Play-Based Learning

Transcript
You probably have heard the term “play-based learning.” Maybe you’ve heard “inquiry-based learning.” Those are often used in a similar way, and it’s often advocated for children particularly at the kindergarten level but sometimes for slightly older children as well. And people wonder, “What does it mean?” For example, a parent might hear the phrase play-based learning and be concerned that their kids are not learning what they’re supposed to be learning in school if it’s all about play. So you might be wondering, “What is it? Why is it? Is it really a good thing?”

So play-based learning is premised on the notion that kids will naturally be learning things as they go about their business and do various things as they’re playing, and that if we use what they do as springboards for the kind of learning we want them to have, the learning will be more meaningful to them, it’ll probably stick with them, and they’ll probably be more interested as well and pay a little bit more attention.

So the idea is that an observant educator is watching the child play, notices something that they can pick up on, thinks about what the curriculum is, and then finds a way to marry what the child is doing with what the curriculum wants to happen at that level (probably kindergarten, as I mentioned).

So here’s [what] might be an example: A child is playing with a bunch of pebbles that they found on the playground, and they start putting them in piles and putting some of them together and leaving some of them out. And the educator notices this and realizes that this child is essentially sorting. Sorting is something we want them to learn about, so the educator picks up on this and starts talking to the child. So, the person might say, “Oh, I noticed you put those two rocks together, but you didn’t put that one with the others. Why didn’t you do that? And what about this one? Where would you put that?” And so we are doing exactly what the curriculum wants, but we’re building it off of what the child was interested in.

Or here’s a different example: A child is playing in a section of the kindergarten [class] where they’re pouring contents of one cup into a bigger cup, and the kid is just playing around [and] pouring. Again, the educator is watching, walks over, and says, “Oh, I wonder how many times you’d have to fill that little cup to fill the big cup? How many times do you think it’ll be?” And the educator is getting kids thinking about what we call capacity and using what we call non-standard units.

And, again, we’re doing what the curriculum requires, but we’re doing it from the perspective of “What is the child interested in, and how do I make sure that they’re listening to what I’m talking about and it’s meaningful for them?”

So I hope that you see that play-based learning doesn’t mean you’re just watching kids play; it means that you’re intervening at the appropriate times. Often a teacher will put out what they call provocations to encourage kids to explore certain things so that they can build on those things. So maybe in the case of the water, a teacher makes sure that there are cups of different sizes around and stuff to fill [them] with that might be interesting, so the kids are likely to do that so that the conversation is more likely to happen.

I think essentially what’s different in a traditional classroom than a play-based classroom is that [in a play-based classroom,] if the child doesn’t go to the water or doesn’t go to the rocks, the teacher is not going to force it; they’re just going to watch what the child does do and follow them [in] a different direction. In a more traditional classroom, a teacher might be a little bit more focused on ensuring that something happens and [on] drawing attention to those materials to make sure that what the teacher wants [to be] discussed actually is discussed.