How?

Practical tips

Here are some really easy ways to encourage play in your space. Most are very cheap and easy, it's just about thinking in a slightly different way about ordinary items, and in fact, a practical way to re-cycle and up-cycle.

The Power of Purposeful Observation

Look...

Teachers need to plan for a guided play environment. Walsh (2006) and Webster-Stratton 2012) state that guided play uses descriptive commentary, academic, social and emotional coaching techniques to respectfully support students in their learning.

The notion of ‘coaching’ as a role for the teacher within a play-based setting extends from Vygotsky’s concept of the Zone of Proximal Development. Teachers need to observe and support the learning when the students are 'stuck' and the play becomes stagnant.

In short, it is teacher observations of how the children are playing and this requires knowledge and understanding. The teacher needs to be looking for the student's progression through the stages using Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development during the child's play. Looking for indicators that show the child is ready for the next step in their learning. Looking to scaffold the play when the play becomes stagnant or too repetitive (does not become more complex over time). ‘Guided Play’ uses descriptive commentary, academic, social and emotional coaching techniques to respectfully support students in their learning journey (Walsh, et al., 2006; Webster-Stratton, 2012).

Collecting Evidence

There are many ways to gather observational evidence from video and photographs, through to the most common I have seen in Reggio inspired environments, writing on good old pen and paper! Often these notes are used for other purposes, including adding to the children's individual and collective learning stories and used for displaying visible thinking in the learning environment.. Children use this displayed learning to build further learning from, revisiting, recrafting, or simply finding inspiration. Below are some examples of evidence, some is also students own evidence gathered during their own inquiry.

Setting up the classroom

Psychology literature points to children developing reflection skills (reflection on the nature of knowledge and the relation between knowledge and reality) at about 9 or 10 years old (Pillow, 2008). Thus, is it reasonable to ask a 6-year-old to reflect on their learning? Teachers must consider where each student is at cognitively in order to truly scaffold the learning. ‘Pressure’ to perform at a high level can interfere with new learning. Research shows performance worsens by pressure for those just beginning to learn a concept. Pressure to be creative (such as incentives to make the ‘best’ artwork), interferes with creativity. Teachers need to create an environment where children can choose a skill, they will keep working at it. Even if they fail, they will keep going back, until they have mastered it. If there is an expectation that the child can do it, and they fail, they will see themselves as a failure at learning.

Piaget's Learning Stages

A way for teachers to ensure that they are creating the right environment is by using Tina Bruce’s 12 Features of Play, alongside Gray and Brewer’s philosophy of play. This is that play is self-chosen and self-directed; it is a focus on process, rather than a product. The structure (or rules) are established by the players, it needs to be imaginative and non-literal, and it occurs between those who are alert and active. It is also important that the child has the knowledge that they can end the play when they wish. Aiono states that the ultimate freedom in play is the freedom to quit. When an adult leads, a child feels less able to quit. When a child feels coerced, the play spirit vanishes. How does it feel when you have to follow directions, versus being given the opportunity to have your own creative input?

The teacher can set up invitations and provocations. These are open-ended 'starting points' for play. Ideally, these will be based on meeting the students play urges and interests. The items set up, ideally, should be natural materials. This, Brownlee (2017) points out helps link students to nature and also helps develop their imagination. An example being that a plastic apple in a play kitchen, will only be played with as an apple; whilst a pine cone could be an apple, or an egg, or salt shaker, or bottle of tomato sauce, etc.

We create alternate realities through play and unfold our “intelligences through the play”

Collecting is a huge play pattern and unfolds before the child is one and carries on for all of life. It is about gathering, a survival skill.

Throwing things (firing things) is a inbuilt hunter gatherer mechanism. How do we cater for this?

Building and constructing are massively important, making stuff is a big deal. If we didn’t have this engrained we wouldn’t have cars, laptops etc. How is this catered for in our learning spaces?

Transformation is a play concept ie scrunching, mud pies, water play, sand. It’s how we learn to cook, paint a new room to make us feel better. It’s about learning through our own power to transform things to improve them.

Playing huts ie buying camper-vans etc is all about creating a hut and this is called “enclosure schema”. It goes back to feeling safe in the womb. We build spaces, it is ingrained in us. We need to have cardboard boxes at school, bush area etc, that allow children to engage in this typre of play, it's in our DNA!

Imagination is not a mammalian trait (ie all mammals that have 1 - 2 live babies), it exclusive to humans, the ability to imagine something and then create.

The highest form of play is imaginative play. Most of the urges of play occur during this kind of play.

If you cannot play, have not had these opportunities, you will really struggle to read and write. The are abstracts concepts and have to be embodied through the physical first earlier in development.

“Whatever makes an impression on my consciousness, seeks expression”

This is a solid theory for the foundational premise for writing programmes as an example, learning through doing…In the expressing part, a whole lot of other things happen, the social behaviours and habits grow. This is where the problem solving stuff with people skills, construction things etc happens. All of the “meta” skills happens in this, but the environment has to be set up to enable it.

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