A few parents have asked us what research says about play-based learning, and what evidence we have to support our programme. We should note that it's good to ask these questions, and we feel as teachers that we should have a response to anyone (parent, child or colleague) who questions the way we do things. We hope to use this page on our blog to share our thoughts and ideas with you over the coming weeks, months and year. It might be useful to think about the way we are using 'play' in our programme, and to contrast this with a more 'traditional' programme. Traditionally in New Zealand, teachers have worked with small groups of children instructionally in reading, writing and maths. These small groups are usually grouped academically, but may also be socially grouped or grouped according to a specific common need. While the teacher is working with a small group, the rest of the class is left to 'work' independently with items the teacher has set. This might include a worksheet, topic-based games to play and perhaps set follow-up activities. The children might rotate around the activities at the teacher's direction, or they may be left to self-select activities. In our programme, we've grouped children instructionally for reading, writing and maths (just as you would in a 'traditional' programme). Instead of setting follow-up activities, we have decided to use 'play' as our independent activity. The children all receive instruction in reading, writing and maths in just the same way (and just as frequently) as they would in a 'traditional' programme, but are left to self-select their own follow-up activities. We'll get to the advantages of play in our next blog post, but for today here's a New Zealand article supporting play-based learning. It makes some useful links between play, our New Zealand curriculum and the key competencies that we are required to cover in New Zealand educational settings. This is an opinion piece, not scientific evidence, but it's a good place to start. In the interests of presenting a balanced view, we also went looking for articles that presented reasons why we shouldn't be using play in our programme. Again, this post is an opinion piece, but an interesting read! “Perhaps play would be more respected if we called it something like “self-motivated practice of life skills,” but that would remove the lightheartedness from it and thereby reduce its effectiveness. So, we are stuck with the paradox. We must accept play’s triviality in order to realise its profundity.” Feel free to respond to this post and leave us a question or comment. In our next blog post we'll talk about why we've chosen to use play this year, and what we've noticed in other years that contributed to our decision. If you have other suggestions, let us know in the comments below.
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They play! It's a tricky concept for us as adults to get our heads around, but there are so many well-researched reasons to incorporate play into our classroom programme. Here's a rather lengthy article to start the year with, and to provide some background to 'play' in the classroom. And here's a much shorter (one page!) article that might help you interpret our different play opportunities.
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About this pageThis year our school has started working with NPDL (New Pedagogies for Deeper Learning). Follow along here as the Kowhai teachers reflect on their learning through the year. ArchivesCategories |