Play is an activity thick with opportunities to use language. To play along, children need to communicate with one another, and use of language through talk quickly becomes the tool for building meaning in play activity. Children's talk in play situations has been well researched, showing evidence of three features associated with language development and early literacy (Goelman & Pence, 1994). One is children's growing ability to use language to tell their own thinking and to comment on language itself. Children, for example, often point to and label items or ideas as they play (“This is the appointments book, OK? We put the names in here.”) and they use words to talk about words (“This sign says 'open.' When you turn it, it says 'closed.'”). Play is an activity that pushes children to name, to tell, and to report -- all language uses that build literacy foundations.

Children also use cohesive devices to help interweave their play exchanges together into meaningful wholes. They start to listen to their play partners, in other words, and to knit together a conversation or “story.” This emerging ability to use language so as to “take a turn” about a common topic builds the notion of temporal sequencing and is the basis of narrative. Pretend play in particular encourages storymaking, which maps onto children's understanding of story structure in texts.

A third feature of play talk is the cognitive demands it can place on children's use of language. In an effort to maintain play, children may be called upon to recall sequences (“Do you remember how this game works?”), provide explanations (“You don't buy books from the library, Nathan; you borrow them.”) and to answer specific questions about the mechanics of literacy (“Josh, how do you make a B? Like this?”). Such demands pull children into using the language of description and inquiry, which develops vocabulary, problem solving, and questioning. These kinds of talk, as we know, spill over into the language of written discourse, which demands language uses often far removed from first-hand experience.

Returning to our research lesson, let's watch two video clips of play in the art studio. The focus of our looking -- or, more precisely, our listening -- is the children's talk. We are searching for evidence of children using language to “tellí” to build a conversation or story, or to inquire and describe at some length. Presence of these talk features will assure us that the play is supporting literacy -- and, if by chance linked to literate roles and acts, all the more so. Using the checklist in Figure 3 to guide your looking, view the video clip series to gather impressions on the language environment.

Before proceeding to the clips, a few details about each one may prove helpful. In the first, referred to as the “Nobody” clip, the teacher is sitting with children at the writing table. The children are using rebus pictures to make messages, and the need arises to spell the word nobody. Watch how the teacher guides the children through this task. In clip 2, entitled the “Sinking Flower” clip, two girls are creating art pieces with paint.. They practice a technique they invented called “scribble-scrabble,” and in using it to paint they create the sinking flower story. Note how the story is constructed through a combination of language and gesture. As before, examine the clips as often as you like and record your observations. Then read on to find out how several other early childhood teachers responded.

A technical note: The video files are large -- 14 MB and 20 MB -- and will take some time to download, even with a high-speed Internet connection. If you need to download a video player plug-in, following are three no-cost options:

• To download QuickTime, click here
• To download Microsoft's Media Player, click here
• To download Real.com's RealPlayer, click here

For those who choose not to download the video files, a transcript of their audio components is available. Note, however, that considerable information is lost without the images and sounds of the children's interactions.

• Download the Nobody clip
• Download the Sinking Flower clip

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