APA Format and Citation Exercise 1

APA Format and Citation Exercise

This Exercise will allow you to practice your formatting, citing, and documenting skills.
40 points. This assignment is due by 11:59 pm on Wednesday 10/3 on Turnitin. Note: This
is an assignment that will likely have a high percentage of plagiarism. You only need to
worry if you have highlighted text in the paragraph you write.

Step I
Format your response to this exercise in APA format. Be aware of your header, title page,
margins, font, indentation, justification, etc.

Step II
Read the following article excerpts and use them as sources to discuss the following topic in a 1-
2 paragraph response; you may focus your response any way you like. In your response, you
must paraphrase and cite ONE of the sources and directly quote and cite the OTHER TWO
sources.

Topic: The benefits of play

Step III
Write a properly formatted References page that includes the three sources you used in the
paragraph(s) you wrote.

ARTICLE EXCERPTS
Article Title: The importance of play in early childhood.
Author: Neale, Dave
Source: International Journal of Birth & Parent Education. Jul2020, Vol. 7 Issue 4, p10-12.
Document Type: Article
Stable URL: https://search-ebscohost-com.cob.idm.oclc.org/login.aspx?
direct=true&db=a9h&AN=145721531&site=ehost-live

(page 10)
ROUGH-AND-TUMBLE PLAY
During an organism’s life, play tends to occur most during the period when most brain
development occurs, and the brain size of mammals is correlated to the frequency and
complexity of their play (Iwaniuk et al., 2001). This suggests that there may be a relationship
between play and healthy brain development, and it seems that even the most apparently
‘mindless’ forms of play could have an influence in this regard. Studies of physical rough-and-
tumble play (such as play fighting) have identified links with the development of social skills,
particularly in boys (St George, Fletcher & Palazzi, 2016; Brussoni et al., 2015; Colwell &
Lindsey, 2005). And studies with rats have shown that rats who are deprived of physical play as
juveniles show stunted development in the parts of the brain related to social interaction, and as
adults they struggle to interact with other rats (Pellis &

(page 11)
 APA Format and Citation Exercise 2

Pellis, 2009; 2007). The explanation for these specific findings may be that rough-and-tumble
type of play requires subtle social cues and communication. For example, it involves cueing to
your partner that you intend to play and not attack; reading your play-partner’s emotions to
ensure you are not hurting them, and regulating your own anger if they accidentally hurt you.
[. . .]

PRETEND PLAY
Aside from the degree of structure, we can classify play based on the object of play, i.e., what is
being played with? This includes, for example, play with our bodies (rough-and-tumble-play;
climbing); play with objects (construction play; exploratory play) and pretend play. Pretend play
is the form of play that has been studied most extensively, and there is evidence that children
may begin to engage in pretend play with mothers or siblings from around 12 months old (Lillard
et al., 2012; Haight & Miller, 1992). Unlike rough-and-tumble play, most animals rarely engage
in anything that could be called pretend play, whereas human children engage in it regularly (for
more on the rare examples in animals, see Gómez & MartínAndrade, 2005). This suggests that it
could be linked to other distinctly human attributes, such as language, complex culture, and
symbolic thought, and many theorists have viewed it in this way.
Pretence is characterised by a mental ‘as if’ stance (Garvey, 1990), where the individual
layers an alternative world over reality. In essence, pretence is about playing with the layers of
reality, from the physical to the abstract and the imagined, and it is this quality which made the
psychologist Vygotsky (1978) view it as the foundation of a child’s integration into the symbolic
systems of human culture. Culture, like pretence, is composed of multiple layers (e.g., physical,
social, legal) that need to be navigated by the individual. Vygotsky saw language as the primary
cultural symbolic system, and the link between pretence and culture may be reflected in the
identified link between pretend play and language skills (Lillard et al., 2012). As it involves
holding two representations in mind at once (reality and pretence) and navigating between them,
pretence may be the earliest form of meta-representation, which is important for later learning.
Metacognition is one form of meta-representation that has been studied extensively in the
educational literature (Whitebread & Neale, 2020). Other related psychological constructs,
including executive functioning (the voluntary control of cognition and behaviour) and theory-
of-mind (the awareness and understanding of other people’s minds) have been empirically linked
to pretence (Dore et al., 2015; White & Carlson, 2016).

