Play(ful) Pedagogical Practices for Creative Collaborative Literacy

With the goal of supporting students' writing and content area learning using play as a pedagogical model, teachers' action research projects involved kindergarten and grade 1 students collaborating to create texts for a range of purposes. The authors analyzed the project activities for their starting points or motivators, student and teacher roles, and artifacts. The activities took the form of small initiatives, a range of themes connecting curricular areas, and imaginative scenarios. Within each, teachers took on various roles to support student interactions and scaffold literacy learning, and students responded through collaboration, creative expression, and writing. Each activity addressed curricular objectives related to literacy while presenting students with opportunities to engage in collaborative, play(ful) learning with peers and the teacher and express their learning through creative means. These projects show that there does not have to be a disconnect between the achievement of curricular objectives and the implementation of play(ful) learning activities.