In classrooms that integrate content themes into dramatic play with six - to eight - year - olds, sophisticated productions of reading, writing, and
oral language result.
Dating back even to the 1920s and 1930s, basals had provided at least a «token» section in which teachers were encouraged to extend the themes or skills of the basal story into related writing (e.g., rewriting stories),
oral language (e.g., transforming a story into a play and dramatizing it), or cross-curricular activities (e.g., conducting community surveys, tallying the
results, and reporting them), but these forays were regarded as peripheral rather than core.