Special Guest: Word Play

On one of our days at Grandview Elementary's afterschool program, the 2nd and 3rd graders learned about Word Play, a child's literacy campaign that is visible throughout Pittsburgh. Word Play posters are mostly found at the advertisement wall on bus shelters and they offer quick, word-exploring games that can be played with children.

In our stations in the library, we followed some of the prompts on the Word Play posters. For the Summer Fun poster, our students drew pictures about what they did over the summer and were encouraged to write stories about their pictures. At another table, they could look at the Space Adventure poster and write all of the words that rhyme with "moon" and come up with an alphabetical list of what they would bring on their trip to outer space.

After stations, we went to the computer lab and listened to our special guest from The Fred Rogers company, Margy Whitmer. She went to every student and asked them what pictures they liked on the poster. Everyone contributed one sentence to a story, and in the end we had a marvelous account of what we would do on a space adventure! It was complete with helping out aliens, riding comets and drinking milkshakes. We should probably turn our story into a book!

We also visited Word Play's website. Next time you are at a bus stop, why not make the most of your wait and tell a story or make up a poem? At Grandview, we can't wait for October's new poster!

-Laura