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In the first of this series of 3 blogs I identified 3 things that play can do to help bring university students to a place where they are ready to learn:
- Play can help people bond with each other; to relax in each other’s company
- Play can energise and awaken people
- Play can focus people
In the last blog I focused on play to energise and on strategies to cope with when my students are either not yet awake (my 9am Monday lectures) or are flagging part way through the class/Semester. Sometimes though I face the reverse problem: there is a lot of energy in the room but it is dispersed and scattered; it dissolves into giggling or discussion that distracts from the task in hand. At these moments certain types of play can be used to get the group into a focused state of mind.
Play to Focus
The Counting Game
This can be played standing in a circle or seated around a seminar table. The aim of the game is to count aloud to 20 (or another number that you chose). Each person must speak at least once. If two people speak at the same time then you go back to 1. It is very simple but can produce an extraordinary sense of focus.
Story Games
These can be played going around a circle but it can be more fun (and keep people more on their toes) to throw a soft ball from player to player to indicate who should speak next. You can play The One Word at a Time Game where the group tells a story one word at a time. Or you can play Fortunately/Unfortunately where each player says one sentence of the story, alternating between sentences that start “Fortunately….” and sentences that start “Unfortunately….”
The Chair Game
This game sits part way between Focusing and Energising and is one of my favourite games. You need a clear space and as many chairs as players. Each player takes a chair and sits somewhere in the room with all the chairs facing in different directions. A player is selected and leaves their chair, going to the other end of the room. They then have to walk (sometimes with knees together to slow them down) and sit in an empty chair. The aim of the rest of the players is to stop the walker sitting down. They do this by getting up and moving chairs. The rule is that once your bum has left the seat you have to go and you cannot return to your own seat once you have left it. If the walker manages to sit down then the last player left standing becomes the new walker. The game is very simple but the strategies and teamwork that develop are very interesting – and the group learns that the more calmly they play, the more likely they are to win. I sometimes part way through the game introduce a rule that it has to be played in silence.
A Post Script: Learning Structured Through Play
What I haven’t really touched on in this blog series is how curriculum learning itself can happen through play. I learned so much about this and the different technologies that can support it at the recent Playful Learning conference at Manchester Metropolitan University. It’s a really rich area and something I want to explore further this coming semester.
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When my students arrive in the first semester of their first year, they are terrified. Terrified because they are away from home, terrified of university, terrified of us the teachers and most of all terrified of how they will be judged by their fellow students, the impression that they will make on each other, whether anyone will want to be their friend, whether anyone will fancy them. In this state of fear it is difficult for them to learn anything. Play can go a long way towards banishing this fear by breaking down barriers, helping people laugh together, learn about each other, complete a shared goal together or just be silly and overcome social awkwardness. Its not only at the start of the first year that students need to bond. At the start of every new semester they are in new groups, sometimes with people they’ve never worked with. And sometimes during a semester itself the pressures of group work can start to rupture a group. Although the causes of these ruptures need to be addressed in themselves, play can help complete this healing process.
One of my favorite activities in life is to dance, and therefore I was very excited about the dancing workshop at CounterPlay. And it was just like coming home! After a friendly introduction by the facilitator, we did not speak much during the session, but still we communicated through our body movements. It reminded me; It is so fun – and very important – when someone makes space for experiences that does not focus primarily on the spoken and written words nor rational thinking. There is nothing wrong with words, but sometimes I think our excessive use of them, is drowning other diverse opportunities to express ourselves and connect with people around us.