Wohlwend,K.E. (2011). Playing their way into literacies: Reading,writing,and belonging in the early childhood classroom.

Wohlwend, K.E. (2011). Playing their way into literacies: Reading, writing, and belonging in the early childhood classroom. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. ISBN: 978-0-8077-5260-9. [192 pp].

Playing Their Way Into Literacies: Reading, Writing, and Belonging in the Early Childhood Classroom is Karen Wohlwend’s study in a kindergarten classroom that utilizes play as literacy. She expands on Bourdieu’s ideas of social practice, Street’s ideas of how literacy functions as a social practice and Kress’ ideas of multiple and multimodal literacies to contend that play should be reinstated as a key curricular element in early childhood classrooms. The author proposes that play as literacy happens in a specific cultural context marked by a nexus of practice (Scollon, 2001), a network of insider-valued practices. Within one kindergarten class, Wohlwend identifies three groups using play as literacy:

‘Abbie Wannabes’ (students playing the role of the teacher, Abbie): Playing/Reading Nexus

Wohlwend states her central objective of this book is a call to recognize literate value and cultural power in play (p.6). Her goal is to show ‘that young children can and do use play to produce and sustain collaborative and meaningful texts’ (p.2). Wohlwend supports her objectives with a plea to bring play back to early childhood curriculum, taking a political stand against mandates such as No Child Left Behind (NCLB) that are causing early childhood educators to eliminate play from the curriculum. Wohlwend emphasizes the legitimacy of play as literacy in the same way that reading, writing, and designing are legitimate literacies, and invites her readers to reimagine literacy learning within a playshop rather than a reading and/or writing workshop (p.122).

Wohlwend organizes her book into five chapters. The first chapter introduces play as literacy. In Chapters 2-4 Wohlwend uses three methodologies to explore play as literacy: mediated discourse analysis, multimodal analysis, and critical discourse analysis. In chapter 5, Wohlwend concludes the book by drawing on her research to support a strong case for bringing play as literacy to the early childhood classroom and curricula. Major assets of this book are the appendices that clearly demonstrate Wohlwend’s unique approach to examining the data within this study from three different perspectives. She communicates how these methodologies fit together to analyze the ethnographic descriptions of students’ actions and practices, modes, and discourses and identities in a complimentary way.

In Chapter 1 Wohlwend introduces and defines play as a literacy. After relaying a vignette about a kindergarten boy, Colin, leaving a voice message at a medical clinic during pretend play in the classroom, Wohlwend posits, ‘In order to appreciate the unwritten meanings of their play action, materials, and identities in this episode, we need new ways of thinking about texts, play, and literacy’ (p.2). Drawing on Kress’ (1997) definition of multiple literacies, Wohlwend argues that literacies represent diverse making-meaning modes in cooperation with others. Throughout Chapter 1, Wohlwend references the vignette about Colin to provide examples of how one can rethink the boundaries of play and literacy. Colin’s play utilized multiple social practices as well as emphasized and combined various modes to form Colin’s literate identity. Wohlwend draws on Dyson (1989; 1993; 1997; 2003) to illustrate how Colin’s pretend play happened at the intersection of school culture (reading and writing) and peer culture (playing and designing). It is in this space where play can be seen as literacy in the classroom (p.5).

In this opening chapter, the author also addresses the current pressures on kindergarten teachers in American schools to focus on academic achievements by removing play from the curriculum. Wohlwend addresses political influences such as NCLB that have pushed teachers to abandon play in school, as well as consumerism in terms of pressure put on teachers to adhere to commercial curricula. By describing Colin’s classroom and teacher, Wohlwend clearly presents a classroom that illustrates ‘play as an embodied literacy’ (p.7), and posits that ‘play has a unique facility for mediating collaborative texts as well as classroom identities and social relationships’ (p.13).

Wohlwend describes a group of children called ‘Abbie Wannabes’ in Chapter 2, ‘Playing School and Learning to Read’. These boys and girls seemed to enjoy playing the role of the teacher. Wohlwend provides many vignettes of the play that happened at the playing/designing nexus where school culture and peer culture overlapped, bringing together official school space where reading and writing are typically the emphasized objectives and unofficial space of peer culture where play is significant. Wohlwend found these ‘Abbie Wannabes’ to be consistent with teacher practices of nurturing, to be evaluators of student responses, to reinforce power relationships, to protect the authority of text, and to engage in early literacy apprenticeship. Through this play, Wohlwend observed that students ‘taught each other valued reading practices that enabled them to independently produce further literacy events but also to circulate a discourse that promoted children’s agency’ (p.42).

