Literacy and the Arts: A How-To Guide

Mar 25, 2025

On day three of her classroom residency at ACCA Child Development Center in Annandale, VA, Wolf Trap Teaching Artist Mollie Greenberg barely had time to put away her coat before the classroom teacher, Miss Tina, began sharing an exciting interaction she had seen in her classroom earlier that morning.

“Miss Mollie,” she said, “you wouldn’t believe it. The children came in this morning and went right to the carpet. They started re-enacting the story you told us yesterday without any prompting. They took some of the stuffed animals and used the bird to take the bear’s hat and flew away with it. Then they started making up new stories and singing the song we practiced with them yesterday!”

Greenberg, who specializes in theater and puppetry, was using Harold Loves His Woolly Hat, by Vern Kousky, as a prompt that week to help Miss Tina collaborate with Miss Tina to use puppetry to illustrate her class’s curricular focus on clothing. Together, they explored different types of hats and touched upon the emotional elements of the story. “How did Harold feel when the bird flew off with his hat?” “Could they suggest other hats that Harold could try?”

Using puppetry and storytelling, Greenberg and Miss Tina worked together to introduce new vocabulary to the students, connecting it to social-emotional content. The children then used their imaginations to extend the story with dramatic play. How can educators and parents replicate this experience in their classrooms or at home? Try some of these ideas from Wolf Trap’s Master Teaching Artists:

Wolf Trap Master Teaching Artist Krissie Marty (Discipline: Theater, Dance, Movement)

“My best tips for using arts in early literacy teaching are to develop intentional and open-ended questions and be ready to respond.  Effective questions are ones that get children thinking and that create opportunities for them to share or show their thoughts and understanding. ‘Show me how this creates moves’ or ‘What would that character say?’

As children build understanding of the world, language effective questions can spark their imaginations and inspire surprising answers — whether those answers are in words, movements, sounds or taking on a character.”

Wolf Trap Master Teaching Artist Melissa Richardson (Discipline: Theater, Storytelling)

“When incorporating the arts into early literacy teaching, a great place to start is to think about the body, the voice, and the imagination. Use voices to add setting sound effects, to speak like a character, or just change your voice as a listening game for children to copy. Use bodies to create gestures for key vocabulary, move like characters, or to mime objects from a story. Use imagination to predict, to come up with alternate endings, or to create dialogue for story characters.”

Wolf Trap Master Teaching Artist Anne Sidney (Discipline: Dance, Movement)

“[In an experience called Coffee Can Theater], we can create anticipation and engagement when telling a story from a container with a lid, a story basket or story can. This strategy gives the ability to tell the story with props, dolls, or stuffed animals; create a setting, present characters, and sequence. I often share characters one at a time and assign a rhythm or sound and movement signature to each. If the main character interacts with the children, we can create an opportunity for the children to empathize with them and problem solve.

[Seeking out] books with a ‘beat’ like those with rhymes and chants, a lot of movement, or action words, a pattern for easy retelling, and an emotional journey or a problem to solve provides clear opportunities to integrate dance strategies.

Help children understand a character by doing a bit of research.  If a character is a whale, watch a video clip of a whale and create a word bank describing the whale’s movement.  In order to encourage action words, ask directed questions. ‘Where is the whale going?’ ‘How is she moving?’ ‘What is she using to move?’  From this word bank with some inspiring music, have the children put a dance phrase together!  ‘She is gently moving forward, slowly, carefully next to her calf!  She pushes with her tail and strongly jumps up out of the water!’ 

Create a costume bin for the characters in your story, to encourage getting into character. Set the story basket and costume bin in the literacy center for some open-ended play!”

Wolf Trap Master Teaching Artist Laura Schandelmeier (Discipline: Dance, Movement)

“Clapping and counting the syllables in your name, then choreographing a dance that everyone can do while saying your name supports early literacy skills Using a drum is a wonderful way to highlight the music of language. You can play the syllables of words from a story, such as ” tippy pat,” and dance to the rhythm or use as a transition from one experience to another.

I like to tell a story with my Dance Box and stretch the story over days or weeks. Whatever is in the Dance Box leads to a movement-based experience that continues the story. This strategy encourages the early literacy skills of anticipation, recall and retelling, making predictions, and higher-level thinking. Once the children finally get to read the book they are invested in the characters and can compare and contrast the way the story was told with the way the book was written. It’s a celebration!”

For more arts integration ideas for early learners, visit Wolf Trap’s digital resource library.