Zombie Boys: Leveraging Play as an Equitable Literacy Assessment Resource in an Era of Standardization

• In Event: 72.047 - Rumblings From the #playrevolution in Literacies: Transforming Knowledge Into Action Through the Power of Play

Abstract

Now that kindergarten is the new first grade (Bassok, et al., 2016), toys and playtime with friends are often quickly set aside for more serious, individual and schoolish pursuits. Primary teachers who seek to allow and invite collaborative play in their classrooms may swim up stream. And, in an era of standardization, children who come to school not yet fluent in school literacies and/or children who decide to focus on the nonverbal, non-written aspects of school literacies often find their storytelling abilities discounted. Such practices are inherently inequitable (Dyson 2008). The purpose of this paper is to examine alternative approaches to early literacy classroom practice and accompanying assessment that leverages play as a resource in meaning making.

Theories that undergird this research recognize play as a literacy enabling multiple players to create and coordinate “a live-action text” by using the pretended meanings of available materials (Wohlwend, 2011). As a part of a larger study on literacy playshops, I collected video data on children’s and teachers’ work and play during a month-long storytelling unit in a K-1 multiage classroom. Through recursive video analysis in StudioCode and with a research team, here I look closely at literacy practices of the Zombie Boys, a Thriller and Walking Dead fan club and collaborative storytelling group of K-1 students. The Zombie Boys worked together, and apart, enthusiastically over several weeks during playshop time (Wohlwend, 2013) to produce a fractured, nonverbal storyline rich in sound effects, music, synchronized dance and puppet, backdrop and props design. Using a multimodal assessment tool, I demonstrate possibilities in assessment compared with school literacy-based traditional assessment for primary grades (Yoon, 2015). Findings indicate the boys’ playful rehearsals were intended to create a meaningful and entertaining film; and although the final product was not considered exemplary, their playful process exhibited a variety of strengths and ruptures. Through this example, I argue that allowing playful, process-based multimodal literacies to “count” in early literacy assessment is an issue of social justice.

Author

• Christy Wessel-Powell, Purdue University