As our understanding of what constitutes literacy continues to expand what counts as literature needs to begin to expand with it. Games are a type of interactive narrative with the potential to help students make sense of the cultural and social contexts. To prevent students from being passive and uncritical consumers we need to support children's interactions with unconventional texts. This lecture will present information learned by the research community regarding how we read and understand any type of text and connect it to some types of texts that can go un-respected in today's learning environments-games. It will call attention to the aspects of game play that align with literacy learning and provide suggestions for how we as a community can support our youngest members as they grow up with these complex texts in their lives.
