months later…
On the second to last week of school I noticed the children in house keeping sat down to plan their play together before they got into playing. Due to testing, IEPs, and other demands it had been MONTHS since I’d been able to sit down and play with them, or give them play-plans like I’d done in November. But there they were, with no adult around, debating who would play what, and using positive social-problem solving skills to work together. The use of the play-plans in the beginning of the year stuck with them! They also played together the entire play period, staying with their story and in their original characters, and showed minimal parallel play.
updates at the end of the year
The year got away from me with this project. For a long time I thought I’d let the project go, but then I realized it had changed course over the year without me even thinking about it, and had taken on a new look. My goal now is to somehow sift thought all of my observations, connect them with research, and link them together into the final outcome of this year’s research project.
Skills practiced during play today
- Counting by 10s with play money
-Exchanging 5 10s for 1 50 with play money
-Making eye contact
-Using please/thank you
-Saying someone’s name when you want their attention
-Listening to your friends’ ideas
-Talking directly to someone when you want to share an idea
-The word wall word ‘I’
-The word wall word ‘at’
-Developing and executing a plan
Beginning of transfering skills…
Normally I stop taking data when it’s time to clean up, however, today as I used my grouchy teacher voice to order the kids around in order to make sure they were cleaning up I noticed they were still using the language that we’ve been encouraging them to use during play.
They are beginning to transfer their skills to times outside of the play!
Grant it, it’s not long after the play, but still. While they were cleaning up they were looking at each other in the eyes, saying one another’s names when they wanted their attention, saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and were working together to fold up the blankets and table clothes they’d used during play.
Small, small successes. But sometimes you celebrate whatever you can.
Bodrova, E. and Leong, D. (2001). Tools of the mind: A case stuedy of implementing the Vygotskian approach in American early childhood and primary classrooms. Innodata Monographs-7. International Bureau of Education.
Bodrova and Leong discuss play planning as it is used in a Vygotskian approach in the classroom. When children are encouraged to record what they are planning to play on paper it is a part of the child’s self-regulation function. Revisiting the plan serves as a mediator for memory.
“In creating, discussing, and revising their plans, children leran to control their behaviours in play and beyond, thus acquiring self-regulatory skills”
Play plans are a way to increase the child’s cognitive and social self-regulation. Research shows that classrooms where play plans are used lead to children with fewer fights and arguements during play.
Children should be able to change their plans if they choose to do so since it is the action of mentally planning that benefits the child’s self-regulation.
Story telling
Today I introduced the stethoscopes to play just to see what the children would do with them. They immediately wanted to play dr and quickly assigned roles and filled out their play plans. Once they got started their play was a little off- they didn’t seem to know what to do first, or how to maintain play. I don’t know if it was the children who came to housekeeping, or if it was the introduction of a new topic. I made a new story about going to the vet to read before house keeping tomorrow so I can compare the difference between the use of the story and not using the story.
One girl decided she wanted to have a fire and went to write it on her play plan first before acting it out! This wasn’t something I had modeled or expected at all. The play plans definitely seem to be supporting the play. I think tomorrow’s story will give them the vocabulary and structure they need to make the play even more meaningful.
play plan
Last week I took an idea I heard about from Tools of the Mind schools. When students chose to come to the dramatic play center I had them fill out “play plans”. The plans said “Today ____ will play _____”. The students had to write the word I (we just added I to the word wall) and then try their best to write what they were going to play during house keeping. Were they the sister? The cook? The mother?
I was amazed by the results- the students kept their play characters throughout the entire play period- when before they were switching characters or just forgetting who they were. The amount of parallel play, ordering one another around, ignoring each other, and incidents of physical contact were signifigantly reduced compared to earlier play sessions where we did not fill out play plans. We have only tried this 3 times, so we will see if the data continues in this trend.
Question
What happens when we take current academic research on play and apply it to a diverse, inclusive, kindergarten classroom?
Different academic research on play will be considered including ways to use play to increase vocabulary, social skills, attention span, working memory, and cognitive function.
Current, available research makes great claims about the importance of play, and ways play can be used as a teaching tool. How do we, as a Title One school, with kindergarteners who begin the year academically behind their peers in other schools, realistically use play
