The Emergence of Letter Writing in Play: A Whole-School Perspective

Behind each classroom door, learning moments fill the spaces with sounds, with buildings, with drawings, with conversations, with movements. When you step outside the classroom and pull back a degree, just far enough to see the school in its entirety, these learning moments become a part of something greater, something akin to a developmental timeline. The emergence of skills seems to blend across classroom borders, each age-group laying foundations that you can witness being built upon just down the hall.

Transitioning from my role as teacher in the two’s and three’s classroom toward working school-wide as the pedagogista has afforded me an entirely new perspective of the school, a holistic view of our learning community from which this development timeline has emerged. As a Reggio inspired school, we relish the belief that children have a “hundred” languages in which they express themselves, and therefore a “hundred” different progressions of the skills required to utilize these “languages.”

Perhaps the most traditional “language” of writing is a good place to start exploring the development of skills though a child’s early childhood journey. Below are actual snapshots from each classroom, all observed within a two-week span. When seen through the lenses of the fluid progression, they work to show the spontaneous, natural, and child initiated ways that language emerges in our play-based school of thought… 

Infants

Within moments of entering the room, Adelynne walks toward me, hands held out in the offering of a book and an asking expression. Her eyes question, “Read with me?” We hunker down onto the floor and open the book. Her glances shift between the words emerging from my mouth and the pictures on the page. Excited fingers search the edge of the book, grasping and turning the page. We continue in this manner until the book is finished. She walks to the library corner, picks up another book and looks up again.