Supporting Emergent Writers Through Guided Play in a Kindergarten Classroom

Abstract

In this paper, we describe a teacher-initiated imaginative-play scenario that took place in a kindergarten classroom in a small northern town in Ontario, Canada. The Fairy Door scenario afforded the 3- to 5-year-old children the opportunity to become writers in order to communicate with and make sense of an elusive visitor to the classroom. It presented the teachers with opportunities to scaffold the children’s writing attempts and provided them with valid assessments of the children’s understanding of texts and writing. We offer this unique form of pedagogical practice as a means to fulfill the play-based learning mandate of the Ontario provincial curriculum.