Article Title: Play Workshop: Changing Preschool Teachers' Ideas about Play in the

Curriculum
Authors: Roden, Tracey, and Szabo, Susan
Source: Delta Kappa Gamma Bulletin. 2017, Vol. 83 Issue 3, p33-38
Document Type: Article
Stable URL: https://search-ebscohost-com.cob.idm.oclc.org/login.aspx?
direct=true&db=ehh&AN=122126914&site=ehost-live
2017.
(page 33)
Play is child’s work and supports physical development, social and emotional development,
cognitive development, creativity, imagination, and language and literacy development (Brown
& Vaughn, 2009; Caplan & Caplan, 1973, Epstein, 2009; Holdaway, 1970; Ramsey, 2014;
Vygotsky, 1978; White, 2012; Wohlwend, 2009). “Play may seem simple, yet it is profound to a
 APA Format and Citation Exercise 3

child’s development. Play makes learning something that happens naturally and joyfully, when a
child laughs and wonders, explores and imagines” (White, 2012, p. 3). Early childhood
classrooms are perfect environments for children to engage in play behavior and develop
language, social, and cognitive skills through interactions with peers and facilitation by adults.
Early childhood programs should provide a fundamental foundation for children’s learning and
development and are essential to the future achievement of each child. Instilling this foundation
of learning and achievement early in a child’s educational experiences ensures that he or she is
more likely to continue to achieve educational success (Bredekamp & Copple, 2009).

Article Title: Dramatic Play Affordances of Natural and Manufactured Outdoor Settings for
Preschool-Aged Children
Author(s): Cloward Drown, Kimberly K., and Christensen, Keith M.
Source: Children, Youth and Environments, 2014, Vol. 24, No. 2, (2014), pp. 53-77
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/10.7721/chilyoutenvi.24.2.0053

(page 54)
Dramatic play is imaginative behavior involving a transformation of objects, actions, and self-
identity (Petrakos and Howe 1996). Sociodramatic play within a group requires multiple high-
level cognitive strategies to develop and sustain makebelieve themes: metacommunication,
planning, goal seeking, problem solving, negotiation, and coordination (Bergen 2002; Copple
and Bredekamp 2009; Rubin and Coplan 1998). It has been argued that learning to understand
and share decontextualized and symbolic ideas is a fundamental task of early childhood (Rubin
and Coplan 1998). Through dramatic play a child begins to master the art of operating within
conceptual constructs; this is seen as a preparation for success in school where much of learning
happens through abstract thinking rather than direct experience (Smilansky 1968). Children who
engage in more complex sociodramatic

(page 55)
play score better on imagination and creativity tests, are generally more popular and have better
problem-solving skills, more positive social interactions and better social skills (Brown, Sutterby
and Thornton 2013). Research has also shown that sociodramatic play helps to develop self-
regulation, especially in impulsive children (Elias and Berk 2002). As children combine multiple
domains (cognitive, motor, emotional, and linguistic skills), and likely engage multiple areas of
the brain, dramatic play may strengthen and create new synaptic connections (Bergen 2002).
Along the same lines, dramatic play can support early childhood literacy by building connections
between speech and writing through activities such as taking a pretend restaurant order or
making a pretend grocery list (Christie 1990; Roskos and Christie 2001).
Enriching a child’s playspace and providing opportunities for dramatic play provides
child-directed learning experiences that support a wider range of learning styles. Understanding
of the functional importance of dramatic play is derived from the foundational theories of Piaget
and Vygotsky. Piaget understood play to be a vital means of acquiring knowledge through
assimilation and accommodation. He believed dramatic play helped children to retain new skills
by allowing them to practice skills attained in non-play situations (Rubin and Coplan 1998).
Piaget’s second stage in cognitive development, the preoperational stage, is when children
develop the ability to form symbolic representations. They switch from the sensorimotor stage,
which is about gaining knowledge through the senses and understanding the world in a tangible
 APA Format and Citation Exercise 4

way, to conceptual thinking. Piaget’s preoperational stage coincides with other researchers’
observations of dramatic play, which is generally accepted to begin around age 3, and starts to
wane by age 6 (Smilansky 1968). During the preschool years, dramatic play builds cognitive
capacity as a child begins to represent their experiences, modify them with nonreality, and re-
play them again and again.