Play Based Learning in the Senior School - What Will This Look Like?

TKI - Kaimai School PBL in action

Kaimai School's blog on PBL

Play based learning should be nature based. Eg. a plastic apple is always going to be an apple, but a pinecone could be an apple, a ball, a remote control for a space ship etc.

Play Based Learning Activities/ideas for the seniors.

• ART - Journal Art by the Sea. My class did the balancing art and grabbed all kinds of natural materials from the bush. They absolutely loved doing it!
• Going into the bush and making huts. Have categories - largest, most people can fit in, tallest, smallest but can still fit a person. Or ones with different rooms etc.
• Have a construction afternoon. Find building construction from around the school and just put it out for students to play and build with.
• Deconstruction - are there old computers or technology that children can disassemble with tools?
• Building - Could we find that wooden building station and have wood and hammers and nails and just let them go for it?
• Go to your younger buddy class and just let the class play with all the equipment and PBL activities in there. My boys LOVED dressing up in the dress ups in Dana’s class.
• Nature art - tell students to create an art piece from natural materials in the bush. They can only take things from the ground (not pulling new leaves off trees etc). Some examples - Nature art examples, More art examples, another example
• Scientific investigations that they organise
• Problem solving activities - break out kits
• Cardboard arcades/miniature buildings or just offer them cardboard boxes and see what they turn them into or use them for.
• Have dress ups for the seniors too. I have some your can borrow. I use them for wet day lunches.
• Have a box full of school journal plays they can create. My class love having the opportunity to do plays for reading, but I control it too much. I might trial them choosing their own friends to do it with, and them choosing their own creative direction.
• Opportunities to create their own dances or art or invent games for the class to play, both board games or physical games.
• Maybe be prepared to be messy and to use the outdoors. Give a group some dishwashing liquid and see what bubbles they can create.
• Take the lead from the students. What do they want to play with? Could the bring stuff from home?

Different forms of play - some obviously young, but you could advance the activity for students in your class.

Gathering - Gathering or collecting items.

Transporting - Transporting can be the urge to carry many things on your hands at one time, in jars, in buckets and baskets, or containers.

Deconstruction - Breaking things comes before making things - for most children.

Construction - Creating and building.

Enclosure - The urge to fill up cups with water, climb into cardboard boxes or kitchen draws, build fences for the animals or to put all the animals inside the circular train track, it is the Enclosure/Container schema. Shelter and safety are deep within the human experience. Trajectory - The urge to throw, drop and other actions that are all part of the Trajectory schema. Some other Trajectory actions are things like climbing up and jumping off (Trajectory of ones own body), putting your hand under running water (interacting with things that are already moving) and the classic, throwing and dropping (making it happen). It can be diagonal, vertical or horizontal... this is a multi-dimensional urge, after all learning is based on movement in the first years of life.    

Connection - Joining train tracks, clicking together pieces of lego, running a string from one thing to another... the urge of Connection. Putting things end to end, tying things together to make a ‘convoy’ of wheelbarrows, trucks, friends.

Enveloping - Putting things into things is an urge, to have a sheet over your head, wrapping things in fabrics or with tape and paper, all actions seen in the Enveloping schema.

Patterning and Ordering - Do you find yourself positioning things neatly into alignment on your desk, ordering the books on the self, getting creative when you plate the dinner or even just tidying-up. Perhaps you see your child lining up their cars, making sure the whale is next to the cow or turning all the cups upside down? It is about sorting, classifying, and seriating.

Role Playing - Children role play to explore their place in society, as well as examine social justice (good versus bad).

Rotation - Anything that goes around anything that is circular - wheels, turning lids, watching the washing machine on spin cycle, drawing circles, spinning around on the spot, being swung around. These are all experiences of the Rotation schema. Starting with rolling when babies learn to move off their backs to spinning round and round and falling down dizzy, children have a pattern of the circular to unfold. Low, horizontal tyre-swings extend this, wheeled vehicles, a spinning wheel, retro wind-up gramophones.

Orientation - The urge to hang upside down, get the view from under the table or on top of the dresser and other actions that are part of the Orientation schema. In order to 'know' what it is like to hang upside down or see things from a different point of view, you must take yourself into those positions. It is looking at things from another angle.

Transformation - The urge to Transform can come in many forms; holding all your food in your mouth for a long time to see what it turns into, mixing your juice with your fish pie, water with dirt, or mixing the bread dough. It's only natural that once you have explored and learnt about a raw material you should want to do further testing. Turning something into something else, watching the properties morph and change: soil and water mud pies, clay and water sculpting, flour, butter, etc.

Climbing - Children are going to climb - some more than others. It is about position yourself to a higher state. Seeing things from a different perspective.

More research...

The Importance of Play

According to (Gray, 2013; Brewer, 2007) play needs to be;

1.  self-chosen and self-directed;
2.  process rather than product driven;
3.  contains structures or rules established by the players themselves;
4.  imaginative, non-literal and removed from reality;
5.  occurs between those who are active, alert and non-stressed.

"Play by definition, is, first and foremost, an activity that is

self-chosen and self-directed. It is an activity that you are

always free to quit. Activities that are chosen by teachers and

directed or evaluated by teachers, is not play" Peter Gray

A child's play is not simply a reproduction of what he has experienced, but a creative reworking of the impressions he has acquired. (Vygotsky, 2004).

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?

Teachers need to observe and support the learning when the students are 'stuck' and the play becomes stagnant.

Aiono and Cheer (2017) state that numerous research has defined pretend or socio-dramatic play as the most beneficial play for children.  This type of play has been shown to have the strongest links to executive functioning development.  This type of thinking develops flexible and abstract thinking, it also helps develop self-control.  This play also allows children to build on their knowledge of what is known, as well as what could be, as well as developing.

Assessing through play

As teachers observe play they can make links to the curriculum. Play can cover a variety of curriculum strands and key competencies, it is the teacher's job to identify these, expand on these and then provide provocations/invitations to areas of the curriculum that have not be covered yet.

Links to Literacy - Jessie’s reflection from readings.

Children who don’t have experiences can’t verbalise experiences. Play based learning gives them new experiences, both social and independent.

Language develops through children communicating and learning from each other. They also learn problem solving and conflict resolution strategies themselves when a teacher is not always jumping in to solve it.

Lots of links to the NZC’s Key Competencies - most all of them can be developed through play-based activities: innovation, inquiry, curiosity, and sustainability, respect, thinking, using language, and managing self, relating to others, participation and contributing.

If children are writing about personal experiences that are relevant to them, the writing will be authentic with their voice and word choice.