101 uses for play people
Kathleen Cavin
Dec 08
Act out script with play people and have
children take on play people roles.
 Devised by Catherine Roberts based on work
by Paul Catherall
 Originally used to
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develop interactive language based play.
structure play interactions
represent knowledge of social events
provide a bridge between solitary and interactive
based play
build a repertoire of playscripts
However also useful for…
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Developing narrative skills
Support understanding of story grammar
Support understanding of classroom texts
Develop problem resolution
Support character development –how the character
feels etc
Develop story retell
Practicing new grammatical constructions, script
about little girl who keeps asking questions
Practising new vocabulary/concepts in context, e.g,
playscript around buying flowers for science unit on
plants
Practice asking for clarification in a role play.
Negotiable Organising Statements
 Definition of situation- “let’s play..”
 Assignment of roles – “I’ll be ....and you
be...”
 Defining location “this is the...”
 Action plan “I’ll do this and you ..”
 Assigning props “this is my..”
 Refining the script “mummies don’t..”
 Refining others’ performance “you have to .”
Early Stages
 Use events in the child’s experience
 Roughly same amount of talk per character
 Use repetitive phrases
 Initially only use 2-3 characters
 Use phrases from previous frames
 Use tragic/funny events!
 Use symbolic noise
 Use story grammar categories – main
event/reaction/resolution
 Don’t insist on word perfect lines
Later Stages
 Build
in lots of repetition of target
 Build in opportunities for retelling, “the
shopkeeper said, “What happened?”
 Build in opportunities for clarification
 Use
play people – don’t give them names or
props in the early stages
 State character and setting at beginning
 State clearly it’s the adults turn to talk
 Use different voices, exaggerated intonation
and symbolic noise
 Take role or guide pupil initially
 Before they start ask, “who are
you?”/”where are you?”
Ideas for Targets
 To
be able to take a non-verbal role in a
familiar playscript on 3 separate occasions
 To be able to initiate talk 3 times in a
familiar playscript
 To be able to respond twice to a peer in a
familiar playscript on 3 separate occasions
 To be able to generate dialogue to solve a
problem in a playscript
 To be able to say how a character is feeling
in a playscript
References
 Catherall
P (1998) Facilitating narrative
competence :helping children to describe
events and tell stories NAPLIC Conference
Papers 1998- (available to order
www.naplic.org)