Call to Action: 
Our session will cover playful learning. Play is not just enjoyment, but a critical pedagogical framework which, when combined with early intervention and community-based design, can provide opportunities to address literacy early and tackle inequity.

Abstract: Literacy plays a significant role in reducing poverty, improving health outcomes, and addressing various inequities due to gender, ethnicity, race, and other factors. Yet 34 percent of students in the U.S. are below basic reading level and another 31 percent below proficient reading level by fourth grade, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. The classroom is not the only place to address this crisis: children only spend about twenty percent of their time in school, and “fun” learning has been shown to have an outsized positive impact on children from low-income families, meaning time outside the classroom is essential. Tackling inequity can start long before children find themselves in a traditional classroom—and long after they leave for the day, the weekend, the summer, and more. A set of three playful learning projects ‘The Nest’, ‘The Hive’, and ‘Seeds and Bees’ are set along Philadelphia’s historic Germantown Avenue and aim to fill that education gap. Anchored through community partnerships with historic properties, each installation was developed in close collaboration with neighborhood partners and advocates to create distinct destinations for learning and play. Each has a variety of interwoven learning elements—including an audio storyteller, games, story starters, and a take-a-book cabinet—that provides interactive play and discovery opportunities to local children and their caretakers. This session will use this set of projects as a jumping off point to explore the framework to identify opportunities for, design, and implement early interventions to improve literacy across communities. Play is not just enjoyment, but a critical pedagogical framework which, when combined with early intervention and community-based design, can provide opportunities to address literacy early and tackle inequity.

Learning Objectives:

1. Expand understanding of the importance of playful learning pedagogy, its real-world applications, and its outsized impact on marginalized students.
2. Identify program elements and design strategies that will promote learning and literacy in a non-classroom environment.
3. Explain how the community engagement and research process can inform the development of a program that supports literacy.
4. Provide attendees with a toolkit to implement playful learning projects that address the needs of their own communities.