Sociodramatic play

In preschool years, the play is the vital mode of learning of children. Among different forms of play sociodramatic play is highlighted as most common and important type of play during 3-5 years old as it is a medium for the development of the cognitive, creative, and socio-emotional abilities that will be useful within a school environment. In the Socio-dramatic play, children use objects as props to develop story episodes that involve other children. However, increased academic expectations for children entering preschools have shifted the focus away from teaching children through play. Thus, this study focused on investigating how children participate in sociodramatic play with regard to their age, gender and themes used in a preschool classroom.
A qualitative approach was employed in the study utilizing an action  research design. A sociodramatic play intervention was carried out in a preschool located in Nawala area in the Colombo district with a cohort of 10 children purposively selected ranging in age from 3 years to 5 years over 4 weeks. The data consisted of observations, field notes documented with the support of video recordings, interviews and teacher’s reflective journal and analysed using descriptive analysis align with the research objectives by deriving sub-themes developed based on literature.
The intervention revealed that children showed a greater interest in sociodramatic play when compared with the other usual classroom activities. A significant difference didn't appear with regard to the age in the children's participation. Girls became more active in some of the subcategories in sociodramatic play intervention than boys while boys showed more participation in the rest of the subcategories. The nature of the themes had an influence on the increment of children’s participation in the intervention. The opportunities for the participation of girls and boys, different age levels, opportunities for a variety of themes, previous practices and skills, nature of the teacher’s involvement became the significant factors for the improvement of participation in sociodramatic play.
Finally, the study concluded that the sociodramatic play is both a medium and context for developing playful experiences for the development of children and, therefore, the findings proposed to develop a greater emphasis and encouragement on sociodramatic play by including it into the preschool curriculum and providing guidelines for the implementations for both teachers and preschools.

Vygotskian theory and empirical evidence suggest that children's private speech and pretend play contribute to their development of motivational processes. Given current U.S. preschool expansion, and resurgent debates over the merits of play-based vs. non-play-based approaches to early childhood education , this study conducted an experimental investigation of the relative impact of these contexts on preschoolers' private speech and mastery motivation (performance and persistence). 38 preschool children engaged in a challenging fishing activity in two experimental conditions (playful and non-playful) simulating pedagogical and motivational (intrinsic vs. extrinsic) characteristics of common preschool settings. Private speech was categorized as cognitive, motivational, metacognitive, playful or partially inter-nalized, and the emotional valence of private speech was marked as positive or negative. Results indicated that preschoolers in the playful condition displayed higher mastery motivation than preschoolers in the non-playful condition. Children in the playful condition used more frequent private speech, including more frequent cognitive, playful, and positively valenced private speech. Mastery motivation was positively correlated with playful, partially internalized, and positively valenced private speech, but negatively related to motivational private speech. Mastery motivation components (performance and persistence) related to different types of private speech. Performance related positively to metacognitive private speech and negatively to motivational private speech. Persistence related positively to playful private speech. The playful condition elicited private speech categories that were associated with higher motivation levels. Findings support the use of playful and play-based pedagogy in early childhood education, and teacher modeling of motivationally beneficial forms of private speech.

In this case study, situated in a preschool classroom within an early childhood Spanish/English dual language programme, we examine how an emergent bilingual child engages with multimodal resources to participate in sociodramatic play discourses. Guided by sociocultural and critical discourse perspectives on multimodality, we analysed ways in which Anthony, a four-year-old emergent bilingual child, engaged in meaning-making during play through verbal, visual and actional modes and in conjunction with additional subcategories in his transmodal repertoire (e.g. translanguaging, sentence types, actual versus signified use of artefacts). Our results revealed differences in the ways Anthony engaged his verbal modes (e.g. monolingual languaging versus translanguaging; varying sentence types) together with actional and visual modes to accomplish adult-centric tasks versus creatively engaging in child-centric play. His translanguaging furthered his communication in tandem with the affordances of his visual and actional resources, depending on his play purposes and collaborators. Anthony’s case illustrates how emergent bilingual children access a variety of modes to participate in literate discourses in complex and varied ways. This article concludes with a discussion on the importance of thoroughly accounting for the contexts and multimodal supports in interactive learning spaces.

Children best learn language through playful learning experiences in the preschool classroom. The present study focused on developing oral language skills in preschool children through a sociodramatic play intervention. The study employed a case study design under qualitative approach. The researcher conducted a sociodramatic play intervention collaboratively with the class teacher for a group of 10 children selected utilizing purposive sampling method in a preschool classroom. The intervention was conducted in a preschool located in Colombo, Sri Lanka for 3 weeks. The observation, interview and reflective journal were the instrument used to collect data. The observation carried under two criteria namely, ability to initiate a conversation and ability to respond in a conversation revealed that the sociodramatic play intervention created many opportunities to develop oral language skills in the children than the regular classroom activities. The sociodramatic play activities enhanced children's oral language skills while creating a language rich playful learning experiences.

In this case study, situated in a preschool classroom within an early childhood Spanish/English dual language programme, we examine how an emergent bilingual child engages with multimodal resources to participate in sociodramatic play discourses. Guided by sociocultural and critical discourse perspectives on multimodality, we analysed ways in which Anthony, a four-year-old emergent bilingual child, engaged in meaning-making during play through verbal, visual and actional modes and in conjunction with additional subcategories in his transmodal repertoire (e.g. translanguaging, sentence types, actual versus signified use of artefacts). Our results revealed differences in the ways Anthony engaged his verbal modes (e.g. monolingual languaging versus translanguaging; varying sentence types) together with actional and visual modes to accomplish adult-centric tasks versus creatively engaging in child-centric play. His translanguaging furthered his communication in tandem with the affordanc...

In this case study, situated in a preschool classroom within an early childhood Spanish/English dual language programme, we examine how an emergent bilingual child engages with multimodal resources to participate in sociodramatic play discourses. Guided by sociocultural and critical discourse perspectives on multimodality, we analysed ways in which Anthony, a four-year-old emergent bilingual child, engaged in meaning-making during play through verbal, visual and actional modes and in conjunction with additional subcategories in his transmodal repertoire (e.g. translanguaging, sentence types, actual versus signified use of artefacts). Our results revealed differences in the ways Anthony engaged his verbal modes (e.g. monolingual languaging versus translanguaging; varying sentence types) together with actional and visual modes to accomplish adult-centric tasks versus creatively engaging in child-centric play. His translanguaging furthered his communication in tandem with the affordanc...