Literacy Playshop

         Literacy Playshop is an approach to teaching literacy skills to young children through the use of pop culture, and multimedia. Children embark on projects such as film making that are inspired by their favorite movies, toys, music, or TV shows. Throughout the process of making a film, children work collaboratively taking on different roles such as writer, cameraman, actor, artist, prop maker,  or puppet master. The children ay engage in multiple literacy experiences like writing a storyboard or a script, reading the script, communication with peers and teachers, and editing a rough draft.
         My focal child for field experience is writing a film with support from me. She incorporated characters from her two favorite movies, Star Wars and Monster's University and made up her own story for them. In her film, the characters will be fighting over what to get to eat for dinner. She wrote out a rough draft of her script and drew a storyboard.
        I really liked how engaged Odelia was in the project. She was willing to miss part of recess to continue writing down her story. I think it would be engrossing and interesting to most students and they would be enthusiastic about making a movie with their friends and playing with toys.  She also wanted to skip a read aloud to continue working on the movie.
         My only concern about implementation is backlash from parents and the issue of time. There is so much that can be learned in elementary school and time is scarce. Including literacy playshop would mean cutting out part of the already established curriculum, so the teacher would have to be sure that literacy playshop would be a beneficial replacement to writer's workshop or journal writing time.  Also some families may disapprove of the inclusion of commercialized toys and products int the classroom because of inappropriate messages. More time would have to be devoted to discussion with students about stereotypes and labels.











References

Wohlwend, K. (2013). Literacy Playshop: New Literacies, Popular Media, and Play in the Early Childhood Classroom. Teachers College Press.

Picture Credit:

Choo Yut Shing. Monsters University, Creative Commons: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic License. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/ Retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/photos/25802865@N08/9156042564/