We all know it intuitively, and so it comes as no surprise that research confirms: Teachers are the single most important school-related factor influencing student achievement. (Rivkin, Hanushek, and Kain, 1998). Since last year, the COVID-19 pandemic has created challenging circumstances and requiring teachers to be more resilient and adaptive than ever before. So, let’s take some time today to be extra grateful for all the hard work and effort our education heroes are putting in each day!
One of the lessons we should learn from this pandemic is that we need to be more proactive and prepared to cope with changing circumstances. If we do that right, not only can we better navigate the challenges that still lay ahead of us, we can even turn it into an opportunity to fundamentally improve teaching and learning methods. Proactive, innovative, and flexible teaching practices are essential to equip the next generations with 21st-century skills, preparing them for a future in which the only constant is change itself.
"Well, that is easier said than done" you may be thinking? You are partly right. However, it doesn’t have to be very complicated, and it can even be a lot of fun! Here is how learning through play can help teachers to get started on the right track, even when teaching or working online.
5 characteristics
Learning through play is an educational approach in which students can explore, experiment, discover and solve problems in a playful environment. The teacher sets intentional learning goals, but also creates space to foster student autonomy and therefore improve the student's learning outcomes. Play means not only playing games or moving around, play is educational when it is joyful, meaningful, actively engaging, iterative, and socially interactive (Zosh, 2018). These five characteristics don't have to be present at all times in every activity, but they can guide you as a teacher to help you elevate your classroom practice with new and creative teaching techniques.
Joyful, socially interactive, and actively engaging
Chances are you are already well on your way applying learning through play. Many teachers try to make their classes fun, encourage students to talk to each other in certain exercises, and make time for students to be active and move around in energizers. That’s a great start, and you can easily crank it up a notch to further deepen students’ learning.
Joy goes beyond the usual song or dance that's used as an energizer. It is also the excitement and pride a student feels when they solve a challenging but motiving problem, or when they can show their knowledge. Have you ever used the notoriously popular Kahoot! quiz in your classroom? It works just as well at home when you are teaching an online lesson!
Social interaction does not stop at students reciting a prescribed conversation, it is much more about what students are saying when you, for example, use open-ended questions or thinking routines. These routines work both online and offline.
Active engagement can refer to physical activity as it is necessary for young students to get enough opportunities to move around instead of sitting the whole day, or to experience hands-on learning where they actively do things like treasure hunting for triangles in their environment (in the school or in their home) in a math class about shapes. But it also refers to being minds-on, being actively engaged mentally in the content of the lesson. Can they sort the triangles according to angle size? (here is the example for a treasure hunting activity)
Meaningful and iterative
Your lessons become more meaningful for children when they can connect their learning experiences to things they already understand. An easy example is in math: 1+1 = 2 doesn't mean much to a 6-year-old when you only use numbers and symbols. However, if you ask how many eggs you get when you take one egg, and add another egg, the child can understand what "+" means and what the numbers represent, because it can connect the numbers and symbols to something they already know: eggs.
The same idea applies to other topics, like sciences or language. When you give a writing assignment, students will likely be more motivated (and actively engaged) when you let them choose their writing topic and let them freely express their ideas. But to be intentional with your learning goals, you can still determine the format: is it an article, a fiction story, or perhaps a poem? One student may write a poem about his grandmother, another student may write a poem about her dream to become a firefighter. Both will learn how to write a poem, and both will have a meaningful learning experience that they care about.
Iterative means children get to try out new possibilities, revise hypotheses and explore other ways to do things. Let's get back to the example of writing a poem. It doesn't have to stop after one try. Nobody is good at something from the first try! Instead, check their work, and provide kind, helpful and very specific feedback so they know exactly what they can do to improve their poem. It can take 2, 3, 4 or more rounds, and in each step, you help them to get better and better. Look at how MC Minh Trang instructed her children do the mindmap activity. Can you recognize how this activity is meaningful, joyful, actively engaging, iterative and socially interactive?
It is a mindset that elevates your classroom practice!
Since 2018, The General Education Programme (GEP) shifted from a content-based curriculum to a competency-based curriculum to better equip studentswith the necessary competencies and qualifications for the future. Learning through play creates opportunities for teachers to teach more effectively to reach those competencies and qualifications, and it creates opportunities for students to be autonomous, socially interactive, creative, investigative, resilient and reflective problem-solvers, which are all key aspects of the new GEP. These are essential skills for the 21st century, creating a strong foundation for lifelong learning.
If you're curious to try this, start small and be kind to yourself. Perhaps focus on one of the five characteristics, and you'll notice the rest will follow automatically. If you design a lesson to be very socially interactive, chances are high it will also become a more meaningful, joyful, iterative, and actively engaging lesson. And that works with any characteristic.
Learning through play is a mindset that you as a teacher can adopt. It is not a 1-2-3 step-by-step plan that you follow, it is an (iterative) learning journey for the teacher as well. It may not always go as you planned it, but that is part of the deal. If you accept that and trust that your students will still be learning a lot in the process, you will be more comfortable trying it out. Start small, keep trying new things and ideas, and in no time, you will be a true master at learning through play!
If you would like some more inspiration to get started, you can find plenty of other activities you can use in your lessons in our iPLAY Library: https://thuvien.choivuihoctot.vn/
