Narrative is an important part of how humans make sense of the world and express their thoughts and feelings. For children, stories are the predominant way in which they organize and express ideas and imagination. Hence, stories have a significant role in children's various play activities, especially pretend-play. At around the third to fifth…

As part of a lengthy lower school (K-3) project, students investigated a vintage vending machine in their Art and Technology classes, created objects to vend, built their own vending machines, and discovered many wonderful things. The uniqueness of the vending machine captured students' imaginations and propelled the project's many steps, from…

Autistic learners master visual and spatial abilities; they use visual language to organise, understand and give meaning to the world. Although they might struggle with verbal skills, they have an associative way of thinking. Taking into consideration the characteristics of seven autistic pupils, the aim of this paper was to identify the potential…

Drawing on a relational ontology and scholarship of new literacies, we investigate the materiality and performativity of children's augmented storying in nature. Our study is situated in a Finnish primary school in which a novel, augmented reality application (MyAR Julle) was utilized as a digital storytelling tool for children (n = 62, aged 7-9),…

We explore our experiences with roleplaying games across learning environments, chasing communal questions such as: how can teachers engage with the possibilities of roleplaying in classroom spaces, and how can we leverage such practices to open up spaces for youth to bodily experience texts, express identities, and imagine new worlds? This…

Drawing on assets-oriented, sociocultural theories of imagination and learning, the authors argue that the improvisational qualities and expanded resources of dramatic approaches to teaching make a positive difference in the quality of and persistence in students' story writing. The authors describe findings from a controlled quasi-experimental…

"The High-Performing Preschool" takes readers into the lives of three- and four-year-old Head Start students during their first year of school and focuses on the centerpiece of their school day: story acting. In this activity, students act out stories from high-quality children's literature as well as stories dictated by their peers.…

Head Start enhances school readiness during preschool, but effects diminish after children transition into kindergarten. Designed to promote sustained gains, the Research-based Developmentally Informed (REDI) Parent program (REDI-P) provided home visits before and after the kindergarten transition, giving parents evidence-based learning games,…

In our research, we investigated whether students will develop inquiry skills, such as hypothesis exploration and formulation and interpretation, and metacognitive skills, such as comprehension of new knowledge, as a result of a storytelling strategy employed during teaching. We also investigated whether students will utilize the skills and…

Vivian Gussin Paley is a teacher, writer, lecturer, and advocate for the importance of play for young children. Author of a dozen books about children learning through play, she has received numerous honors and awards including an Erickson Institute Award for Service to Children, a MacArthur Foundation Fellows award, and a John Dewey Society's…