The purpose of the koukai kenkyuu jugyou is to illustrate, to critique, and to reflect so that we might take away from the research lesson more than we brought. The focus of this lesson was the play environment as a setting for early literacy teaching and learning activity. We had the good fortune to look in on the play of 17 four-year-olds, who were exploring the work of five modern artists as well as their own artful handiwork. We searched for evidence that their play environment was literacy rich and language filled -- conditions that descriptive research has found support early literacy development in the play context.

Turning from the lesson to thoughts of our own, several ideas seem to follow along. One is a deeper realization perhaps that literacy ideas, information, and processes need to be embedded in playful activity. The goal is not a play environment decorated with print, but rather a play environment networked with print so as to interrelate space, materials, and activity. In the case of the art studio, print was used to make connections between experience and ideas and to support constructions of new schemata and possibilities. It served a real purpose and, as a consequence, was purposefully used, which enriches individualsí knowledge, skills, and literacy habits.

Another idea that lingers is a deeper understanding of language as a primary connector between play and literacy, and an appreciation that the ways in which language is used by children in play builds and fortifies the mental structures they will need to construct meaning with printed texts. At play children use words to tell, to name, to report, to explain, to argue, to reason, and to create. Critical for young children at school is plenty of opportunity for talk in these ways with their peers and their teachers -- a primary reason that play belongs in the curriculum and should be well represented there.

Also lasting (and delightfully so) are images of the art studio as a literate place and what made it that way, and echoes of the children's talk there and how their playful opportunities to use language pulled them forward into literacy. The observational tools, too, helped to capture some of this and also hold out the possibility for us to do so again in research lessons of our own.

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