Building Literacy Skills With Dramatic Play

By acting out their own stories, young children develop a deeper understanding of character, setting, and language.

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(Oscar) One time, I went to Legoland.

(child) Oh!

(Noelle) Because our class
does storytelling, story acting,

our students know
and respect each other more.

It's a language and literacy practice,
really, but it does so much more.

It helps the kids with their social
emotional development.

It's really community building
within the classroom.

(child) I went to Legoland.

♪ (music) ♪

(Sarah) Amigos is a two way
immersion school

for students, in Cambridge,
Massachusetts.

At Amigos, we look to support biliteracy
in the early years

by really developing and strengthening
oral language skills,

and the students' ability to tell stories,

understand the shape of a story,
and be able to share that

with oral language
in both Spanish and English.

With my mom, my dad.

(Oscar) So storytelling, story acting,
we first ask a child to tell us a story,

and it could be a personal
story of theirs,

or something that they have made up.

And then when it's time to do
the story acting,

we are actually seeing a visual
representation of their story.

(Oscar) And there was petals.

We're actually working with language,
but at the same time,

we're working with elements of a story.

(Oscar) You can use Legos to make a car.

(children) Brrmm, brmm

It has setting, characters.

(child) A brother.
(Noelle) Brother.

(Noelle) Each day, a different student
has a turn to tell a story to me.

It was a family of turtles.

(child) Yeah.
(Noelle) Ah, okay.

So there was a family of turtles.

I take the story dictation
during rest time.

It's a quiet time, so I
call the student over.

(child) The shark.

There's a shark in your story?
>>Student: Yeah.

(Noelle) It just probably
takes five or ten minutes.

They tell me the story.

(child) Then I [speaks Spanish].

(Noelle) And often because
we're a bilingual school,

it's really a motivator for the kids
who are just learning Spanish

to try to tell the story
in Spanish.

And then we clean up the mats,
we get in our circle,

and then I call the student
up to sit next to me.

There was a family of turtles.

I read the story aloud.

Do you want to be the baby?
>>Student: Uh-huh.

(Noelle) And then they are responsible
for choosing who the actors are.

(child) Do you want
to be the mommy?

(Noelle) We just go in a circle.

So it's not popularity contest,
but more of just whose turn it is.

Do you want to be the sister?
(child) [speaks Spanish]

(Noelle) And they put them
in their places,

and then I read the story
for a final time,

and they act it out.

The turtle said "Hi!" to the girl.

(child) Hi.
I'm not the girl, she is.

(Noelle) Oh, so if you're a turtle,
then you have to go like that.

For the very shy kids, it gives
them a structure and a platform

and rules to be able to do that.

And then the shark
ate all the turtles.

For other kids, it gives them that
much-needed like

"This is my turn. I've been
wanting this all day long!"

So it depends on the child.

But it is very powerful for everyone
to have that kind of spotlight on you.

Wow, look at the shark.

Look at the shark!