Dramatic Weather!
Motivating Oral Language, Vocabulary and Early Reading and Writing Through Dramatic Play (Virtual Tour)
Stage of Literacy Development:
Stage 1: Beginning LiteracyAges:
4-6
Grade Range:
PreK KFood Groups:
Primary: Oral Language, Vocabulary Secondary: Motivation for Literacy, Concepts of Print
Transcript
This is our drama center and right now our drama center is featuring a weather station, as weather has been integrated throughout the entire program. There are various literacy activities that the children can take part in, they might create a one day weather forecast. They've drawn a picture of what the weather is and then they actually write down what the weather is outside that day. They'll dress up according to this weather using props that are on the rack and utilize the props that are contained here to get in the role of being the reporter. Students have created assorted devices to even report the weather, such as the paper mach camera, which has been even labeled by the students within the classroom because they decided that this weather station needed a name. Some of the other literacy pieces within this center are a five day weather forecast. Each day a student will decide what the weather is like outside from Monday to Friday. After watching other weather forecasts we've decided that there were certain things that every weather forecast needs to have. First of all, the person needs to be told what the weather is like outside, then they need to know what it is that they should wear outside, and after that they should know what they can do outside on that day. So I created a sheet so that they could draw what the weather is, what they should wear, and what they can do. There are a lot of other activities featured at this station. They could note what kinds of weather conditions there currently are across the world by using these different Velcro weather symbols. They can also create a seven day forecast using the pocket chart. The weather center also features a lot of non-fictional text, so the students can look at pictures of different weather, or at least get used to the characteristics of a non-fictional text.
Related References
Activity Objective
The goal of Dramatic Weather!: Motivating Oral Language, Vocabulary and Early Reading and Writing Through Dramatic Play (Virtual Tour) is to create activities for students to use complex oral language structures and provide students with experiences that generate opportunities to learn new words.
Quick Tips
Additional Comments:
- Provide students with opportunities to create five-day forecasts, learn about weather around the world, and report the weather using costumes and props. - Model each activity at the drama center so that students understand the learning goals and expectations.
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