can also improve developmental skills of children. This is an activity that should be incoporated into all preschools and early childhood programs.