Children's Planning of Classroom Plays with Adult or Child Direction.

This study examined the planning that occurred when children participated in classroom playcrafting with either adult or child leadership. In a first-/second-grade classroom in an innovative public school, we videotaped 11 sessions in which children volunteered to develop a play with small groups of classmates and seven sessions in which adult volunteers (parents and a grandparent) developed plays with small groups of children. The plays were crafted in one session of about an hour, and then usually performed for the class. More planning took place during child- than adult-directed sessions (averaging 92 vs. 35 percent of the session's duration). The groups led by children were more frequently involved in planning of themes, planning of details of the themes, and especially in improvisationally mindstorming ideas than were the groups led by adults. In adult-directed sessions, the adults often planned the play before the children joined the activity, and the children spent most of the session in non-playplanning activities such as gluing and coloring puppets or rehearsal of lines designed by the adult in advance. We argue that opportunities to observe and participate in planning—which occurred more frequently in child-directed than adult-directed sessions—are important to the development of planning skills and of co-ordination of plans with others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]