ABSTRACT
In a time of high-stakes testing, pushed-down scripted instruction and intense teacher accountability in elementary school, play-based and child-friendly learning in early-childhood classrooms is increasingly set aside to make room for broad-based intervention aimed at preventing low test scores. To reclaim emergent, child-friendly, and learner-directed curricula, it is necessary to revisit the extensive early literacy research base on children’s play (Dyson, 2003; Paley, 2004; Wohlwend, 2011; for comprehensive sources on early literacy research, see Larson & Marsh, 2013; Marsh, 2010; Pahl & Rowsell, 2012). At the same time, there is an equally compelling need to update early literacy curricula to better utilise the digital technologies so prevalent in modern childhoods (Alper, 2013; Burnett, 2010). We are living in a digital era when we finally have sophisticated and user-friendly technologies that are just right for little fingers to operate and to easily capture children’s play texts. Specifically, touch screens on phones and tablets are mobile and responsive, with filmmaking apps that are simple and intuitive. These new tools seem designed for early-childhood teachers to use with their students. To be clear, we do not intend to invoke an old/new binary and either/or choice, often constructed around print and digital tools. Rather, we follow the children’s lead to see how they are using and making texts with all the multiple resources they find around them, from paper and pencils to tape and popsicle sticks to cameras and digital video. Elsewhere, we have argued that play is a productive literacy with reconstructive potential to help children participate more fully in school cultures (Wohlwend, 2011). In our recent work on literacy playshops, we showed that video storying is a particularly powerful form of storytelling with toys, which invites invention and collaboration among players (Wohlwend, Buchholz, Wessel Powell, Coggin, & Husbye, 2013). In this chapter, we examine how young children in a combined kindergarten/first grade classroom, when encouraged to make their own digital films and paper toys, achieve academic goals consistent with prevailing standards for literacy but also, importantly, enact and tap into their individual literacy proficiencies and media interests.
