Play & Language: The Roots of Literacy

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Join Carol Westby, PhD, CCC-SLP, internationally-renowned expert on play assessment and development and language-literacy relationships and discover current play theories, the development of the four dimensions of play in young children (birth-5 years), and the interrelationships of these dimensions of play to children’s language, cognition, social-emotional skills, self-regulation and literacy. You will walk away with an effective tool that offers a way to assess young children’s symbolic play skills—organized by developmental level. Attention will be given to the ways that language learning disabilities, autism, and socio-economic/cultural variations influence early language, play, and literacy development.

Attend and you will learn current intervention strategies to:

• Advance phonological skills and comprehension for emergent literacy using playful practice
• Promote development of various dimensions of play and the interrelationships of the dimensions of play to children’s language, social-emotional skills, self-regulation and literacy
• Encourage the interactions essential for social-emotional development
• Facilitate children’s understanding of the temporal, cause-effect, and social relationships that exist in the world and that are critical for comprehension of social and academic interactions
• Stimulate language for interpersonal communication and abstract reasoning
• Nurture children’s ability to interpret and respond appropriately to the needs, desires, and roles of others and to use this knowledge to infer the thoughts of others
• Promote children’s ability to organize and monitor their own behavior so they can become independent, self-motivated learners

**The intervention activities that you will learn work for ESL children and pre-school children with disabilities.

OUTLINE

Foundations of Cognitive-Play-Literacy Relationship: Frameworks for Assessment/Intervention

• Dynamic systems theory: integrating nature and nurture theories
• The World Health Organization’s International Classification of Functioning
• A performance competence framework for assessment and intervention

Social-Emotional/Cognitive Precursors to Play: Birth-17 months

• Neurotypical and atypical patterns of social emotional development
• Environmental influences on social emotional development and play
• Temperamental variations in children
• Presymbolic play

Development of Pretend Play Dimensions (17 months – 5 years): Relationship of Play Dimensions to Language & Literacy

• Theory of Mind Dimension (understanding thoughts & feelings of self & others)
• Decontextualization Dimension (reduced use of props in play)
• Thematic Dimension (from familiar to novel pretend themes)
• Organization Dimension (sequencing & planning of play)

Interventions to Promote Playing to Learn

• Set goals for playful learning
• Promote literate-style language through play
• Develop phonological awareness skills through playful practices
• Promote thematic pretend play to develop foundations for language and literacy

OBJECTIVES

1. Explain the development and interrelationships of cognition, play, language, social-emotional skills and literacy.
2. Describe methods used to evaluate a child’s play/language skills.
3. Employ play to promote the cognitive, language and social-emotional skills that underlie children’s effective social interactions and literacy comprehension.
4. Describe current theories of language/ literacy learning.
5. Explain the role of play in self-regulation.
6. Implement a playful practice approach to emergent literacy.