Month: February 2018

The Five Common Stages of Play Development

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Kids Playing

Last week we discussed the five types of play necessary to support your children’s physical, intellectual, social and emotional growth and well-being. Here we explain the five common stages of play so that you can better understand your child’s play development and how best to support them through play.

The Five Common Stages of Play:

Watching – A child watches what others are doing but does not join in, they are purely an onlooker.

Solitary Play – They play on their own without regard, or need for others, and enjoy independent activities that do not require others to participate.

Parallel Play– This is when they play near others but do not interact with them, even if they are using the same play materials.

Associative Play – When children play in small groups with no defined rules or assigned roles.

Co-operative Play – Is when children work together in building projects, or pretend play, assigning roles for each member of the group.

Children are all so different and the length of time they spend at each stage varies greatly because of this; but they all find their way in time.

The physical strengths and skills developed through different play experiences build the key strengths, flexibility, co-ordination and dexterity skills that children need as they grow.  All these strengths are required to perform everyday activities such as eating, washing and getting dressed. As your child starts school these skill levels need to be supported and refined even further as they face new challenges such as learning to handwrite.

Through play children continue to develop key communication skills including turn taking. There are a whole new set of facial expressions, body language and spoken vocabulary to be learnt and understood as part of play and learning the social conventions of turn taking. For tips and ideas for developing Turn Taking skills follow this link and then click on the light bulb: bit.ly/1STTKY5

You are your child’s first, and most important, playmate. They just love it when you are silly and play games with them; become a pilot, rally car diver or fairy princess for 10 minutes. Can’t remember how? Then let your child show you!

To Play is to Learn

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There has been a lot in the press recently about the changes the Government are looking to make to the Early Years curriculum, such as a greater influence on teaching phonics, reading and maths skills (Ofsted’s Bold Beginnings Report). It feels as if they are pushing quite advanced skill sets down in to the Early Years. This seems to be going against the ethos of other countries that are often quoted to us as having exemplary Early Years curriculums. These are using and developing more play structured curriculum approaches; such as Finland (children start school at 7 years old).

We are always being shown how important play is in the development of young animals’ survival and hunting skills. How many times have you thought how cute or lovely when watching kittens, puppies or polar bears playing.

Humans are also animals which thrive and develop through play; in fact play is so important the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights state it as a right for every child (Ginsburg, 2013).

Here at Teach Children we see play as a vital part of a child’s physical, emotional, social and intellectual growth and well-being.

There has been considerable research over the years on play, which supports our point of view, with the consensus being that children need to experience five different types of play. These five types of play are roughly based on the developmental opportunities they provide, especially if it is child driven rather than adult lead:

Physical Play – active exercise (running, jumping, skipping etc..), rough & tumble and fine motor skills activities to develop whole body and hand and eye co-ordination strength and endurance. The outdoor element of such play develops independence, resourcefulness and self-regulation while the fine motor skills activities support the development of concentration and perseverance.

Play with Objects – starts as soon as a child can grasp and hold an object; mouthing, biting, turning, stroking, hitting and dropping. It’s how we all learn through the exploration of our senses (sensory-motor play). This type of play develops our abilities to; physically manipulate items, think, reason and problem solve, to set challenges and goals as well as to monitor our own progress.

Symbolic Play – refers to the development of spoken language, visual symbols such as letters and numbers, music, painting, drawing and other media used for communication of thought and ideas. This type of play allows children to develop the abilities to express and reflect on experience, ideas and emotions. Sound and language play develops phonological awareness required for literacy, while number play that relates to real life situations supports numeracy skills.

Pretence/socio-dramatic Play – Pretend play provides the opportunity to develop cognitive, social, self-regulatory and academic skills. This kind of play means children have to learn and pick up on unspoken rules of interaction, taking on the role of a character and playing within the expected confines of that role.

Games with Rules – physical games such as chase, hide & seek, sport, board and computer games. Develop social skills and the emotional skills of taking turns, winning and losing as well as other people’s perspectives.

(Dr.D Whitebread, 2012)

Here are some articles from home and around the world I thought you may find interesting that support and highlight the importance of play in learning:

Bibliography

Kenneth R. Ginsburg, MD, MSEd, 25/07/2013; ‘The Importance of Play in Promoting Healthy Child Development and Maintaining Strong Parent-Child Bonds’: THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF PEDIATRICS: http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/119/1/182.full

Dr.D. Whitebread, April 2012: ‘The Importance of Play’; Commissioned for the Toy Industries of Europe:  http://www.importanceofplay.eu/IMG/pdf/dr_david_whitebread_-_the_importance_of_play.pdf

 

Children need Joined Handwriting to Pass the Key Stage 2 Writing Assessments

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Cursive igh join tall

Primary schools preparing their children for this year’s Key Stage 2 writing assessments have to take into account new government changes made to the “Teacher assessment frameworks at the end of key stage 2 For use in the 2017 to 2018”.

Helen Ward’s TES article (05/02/18) “Sats: Most teachers say writing assessment will not produce accurate results” highlights some of the concerns and confusion teacher have following the changes.

For instance,

“The changes mean that some of the elements of writing that children had to show last year are no longer necessary to meet the expected standard.

But, while children could meet the expected standard without neat handwriting last year, now they must “maintain legibility in joined handwriting when writing at speed”.”  H. Ward (05/02/18)

Bibliography

Helen Ward: TES article (05/02/18) “Sats: Most teachers say writing assessment will not produce accurate results”: https://www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-news/sats-most-teachers-say-writing-assessment-will-not-produce-accurate

Standard & Testing Agency 2017 “Teacher assessment frameworks at the end of key stage 2 For use in the 2017 to 2018”: Electronic version product code: STA/17/7957/e ISBN: 978-1-78644-414-1: download at www.gov.uk/government/publications.

The Advantages of Handwritten Notes

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Making NotesBack in December 2014 we wrote about some research by the psychologists Pam A. Mueller and Daniel M. Oppenheimer that investigated the effect of using laptops for taking notes in classrooms.

The findings of the research are interesting, they found that students who handwrote their notes, rather than just typed them into a laptop, in the class learned and retained more information.

Their conclusion was that because handwriting notes was slower, this accelerated the learning process.

There are a number of reasons for this:

  • Because you cannot handwrite every word that is being said in a lesson, you have to decide what notes to take. So you highlight what is important, make links/connections and note anything not really understood (questions). To do this we use critical thinking, engaging the brain with the material. However, if you touch type everything that is being said you do not have to engage or think about what you are typing.
  • Handwriting notes take more effort, this effort is what helps you to commit the material to the memory.
  • These findings are in line with research by other psychologists that state that handwriting engages different parts of the brain which typing doesn’t.

Yesterday I can across this article (http://on.inc.com/2nsDkKu) by Marla Tabaka (Jan 29 2018) which further highlighted the importance of handwritten notes. She writes about Richard Branson’s habit of always using his notebook in meeting and carrying it around with him. This enables him to jot down all the ideas that materialize in a meeting or just random thoughts, whether they are big and complex or small and simple. How often have you forgot what at the time seemed a brilliant idea if you didn’t write it down? It is usually the small ideas that can have the biggest impact.

Bibliography

Marla Tabaka Jan 29th 2018: Richard Branson Says You’ll Be More Successful if You Develop This Daily Habit: https://www.inc.com/marla-tabaka/richard-branson-wont-leave-home-without-this-productivity-tool-and-he-says-you-shouldnt-either.html

Mueller P. A., Oppenheimer D. M.: First Published April 23, 2014: The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard Advantages of Longhand Over Laptop Note Taking: Phycological Science; http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797614524581