Aspect of Guided Play |
Pre-K: Literacy and Social Studies |
Kindergarten: Literacy and Science |
Grade 2: Science and Engineering |
Guided Play Experience |
Local Eatery Dramatic Play: Children co-created a drive-through restaurant based on a familiar neighborhood eatery. Using menus with pictures and labels, they took orders, read recipes, and prepared meals with pretend food. |
Text Detective Lab: Emergent bilingual children and children with language delays were given informational texts about animals. At stations created by their teacher, the children freely reconstructed and deconstructed book pages, matched labels to diagrams, created their own animal fact pages using sentence frames and magazine photos, and hunted for text features in books, marking them with sticky notes. |
Sound Exploration and Parade: After freely exploring how different materials produce vibrations and how changes in vibration affect pitch and volume, children designed and built musical instruments from recycled materials. Each instrument had to produce at least two distinct sounds. The unit culminated in a schoolwide“ sound parade” where children performed collaboratively. |
Examples of Learning Goals Addressed |
› Children will demonstrate that print in the environment conveys meaning by recognizing and using labels, menus, and signs during dramatic play.
› Children will use vocabulary in oral language to express ideas, describe play plans, and communicate with peers.
› Children will represent ideas through drawing and emergent writing, using pictures, letterlike symbols, and letters to communicate.
› Children will demonstrate respect for and recognition of different cultural identities and community knowledge through collaborative dramatic play.
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› Children will comprehend the major parts of informational text, including titles, headings, labels, and diagrams.
› Children will explain how illustrations or photographs in a book are related to the text.
› Children will understand how where animals live is related to animals’ needs.
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› Children will demonstrate that vibrating matter produces sound and that sound can make matter vibrate.
› Children will demonstrate that changing the rate or type of vibration changes pitch and volume.
› Children will apply the engineering design process to design, build, and test an instrument that meets specific criteria.
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Teacher’ s Role |
Introduced vocabulary( order, receipt), modeled written communication, and prompted children to describe their play plans and represent them through drawing and emergent writing. |
Provided the structure of the project by creating stations, observing each child’ s actions, and asking them guiding questions. |
Posed inquiry questions during the free exploration phase, modeled scientific vocabulary( vibration, pitch, volume), and provided basic construction guidance. |
How It Supports Individual Learners |
Basing the play scenario on a restaurant familiar to the rural community grounded the activity in children’ s existing knowledge and experiences. Visual menus with pictures paired with print provided different modes. The open-ended nature of dramatic play allowed for flexible participation for each learner( taking written orders, arranging food props, or managing the pretend kitchen) for multiple ways to engage. |
Visual anchor charts with icons as well as text for emergent readers were provided for the children. Multilingual learners were guided by the teacher with leading questions, then eventually independently matched the correct labels to the photographs provided. Children with emerging fine motor skills verbally directed partners’ hands. |
The open-ended design challenge created multiple solution pathways. Children who were uncomfortable with traditional testing formats demonstrated understanding through performance and design rather than written assessment. Multilingual learners used the hands-on materials to show scientific thinking through their choices and constructions rather than relying solely on oral or written explanation. |