Learn in play

Playing to Learn | Harvard Graduate School of Education

Research Stories

By: Grace Tatter

Posted: March 11, 2019

Play and school can seem diametrically opposed. School is structured, often focused on order; play, by definition, is not.

But within this paradox of play and school, educators can find meaningful learning opportunities, advancing students' academic skills as well as the social skills that will allow them to thrive in adulthood and enjoy their childhood now, according to researchers from Project Zero (PZ), a research center at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

With support and collaborative input from the LEGO Foundation, Project Zero embarked on an exploration of the pedagogy of play in 2015, in partnership with the International School of Billund in Denmark, which has made play a key part of its approach to learning. Since then, researchers have looked at how play enlivens lessons in three schools in South Africa, as well. The goal is to understand, articulate, and advocate for the role of play in learning and schools.

In Denmark, playful learning has meant allowing middle school students to design their own schedules for two weeks, for instance; or students drawing a map of the world onto an orange. In South Africa, it looked like five-year-olds drawing words with the ‘er’ sound. Universally, a playful pedagogy allows students to experiment, use their imaginations, and be creative.

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There is a universality to play: children are often more relaxed and engaged during play, and it’s enjoyable — all aspects that facilitate learning. But there are also cultural specifications to what play looks like, when it’s appropriate, and who children play with.

The hope of the PZ researchers is that by observing playful learning and asking questions about its characteristics, they can work with educators to develop a pedagogy of play in their own contexts — a systematic approach to the practice of playful learning and teaching — that can weave through the tensions between school and play.

Here are some takeaways from their research thus far — and the questions that they, and other educators, are grappling with for the future.

It’s possible to play with a purpose. There is a difference between free play and playful learning. While both are important, a pedagogy of play is grounded in playing toward certain learning goals, designing activities that fit in and leverage curricular content and goals. Children are trusted to direct their own learning, but with appropriate supports from their teachers to meet specific goals.

While learning through play is universal, what that looks like depends on the culture. There is a universality to play: children are often more relaxed and engaged during play, and it’s enjoyable — all aspects that facilitate learning. But there are also cultural specifications to what play looks like, when it’s appropriate, and who children play with. In South Africa, Pedagogy of Play researchers and local researchers identified three South African indicators of play, centered around the concept of ubuntu, or a sense of human interconnectivity: ownership, curiosity, and enjoyment. In Denmark, that looked a little different. The indicators of play the researchers and educators identified were choice, wonder, and delight.

Older students can benefit from play in the classroom, too. “Play is a strategy for learning at any age,” says PZ researcher Mara Krechevsky. While older students and their teachers might have more curricular demands than younger students, playful learning still has an important role to play — it might just look different. The kinds of activities that inspired a sense of ownership, curiosity, and enjoyment among older students in South Africa — like a debate over the nature of facts — might not qualify as play for younger learners.

“The commonality is this sense of playfulness — some sort of agency and sense of control over what you’re doing; some sort of curiosity; and that you’re enjoying yourself,” says PZ researcher Ben Mardell.

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“Play is a strategy for learning at any age.” – Project Zero's Mara Krechevsky.

And so can adults. “We want students to feel they have agency, and it’s really hard to imagine someone who doesn’t have agency instilling it in someone else,” Mardell says. “We need to provide teachers with that agency so they can take that back to their students.”

Again, what’s playful for a group of educators might look different than it does for children. In one study group of teachers in Denmark, the process of coming up with research questions to explore together felt like purposeful play.

But the PZ researchers do have at least one example of teachers participating in more childlike play: PZ researcher Lynneth Solis recalls how, at a school in South Africa, a group of teachers actually went out to play a game on the playground. “The idea was to bring themselves back to what it means to be a child, and what interactions are happening during play,” she says. During the game, the educators “realized they were bumping into each other, and it provided some insight that when children bump into each other during playtime it doesn’t mean they’re trying to hurt each other — it gave a little insight into the child’s experience. ”

Learn more

Project Zero has a dedicated blog to Pedagogy of Play. You can also find more resources at the International School of Billund site and at Project Zero, including the most recent Pedagogy of Play working paper, “Toward a South African Pedagogy of Play.”

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How Do Children Learn Through Play?

As an adult, Albert Einstein remembered a pivotal event in his life that inspired his interest in scientific discovery. He was four or five years old and stuck in bed with a childhood illness when his father handed him a magnetic pocket compass to play with. He spend hour twisting the compass, wondering how the needle always knew to point towards the north.

The book Internet Invention: From Literacy to Electracy , quotes Albert Einstein on how playing with that compass inspired his love of science. "I can still remember," he wrote, "that this experience made a deep and lasting impression on me. Something deeply hidden had to be behind things."

As a parent, you probably love to see your child playing. It’s incredible to hear their ideas and to learn about the new worlds they create. It’s also fun to see how creative they can be as they put their imagination to use in learning about the world around them.

Play is far more powerful for children, however, than many parents realize. It’s actually the key to learning. Researchers and educators across the world have found that play can help enrich learning and develop key skills such as inquiry, expression, experimentation, and teamwork.