In Chapter 3, ‘Just Playin’ Around’ and ‘Just Makin’ Stuff’ to Make a Space for Just Guys,’ Wohlwend describes a small group of boys who bonded around sports teams, often wearing similar team jerseys and talking about their most recent experiences as sports fans. These boys were ‘designing to play’ in the playing/designing nexus by creating all kinds of “boy” artifacts. The boys claimed that these activities had no meaning or were ‘just for practice,’ however, through these activities they created identities, making space for themselves and their masculinity in the classroom. One boy made a paper airplane, which is normally against class policy, but with careful mediation from the teacher, he wrote a skillfully crafted how-to book complete with photographs of the process of making a plane. Wohlwend highlights how the teacher’s expert moves increased literacy and expanded access to literacy in the classroom.

Wohlwend introduces a third group of students in Chapter 4, ‘Boys and Girls Playing Disney Princesses and (Re)Writing Gender.’ This group of students, referred to as the ‘Princess Players,’ engaged in writing to play and playing to write as they participated in a permeable curriculum where the classroom teacher welcomed popular culture. Wohlwend identifies this as the playing/writing nexus where animating, authoring, drawing, and approximated writing intersect and create interactions between the school and peer cultures. Wohlwend illustrates through multiple vignettes that the students (both boys and girls) were not bound by the stereotypical roles of the princesses, but created new identities for the princesses and for themselves.

In the concluding chapter, ‘Play as Tactic,’ Wohlwend supports her position, ‘Play is not only a set of transformative literacy practices but also a powerful means of shaping children’s identities and participation in classrooms’ (p.112). Play is a literacy practice because it is a tactic, something people take up ‘in artful and/or innocent ways as they do what seems best at a particular time’ (p.114). Wohlwend further contends that play allows for alternate power structures among peers including a redistribution of cultural capital. During reading and writing activities the kindergarteners who have been immersed in literacy prior to schooling typically hold power with their peers, when play is central to the curriculum power can belong to all of the players. When play is mediated by teachers who are ‘cognizant of the relationships between power, play, and peer culture’ (p.122) in all nexuses; playing/reading, playing/designing, and playing/writing, it changes how literacy functions in the classroom. This includes a place for pop culture as part of the curriculum mediated by teachers taking a critical perspective of literacy. Wohlwend emphasizes that this kind of play is a political move that may sideline the curriculum in favor of valuing students’ cultural resources.

Throughout the book, Wohlwend focuses specifically on three groups of students playing in the classroom. The reader is left to wonder about the other children in the classroom. While there is a visual representation of each child in the class and how they were linked relationally to their classmates through play, more contextualizing of the class as a whole may enhance the reader’s understanding of the study. The play of the three groups is represented through graphics illustrating the nexus of practice of each group. While these graphics fit together nicely at the end of the book to demonstrate how adding playing to reading, writing, and designing further develops each of these elements, it is not always immediately clear to the reader what some portions of these graphics represent. Perhaps connecting to specific examples or specific students within the group could help to make these more meaningful.

Wohlwend concludes with inspiring suggestions and challenges for teachers and administrators, curriculum designers and policymakers for revaluing play as literacy. First, she suggests educators bring back play as a key curricular element in early childhood in sustained and regular blocks of time. Second, provide space for play with toys and technology linked to popular media. Third, ‘incorporat[e] play as a catalyst for critique in critical literacy or media literacy curricula’ (p.126). Students in turn are able to inform and co-create this curriculum. Fourth, teachers need to educate themselves about popular culture in order to engage critically in conversations with children about toys. This involves a, ‘willingness and ability to mediate popular-culture texts with gendered messages’ (p.126). Fifth, develop research to continue to understand social practices around toys and artifacts. Finally, Wohlwend reiterates what she eloquently persuaded her readers to do consistently throughout this well-organized, student-centered text – to redefine play as literacy.