Teach-Primary-Issue-19.7

teachwire.net/primary 35 A s teachers, we often spend years chasing pupil engagement. But what if we could utilise the very thing we try to stop them doing? Play intrinsically motivates children to challenge themselves, solve problems, and build skills. But somewhere along the line, we decided that learning had to be serious to be valuable. Play became for playtimes only. The result? Generations of disengaged children. From building blocks and dolls, to puzzles and video games, play is how children explore, destress, and engage. It's not a waste of time; it’s the foundation of deep cognitive development. And not just for the EYFS; as we develop, we don’t stop learning through play – schools just stop teaching that way. So… what exactly is play ? “To play is to engage,” writes Ackerman et al. (2010). It’s not necessarily about outcomes; it’s about exploration, experimentation, curiosity for its own sake. And that’s good for everyone, not just children. The games industry excels at onboarding players into new systems without losing their interest. Imagine if education were designed like that – intriguing, exploratory, and rewarding. You’ve likely all heard the terms play-based learning, game-based learning, and gamification, but what do they really mean, and how can we use them to interest our pupils? Here are some activities I use to bring each approach into my everyday lessons: • Play-based learning involves exploring and solving problems in playful ways. Try this: pick a playground game or a board game, such as hide and seek, tag, hopscotch, or snap. Childhood games can teach computing, programming, creativity, systems design and more. Play a single round of the game with your children. Then discuss what specific rules and instructions were followed. It is helpful to write these down. Your instructions are the equivalent of a computer algorithm, which, programmed into a computer, would create a digital version of the game. Next, change three things about the game, modify your written set of rules and instructions and test them. Replay the game following the modified set of instructions. Did it work, or do the instructions need to be corrected? This is called testing ; something all programmers do. We test our algorithm to see if it produces the correct outcomes. When all tweaks have been made and the game works, you’ll end up with a new game and your children will have learnt the basics of games design, programming, and computational thinking, alongside developing their creative problem-solving skills, and encouraging teamwork, communication and strategic thinking. • Game-based learning uses actual games to teach. Think Monopoly for budgeting, Minecraft for creativity and collaboration, or Assassins Creed Discovery Tour for teaching ancient history in UKS2. Games naturally build skills such as logic, risk-taking, resource management, communication, and computational thinking. Try this: the game Just Dance is widely available across multiple platforms. It’s a great game to use to encourage physical fitness amongst children, and to teach them about graphical algorithms. Challenge pupils to follow along with the dance, while paying attention not just to the characters on screen but the pictograms. Using your own version of pictograms, choreograph the next segment of the dance sequence to make an ‘algorithm’. Good practice would be to test your algorithm, by dancing the steps, and checking how it looks and feels. If you don’t like it, change your algorithm! This teaches algorithmic thinking – and the use of graphics bypasses any literacy challenges that some children may face. They will be able to grasp the concepts of design, programming and testing, all through dancing to a video game. Watch a walkthrough of this activity at tinyurl.com/ tp-JustDance • Gamification borrows elements of game design – points, badges, leaderboards, etc – and applies them to non-game contexts. Apps like Class Dojo use this to manage behaviour and motivation. Each of these approaches has value, driving learning in different ways. TP A not-so-trivial PURSUIT www.teachwire.net | 35 Shehneila Saeed is the programme director of Digital Schoolhouse and head of education at Ukie. tinyurl.com/tp- DigitalSchoolhouse What could we possibly learn about effective teaching fromgame design? As it turns out, quite a lot, says Shehneila Saeed F EATURE S P EDAGOGY