Why Playful Learning?

Before exploring how to select and apply playful learning strategies, explore the theoretical basis for why it can be effective.

Interactive Theory

In the interactive theory put forward in Adam (2004), reading is an active process in which to comprehend, the reader interacts with a multitude of factors related to himself, the text being read, and the context the reading takes place. This theory is a continuous combination of top-down and bottom-up reading theories. This approach is also developed based upon transaction reader response theory (Rosenblatt, 1978), which involves a transaction between the literature or the text’s inferred meaning, and focuses on the readers’ individual experience of a literary work through their interpretation through their own prior knowledge. This theory emphasises the cognitive reading process.

Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)

The playful reading approach uses the constructivist theory approach of ZPD (Vygotsky (1978)) to develop readers’ analysis or comprehensive capabilities in all letter, phonemic, syntactic, discourse, schema analysis. Using play based learning, the meaning processing has been emphasised in not only readers’ own prior knowledge, learning interests, and their social and cultural background, but also teaching pedagogies in assisting readers’ learning interest, content processing, and development of orthographic and phonological awareness.

Join the Discussion

Child development is the result of the interactions between children and their social environment. List social interactions where playful reading might take place in that context.

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