guided play can scaffold young children’ s vocabulary learning( Toub et al. 2018).
To effectively identify when and how guided play is embedded in the curriculum, educators must carefully consider instructional goals and materials as well as what they know about individual learners. This helps to ensure that all children benefit from the curriculum while participating in engaging, motivating, and developmentally appropriate experiences( Masterson & Bohart 2019).
During a professional development day, Mr. Ridgley and the first-grade teaching team worked with an instructional coach to study the district’ s new materials. They discovered several entry points for engaging children in play. These were either embedded within the required components or listed as extension activities that could be offered if time allowed. As a team, they decided to identify and implement guided play activities for any curricular components that did not include them( see“ Identifying Areas for Guided Play” on page 46).
In the following sections, we show how Mr. Ridgley threaded guided play throughout his first-grade curriculum, scaffolding playful explorations and activities toward specific learning goals. We also offer examples of how he assessed children’ s learning.
Responding to Children’ s Questions and Interests
The first graders at Mr. Ridgley’ s school have been studying birds. One day, they notice a group of vultures gathered around a dead animal on the street, which leads to a lively conversation about scavengers and the beaks of birds of prey.
Jasmin: Mr. Ridgley, Mr. Ridgley, there are three big birds in the middle of the street!
Mr. Ridgley: Those birds are turkey vultures.
Jasmin: What are they doing?
Mr. Ridgley: It looks like they’ ve found a dead squirrel in the street. Scavenger birds look for carrion, which are dead animals, to eat.
( A car drives by, and the birds hop away. Once the car has moved on, the birds return and pull the squirrel to the side of the road.)
Mr. Ridgley: What kind of beak would a bird need to eat a dead animal?
Kenneth: Probably a hook beak, like an eagle. I know eagles tear the flesh off the fish they catch.
The first-grade team decides to encourage children to investigate further the types of beaks birds have and the foods they like to eat. Over several days, they place bird feeders on the playground along with binoculars, drawing paper, colored pencils, and crayons. Children are eager to use the binoculars and soon notice how the birds they observe are different from
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