Play & Creativity in the Classroom

The word “play” does not only apply to activities such as the typical presentation of play time in preschool or kindergarten. This can also mean something as simple as allowing students in middle or high school classrooms to have even just 10 minutes of “play time” while using a Kahoot! or Blookit trivia game, whether it’s related to the subject you are teaching or you're taking a break to do a fun activity the day before Halloween.

In their book Play, Playfulness, Creativity and Innovation, Patrick Bateson and Paul Martin state that “... playful behavior and playful thought can generate radically new approaches to challenges set by the physical and social environment.” (Bateson & Martin, 2012) Creativity and playfulness in the classroom have the ability to empower students to explore ideas and see where their own wonderful, powerful brains take them. When doing the interviews for this research, something my mom, who has been a preschool teacher for nearly two decades, said truly caught my attention when asked how we can encourage creativity and playfulness in our students. “Get them off screens, let them search for things to do. Have them think of how to carry an idea out instead of just Googling it.”

Now, as important as many of us believe creativity and play are, the education system seems to not be trying as hard to create more space for this in the classroom. According to a 2021 article by Muriel K. Rand and Lesley Mandel Morrow, “In spite of the research that has shown the benefits of play as it relates to literacy development, the time allotted for play has been reduced and often replaced by teacher-directed, skill-based lessons.” (Rand, 2021) In the short experience I had as a substitute in my hometown’s school district during the pandemic, I saw this in action in another preschool classroom. Throughout the full school day, the students had roughly two hours of devoted play time, including recess, and then the rest of the day was spent on lessons and reading. I am in no way trying to undersell the value in these mini-lessons or in reading time because both are absolutely important, but having the space to play and be creative is equally as important for students of all ages. All of this being said, this is not at all to say that the teacher in the classroom I was in is to blame. According to Rand and Marrow, the Common Core State Standards state that “the use of play with young children is not specified by the Standards, but it is welcome as a valuable activity in its own right and as a way to help students meet the expectations in this document.” (Rand & Morrow, 2021) Although they claim that play time is considered “welcome as a valuable activity”, the Common Core seems to not really want to allow it the space to be an equal part of education, especially for younger students.

In their book titled Teaching English Creatively, Teresa Cremin et. al, state that “Creativity emerges as children become absorbed in actively exploring ideas, initiating their own learning and making choices and decisions about how to express themselves using different media and language modes.” (Cremin et. al, 2015) There is so much research that shows how important playfulness and creativity are to our students of all ages. Why not use this information to the benefit of all of our students?

References

Bateson, Patrick, and Paul R. Martin. Play, Playfulness, Creativity and Innovation. Cambridge University Press, 2015.

Cremin, Teresa, et al. Teaching English Creatively. Routledge, 2015.

Rand, Muriel K., and Lesley Mandel Morrow. “The Contribution of Play Experiences in Early Literacy: Expanding the Science of Reading.” Reading Research Quarterly, International Literacy Association, 30 Apr. 2021, https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1298081.

Wolf, Maryanne. Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World. Harper, 2019.