Schools that use the Montessori education focus on encouraging children to learn through “meaningful play.” According to the book, From Play to Practice: Connecting Teachers' Play to Children's Learning, “meaningful play” has five characteristics. It:

Gives the child a choice about what he or she wants to do
Feels fun and enjoyable for the child
Evolves spontaneously, rather than giving kids a script to follow
Is driven by intrinsic motivation about what the child wants to do
Creates a risk-free environment where kids can experiment and try new ideas.

In meaningful play, children are active participants. For example, instead of passively taking in a lesson, children take on roles alongside their peers and respond to the other children according to the rules of play that they’ve created.

While “rules” may seem counterintuitive to the idea of free, voluntary play, a system of mental rules is actually one of the other key features of play. Children may state these explicitly, form them collaboratively or follow a selected leader, or have an inherent sense of what governs the terms of their playful engagement. This active, pleasurable negotiation of rules and symbols can offer a number of learning benefits.

How Do Children Learn Through Play?

In her TedX Talk talk, Professor Doris Fromberg, Director of Early Childhood Teacher Education at Hofstra University, explains why play is such an important part of the learning process for children.

We need to consider that young children learn in quite different ways [than adults]. They learn by comparing physical experiences, by interactions with other people and their own feelings. And they learn an enormous amount through their imagination.... Play is what pulls together the logical and creative parts of the brain.

For young children, play is often a full body activity that helps them develop skills they will need later in life. Running, dancing, climbing, rolling—these activities all foster muscle development and help fine-tune motor skills. Children also build their mental and emotional muscles as they create elaborate, imaginative worlds rich with a system of rules that govern the terms of play.

University of Denver researchers Elena Bodrova, Carrie Germeroth, and Deborah J. Leong found that children teach themselves to regulate their emotions and think before they act when they play. For example, if a child is pretending to be Olaf from Frozen, they may pretend they’re melting when they come inside or insist that they like warm hugs. In each case, they consider how their actions will correlate with how Olaf should act in a given situation.

This role playing helps children build social skills and helps them become the kind of adults who are able to thrive in a range of personal and professional environments.

Why It’s Important to Include Play in the Classroom

In an academic setting, play can also help children learn and grow. Teacher-initiated play is a close cousin to inquiry based learning. At Whitby, our early child educators ask children questions about the rules and process that govern the play, and then encourage children to make connections to the wider world through their own body of knowledge.

Dr. Angeline S. Lillard, author of Montessori: The Science behind the Genius, wrote about about how Maria Montessori encouraged educators to use play as a part of the learning process.

[In a Montessori classroom] teachers guide learning within structures but do so playfully and loosely, with particular focus on the goals they have in mind... the Montessori education resembles playful learning.

We’ve seen this at Whitby. When we take a play-based approach to combining different subjects, we’ve found that teachers can create an educational experience greater than the sum of its parts. Students learn critical thinking skills, develop their language abilities, expand their range of knowledge and increase their social emotional awareness—all without realizing how much they’re learning.

Maximize Learning Through Play

From offering children a chance to ask questions, problem solve, work collaboratively and conduct structured experimentation, play is a key component of learning at Whitby. One way that Whitby teachers bring a sense of play into the classroom is by taking an activity-based approach to nearly every subject.

For example, when our teachers read a book aloud, they encourage young students to turn each page and follow each word with their fingers. They can also prompt students to talk to each other about the content, and to talk about the associations it sparks from their own lives. Teachers also engage kids’ imaginations and sense of curiosity by asking “What do you think will happen next?”

Students are also given an opportunity to bring stories to life through dramatic play. When children are given opportunities to act out scenes and express themselves, they improve their social confidence, increase their ability to see the perspectives of others and increase the attention they give to the literature.

Play gives children a chance to practice what they’re learning.
- Fred Rogers

At Whitby, we seek to teach children that learning is not just a formal activity they do in the classroom—it’s actually a lot of fun! One of our goals is to give kids opportunities to wonder, question, work as a team, experiment, play with different possibilities and investigate subjects that interest them. For example, in our 3D printing class, educators give students the opportunity to design an object from their imagination. Then they ask students to explain, “Why did you make that?” “What did you make it out of? What is the purpose of that object?”

This teacher engagement supports children in their creativity, while also challenging them to think about why they chose to create an object. It also requires them to think through the challenges they solved in creating it and helps them become more confident in their problem solving abilities.

Help Your Child Learn Through Play

Our goal at Whitby is to help students learn to ask questions, express themselves, collaborate with others, and take creative risks. We also want them to retain their natural curiosity and to never lose the excitement of learning something new. All those things are achieved by making learning fun for children.

Find out more about how you can help your child learn during our upcoming Parents as Partners parenting classes. We will be presenting on “Play as a Powerful Learning Tool” on Thursday, March 17. Click the link below to attend.

5 sites and apps for kids and teens - Afisha

Chess.com

Hundreds of thousands of players around the world use this resource, and it is rightfully considered one of the best. Here you can train in classical chess, solve problems, choose the timing of games and set the level of difficulty of the game.

