Section 7: Popular culture and role play
Role play is central to children’s language and literacy development (Hall, 1999). Incorporating popular culture into role play areas is one way in which children can be motivated to engage in meaningful literacy practices. For example, some teachers have set up ‘Bob the Builder’ offices and then have been amazed when children have been keen to write plans, orders, messages to Bob and Wendy and diary entries that document life as a builder! In the ‘Digital Beginnings’ study (Marsh et al., 2005), teachers used popular culture to promote play. For example, one nursery teacher described how she planned the whole of the nursery curriculum using the television programme ‘Balamory’ and the children engaged in a wide range of play activities which promoted language and literacy:
She’d got these and I obviously let her laminate them because I thought they were really good…then we turned around and they’d all got lollysticks on the backs of paper and they were writing on the backs of the sticks, ‘Miss Hooley’ and ‘PC Plum’. They just really took it to the extreme and the puppet theatre that they made with these wooden blocks, he, Derek, said, “I’m going to put an opening time” because he was getting annoyed that everybody was coming in and out. So I said, “Well, good idea”. So I went back and it had got ‘Open’ and then I went back and it had got ‘Closed’ next to them and then I went back and it had got some times and the next thing there were seven of them beavering away on the carpet, sticking these pieces of paper up and they just made sign upon sign and really concentrating on this sign they were writing and really eager to get it up - which is obviously really a good literacy experience for them, it’s about writing, isn’t it, and doing it for a real [purpose]?
Student teachers could be introduced to work such as this and then asked to devise a theme for a role play area and identify ways in which reading and writing could be promoted in the area. Table 2 provides an example of one group of student teachers’ ideas:
Table 2: Planning a role play area based on an aspect of popular culture
Theme of role play area: |
Superman and Superwoman HQ |
Props needed: |
Computer, notebooks, pencils, pens, paper, paperclips, stapler, post-its, noticeboard, outfits, telephones, tape recorder |
Ways in which reading and writing could be promoted: |
Children could be encouraged to:
- Write diaries of Superman and Superwoman’s adventures
- Write articles for local newspapers recounting the superheroes’ adventures
- Write notices to office workers informing them of jobs to be done
- Write letters and emails to friends
- Create maps of areas to be visited
- Read and create comics about the superheroes
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Superheroes are a constant source of fascination for children. Marsh and Millard (2000) identify a number of reasons why this might be the case, including:
- The underlying themes of good and evil that permeate the superhero stories
- The triumph of good over evil, which can offer certainty in an uncertain world
- The costumes and tools used by superheroes can be attractive
Student teachers could be asked to consider this list and add to it, identifying specific superheroes and analysing what was popular about them. Of course, there is much valuable work that can be done comparing superhero’s narratives to Greek myths – Batman and Apollo can be seen to have much in common, for example. Student teachers could undertake such comparisons and then devise ways of using this material effectively in classrooms.
In any work on superheroes, student teachers should be made aware of issues relating to gender and ‘race’. Villains, for example, are often dark-skinned and the majority of superheroes are male (Marsh and Millard, 2000). These issues can offer a valuable means of developing critical literacy approaches in the classroom.
 
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