I will be completing my master’s project on dramatic play and why it can be so beneficial to elementary school students.
Research Questions:
Children learn through play; it is crucial to their development. Children can learn so much through playing, in fact, play is a natural instinct for them, so dramatic play is a great stepping-stone to self-regulating their emotions and actions. Children can be so motivated to learn in a fun environment where play is welcomed, after all, we want children to want to learn and enjoy learning from a young age. The question I am posing in this research will be, what are the effects of dramatic play in an early childhood education classroom? You might wonder, why does dramatic play matter? It matters because children learn self-regulation, it teaches conflict resolution, and it supports literacy, among many other things.
Methods with anticipated participants:
Studies have shown that children learn best through play that is not guided by teachers or interrupted by adults, rather, play that they have come up with on their own. It is important to allow children to come up with their own rules and figure out their own problems without adult intervention. Another important aspect of play is teacher-guided play, such as the teacher comes up with the rules and the concept behind what is being learned and the children play through it. Both of these methods are effective and teachers need to make time for both to happen in the classroom for optimal growth. Teacher’s that will benefit most from these methods would be early elementary such as birth-2nd grade.
Anticipated results:
I would anticipate that teachers who implement my master’s research project in their classrooms would have favorable results as far as emotional and educational development goes with their students. This method can be difficult to implement in a classroom, especially one that has never practiced dramatic play so I would recommend starting slowly with just allowing the children to play on their own, uninterrupted and gauge where their students’ interests lie.
Use in the future:
Future educators will be able to implement my master’s project research in their everyday lessons in order to reach their students on a new, fun, and exciting level. Dramatic play can be used in any subject as long as the teacher is creative and thoughtful enough to do so.
Conclusion:
As educators we should always be looking for ways to relay information to our students in an engaging way. It should be our goal to have the information we teach our children stick with them for a long time, and implementing dramatic play into lessons in the early childhood classroom is one way to achieve education retention.
References:
Brooks, A. (2015). 5 Reasons Dramatic Play Matters for Child Development. Retrieved from https://www.rasmussen.edu/degrees/education/blog/why-dramatic-play-matters/
Robertson, N., Yim, B., & Paatsch, L. (2018). Connections between children’s involvement in dramatic play and the quality of early childhood environments.Early Child Development and Care,1-14. doi:10.1080/03004430.2018.1473389
Amelia Gillman 