Chess.com has many learning opportunities, but most of them are paid. You can analyze your games and learn from the mistakes (of your own and your opponent), but the free option is available only three times a day. nine0005

The site makes sure that everyone plays fairly and stops any cases of fraud. You can also always complain about the rudeness of the opponent and block him so as not to collide with him again. And if you don’t want to communicate, you can always set up the Block Chat function.

Another plus is that the site has accounts of chess champions, for example, Magnus Carlsen. Anyone can follow the game of the pros and learn from experience.

Chess courses at Skysmart online school

Skysmart has chess courses for all ages and skill levels. Each new student is given an individual lesson plan, depending on his goals, whether it is preparation for tournaments and a career as a chess champion, or simply the desire to master the game at an amateur level.

Lessons are supervised by professional teachers who point out mistakes, strengths and weaknesses of the student. This allows you to learn about all the most common mistakes at the initial stage and not make them. nine0005

Another advantage of studying is that time is given not only to theory and practice, but also to the history of chess, biographies of famous chess players and other interesting facts. And the coaches also share their secret life hacks that you can’t just read on the Internet.

For the youngest players (children from 4 years old are accepted for classes), physical education minutes are provided - parents know how important this is for the health of children.

Lichess.org

The main rival of Chess.com in terms of popularity among chess players. This site has a large base for learning and training, and attention is paid not only to the classical, but also to the modern game. nine0005

Today Lichess is actively developing the direction of rapid chess, so fans of this format have a place to roam. In such a game it is very difficult to get a draw - the one who has more pieces on the board at the end of the game wins. Suitable for connoisseurs of chess passion.

Here you can also play with the computer, having previously set the desired difficulty level - in case you do not want to contact a live opponent.

Play Magnus

Magnus Carlsen is a Norwegian chess player, the 16th world chess champion. He became a grandmaster at the age of 13, and in addition to the world championship, his track record includes first places in classical game, rapid chess and blitz tournaments. nine0005

His enormous experience can be adopted at least partially in the Play Magnus app. It is based on AI that plays like Magnus in different years. You can take on a five-year-old chess player or try your hand at a 27-year-old world champion. In parallel with the games, players will learn interesting facts from the athlete's biography.

The application has the most powerful incentive for development: once a year, Magnus plays personally with the best of the best. There are no age restrictions.

Chess Light

Those who are just at the very beginning of learning chess can learn how the pieces move with this eye-pleasing application, so as not to get confused and not be afraid of the first difficulties.

The goal of the game is to arrange the pieces so that the entire field is highlighted in yellow. There are six levels - from beginner to grandmaster - and on each you need to solve from 10 to 50 problems.

A great option to do something on the road, when there is no Internet access for a classic game, and you don't want to lose your knack. The application is free. nine0005

experts explain why games are more useful than educational games and lessons

Not only screams and chaos, but also a lot of good!

A common complaint about kindergartens, which is regularly found in parental circles, is: “No one works with them there, they just play all day long!”. In the world of adults, the opportunity to roll a car on a carpet all day is considered completely unacceptable (and in vain), but for children, “just playing” is many times more important than any developmental activities. We remind you of this at the beginning of the new school year and explain why. nine0005

When children have the opportunity to play with their peers or parents, their imagination runs at full capacity. They constantly come up with new scenarios and ways of playing, adapt to changing conditions and develop creative thinking.

University of Maryland Mental Health Center director Sharon Hoover confirms that "gaming and mental health are linked. " Pediatricians and other professionals agree that free play is a normal, healthy, and natural part of a child's development. nine0005

According to Hoover, games are good because they generate “positive feelings, such as joy or excitement, that improve the child's mood and reduce feelings of anxiety and sadness. At the same time, children who did not have enough time to play saw an increase in symptoms of depression, anxiety, and inattention.”

Remember the pleasant feeling of relief and joy when you hear the bell from the lesson? This most exciting moment, when you can leave the classroom and have fun from the heart, run and play with your classmates, is hard to forget. nine0005

The opportunity to play freely with your peers is essential to a child's development and helps him acquire many social skills that will be useful throughout his life.

The current generation of children is looked after much stronger and more carefully than previous generations (well, you yourself know these stories about how children from the age of five used to walk without their parents in the yard, and playgrounds looked more like an army obstacle course). This gives rise to a problem: due to the overprotection of parents, not all children get the opportunity to fill bumps on their own and figure out what is dangerous for them and what is not. nine0005

Free play allows children to test themselves and learn to better manage their bodies, their emotions and their decisions. The ability to self-regulate is another important stage in a child's development, and free play is a great way to develop it.

When you give children the opportunity to play independently and freely, “they learn to cope with problems, think through their actions to the end and realize their own possibilities. This allows them to feel more confident and less helpless." nine0005

Children are born to play. For them, this is the best way to learn, grow and master new skills. Free play stimulates brain cells, and the game tasks that the child sets for himself make his brain work hard, which contributes to his development.

In general, games (even if they look strange from the outside) are not a waste of time that is needed only in a break between useful activities, this is a useful activity, and, perhaps, one of the most useful for children.