Supporting Early Literacies through Play

Dr Kate Smith is a Senior Lecturer in Childhood and Early Childhood Studies at Canterbury Christ Church University. She currently leads modules on language and literacy and supervises post-graduate and research students. As a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy she has led employment based undergraduate programmes and travelled to Sweden, Finland and Norway as part of her university role. Kate’s PhD explored young children’s writing activity in their first year of school. She continues to research this area and has written a number of articles about young children’s literacy. Before lecturing she was a primary teacher working with children aged 3-7 in London and Kent schools with whole-school responsibility for Literacy and Art. Kate’s work with school’s continues in her role as a Director of a Multi Academy Trust in Kent. She is co-editor of An Introduction to Early Childhood (2018) and has recently contributed to the Birth to Five Matters documentation. She is a member of UKLA and BERA.Karen Vincent is a Senior Lecturer in Early Childhood and Primary Initial Teacher Education. She is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and is the Primary Lead for Early Years at Canterbury Christ Church University. She currently leads the early childhood placement modules, teaches modules on child development and learning and supervises final year research students. Karen’s doctoral thesis explores the pedagogical narratives of early childhood initial teacher educators. As a teacher of young children, Karen taught in a range of different school settings in a variety of leadership roles, before becoming a teacher educator. Karen has written several chapters and articles relating to early years and primary initial teacher education. These include pedagogies of play, play and mathematics, literacy transition from EYFS to KS1 and mentoring. Karen is a member of IPDA, TACTYC and The Chartered College of Teaching.

• Introduction: Weaving together young children’s play and literaciesChapter 1: Strong Foundations: The significance of playChapter 2: Playful Encounters: Language and multimodal communicationChapter 3: Playing Narratively: Stories, imagination and role playChapter 4: Making a Mark on the World: Playful writingChapter 5: Sharing Stories: Reading and playing togetherChapter 6: Playing Digitally: Multimodal digital literaciesChapter 7: ‘We’re going on a bear hunt’: Language and Literacies in Outdoor PlayChapter 8: Curriculum Conversations: How the curriculum can support literacies and play