Early Years Educators at Play: A Research-based Early Childhood Professional Development Program

Every culture has developed some version of performance art. Children especially appreciate performance; their innate openness, forgiveness, and self-love make them delightful performers and audience members. Every time they engage with performance art, children are learning about storytelling, history, sociability, artistry, and physicality. Through performance, children learn skills related to organization, collaboration, emotional competence, compassion, and literacy. Children learn best when their lessons include rich, multi-faceted and participatory elements; drama and theater can help augment learning by involving physical movement and child participation to aid in comprehension and memory. In this article, the authors discuss a professional development program designed to support teachers in employing drama strategies for literacy instruction with 3- to 5-year-old children.