Play as the text for literacy and numeracy

6/9/2013 Week 6

After the workshop during the week I was struggling with understanding text as more than the written form.  Exploring the notion of text and text user has led me to discover multimodal literacies, emergent literacies and new literacies.  The focus for most articles was emerging ICT and digital technologies.  Little is written about text in early childhood context and the implications for teaching.  Arthur, McArdle and Papic (2010) explain texts in early childhood this way

Texts can be:

oral—e.g. conversations, stories, poems, songs and rhymes

print based—such as books and magazines

visual—including photographs, drawings and paintings

gestural—e.g. performances, body and facial gestures, dance

spatial—such as architecture, constructions and sculptures

multimodal (texts that integrate a number of different modes, such as images, words and sound)—including music videos, movies, television programs, DVDs, computer games and websites.

(Arthur, L.  Mcardle, F., & Papic, M. 2010. Stars Are Made Of Glass: Children As Capable And Creative Communicators. Research In Practice Series. Canberra, Act: Early Childhood Australia. P.3 Retrieved 7/9/2013 http://www.earlychildhoodaustralia.org.au/pdf/rips/rip1002_sample.pdf)

Play is central to early childhood pedagogy and with the above understanding of text I examined play as the context for literacy and numeracy learning. Wohlwend declares that “.. children directly explore the material word through multimodal play..” and the “.. multimodal quality of play offers children multiple ways to expand the meanings of the messages they produce” (p 128). This recognition of play as a medium for children’s representation of ideas, thoughts and feelings along with numerical concepts and understandings adds strength to a broader concept of what is understood as text.

While the articles have reinforced my belief in the centrality of play for early years contexts, a new, broader understanding of text and blended modalities and children as text users will add new challenge to this.

WOHLWEND, K., 2008. Play as a Literacy of Possibilities: Expanding Meanings in Practices, Materials, and Spaces. Language Arts, 86(2), pp. 127-136.

EMFINGER, K., 2009. Numerical Conceptions Reflected During Multiage Child-Initiated Pretend Play. Journal of Instructional Psychology, 36(4), pp. 326-334.