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Building on Critical Race Theory, Black Critical Theory in education (BlackCrit), and Black Male Studies (BMS), the author theorizes what he terms Black PlayCrit and, by extension, Black PlayCrit L…
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Chapter 8 highlights the portrait of Mr. Henry, whose literacy practices are described by Black boy kindergartener, Roland. Understanding his students’ interest in boyhood play, Mr. Henry used play to help his students better connect with reading—a subject matter that is often erroneously described by those who do not see or value Black boy knowledge…
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Our children spend their days being passively instructed, and made to sit still and take tests–often against their will. We call this imprisonment schooling, yet wonder why kids become bored and misbehave. Even outside of school children today seldom play and explore without adult supervision, and are afforded few opportunities to control their own lives.…
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Background For too many youths, school has become a place for students to withstand and kill time until they can leave and learn about things that matter to them. Instead, schools should be inviting and exciting places to learn but also nurturing spaces where all students feel they belong. Drawing upon expanded definition of literacies…
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The authors propose and discuss their Playshop curricular model, which they developed with teachers. Their studies suggest a playful approach supports even more rigor than the Common Core State Standards require for preschool and early grade children. Children keep their attention longer when learning comes in the form of something they can play with. Research…
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This text is a response to the increasingly widespread practice of administering standardised tests to pre-school and primary-grade children. As Celia Genishi points out, such traditional tests are often misused and fail to measure many significant aspects of children’s growth and learning. Here she and her colleagues present teachers’ alternative ways of meeting the need…
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It is writing time in the kindergarten class. As she does every day, Mrs. Bee (all names are pseudonyms), the teacher, urges her young charges to “think” before they write, to make a “quick sketch” of their idea, and then to write that idea, “stretching their words” and listening to their sounds, bravely spelling the…
