Longworth Education -Play in the Classroom: Effective teaching and Learning in a Play-Based Classroom

The first thing we did upon arriving at the course was to place ourselves on the continuum of teacher practise. We had to just think about this knowing we are all on a journey and this is where we are starting. Afterwards they stressed that although this is a continuum by no means does it mean that we all need to be working towards being at the number 7. This is not the end point for everyone, it is important to look at what will work for you and your students. They find that most people end up finding that 5 or 6 suits them best. I rated myself a 3 and I think personally I am moving towards 4. We have started our play-based journey but it is a journey which will take a long time to understand and utilise new practises.

Next they shared with us a lot of great background information about how good play is for students. Play is important for all areas of learning and it really develops all aspects: physical, sensorimotor, social, emotional and cognitive. It helps children with some of the most important things that we see a lack of in children these days such as resiliency and higher order thinking. Probably they lack these skills because they tell us there is a real lack of play in the lives of children. In a study done between 1981 and 1997 there was already 25% less general ‘playing’ happening in children’s lives and then when this study was repeated in 2003 it went down by another 7%. Another great reason for doing play is that it is positive for mental health also as well as helping students become calmer. But what are we actually talking about? What is play-based learning as opposed to just playing? The below definition was really helpful to me because sometimes it is easy to get carried away with what you want the students to do. Play-based learning is all about the freedom of choice for students. You can plan cool ideas for students to do but ultimately you have to then not be too sad if nobody decides they want to do it, which I can relate to and I’m sure this will happen throughout our journey.

It is also important to note that through play the students have to have the freedom to quit, which in turn builds intrinsic motivation. It is not the end result that matters but how they are playing and what they are doing. If they spend a long time figuring out how to make a musical instrument and they discover the equipment for themselves and decided to put it together etc. but then they completed it and it looked and sounded horrible it doesn’t matter. There were so many skills they learned within the making of that instrument that they can transfer into future activities, if they were doing it with others there were also many social skills they were developing along the way also.

The play also has to be balanced with intentional teaching. This was a part of the course that really challenged me however as they said they do not have set times when they take groups. It kind of happens when it happens and when the students have settled down into the play. I really struggled with this because I have always been told about the importance of students having structure and predictability, I also wondered how they ensured that all students received adequate time. I don’t know if this aspect is something I will come to understand later but at the moment I struggle to balance the need for play and the high learning needs we have in the classroom.

However there were some very interesting things they said about instructional time that made me think about my teaching and what I am doing everyday. They spoke of the importance of Oral language and how we need to lift the talk and limit the teacher talk. The above statistics were very interesting about the amount of teacher talk in the classroom. Play allows for more time for students to be speaking with each other and adults to develop their speaking and vocabulary. This is also important in instructional teaching and it shocked me to hear that during things like reading groups a question is asked by the teacher every 72 seconds on average yet we only wait on average two seconds for an answer. They tell us if we wait only a further two seconds each time we ask a question this can make a measurable difference in the student’s learning. Something I have certainly tried to think about since when I am talking.

We looked a lot in the course about the development of children, which you can easily see in students arriving at school at the age of 5 who aren’t really ready to be sitting down and learning. In the below developmental stages the pre-operational is typically seen in children aged 3-7 whereas the concrete operational is more seen in 7/8-10 years.

They then started to tell us about how to prepare equipment for play. How do you plan for something that students are supposed to be choosing and creating for themselves? We need to look at the urges we see in our students, see the things that interest them and resource them for things we think they may be able to use to fulfil this urge. Urges can be things like gathering, transporting, constructing, deconstructing, jumping, climbing, digging etc. Playing with fire and water is also an urge and they ask how we can manage this. Personally I find water fine but the thought of exploring fire with any of the children in the hub scares me!

The role of the teacher is to resource the students with equipment but also to lift the play by giving extra knowledge or giving them a resource to help further the play for them. Such as giving the students a book on paper planes if that is what they are doing, you’re not directly telling them everything they need to do but instead helping them along. We can plan activities for instance something that goes along with the big book you’re reading or something else you’ve been working on. The big thing here is it has to be an invitation which they can then choose to accept or not. We can also provide provocations to further the play. All the talk of integration really interested me and I thought how much more powerful our classroom programme would be if we linked more of our learning together. For next term we have looked at this and thought about ways we can link things like the letter of the week, writing activities, poetry, our big book with some things during the play. I am excited to get into this and see if it makes a difference for our learners.

We then heard about loose parts and the things that the children do with them. This video below was really helpful to see and think about all the little random things that they can use to play. As well as thinking about possibilities for break times as well. This again made me think about needing to get more things like this for the students to just be able to make up uses for and develop their imaginations.

At the end of the course they spoke about learning stories and taking lots of pictures of the play. This makes the learning visible and allows students and parents to be able to see the process that the students have gone through in their play as it’s the most important part. Again this is something I intend to work on when I am the roving teacher at the beginning of next term. The course was a good starter and background about beginning play-based learning which was really good, it certainly left me with a lot to think about for the future of play-based learning at Gilberthorpe School.

Unfortunately we ended the course in a lockdown with the horrible events of that day so it has taken a bit longer to process everything we learnt about. Everyone handled this well and the course providers were kind enough to also provide extra notes in case we lost ours, which was very kind.