The question was asked how do you develop children’s scientific ideas through play. Richard Needham (@viciascience) recommended that educators check out the new EYFS framework. The discussion opened with what we mean by play. Cardiffscience said to them ‘play’ means exploration and investigation, preliminary to deciding what to explore in more depth. Cleverfiend referred to a session at the NSLC (National Science Learning Centre) in which teachers were given a selection of toys to play with (investigate) and generate questions about how they worked. Cardiffscience went on to suggest that play tasks be open ended and not simply guessing what the teacher is thinking.
Ideas for play included acids and alkalis with indicators, use of indicators from plants/food, parachutes, electrical circuits and playing with cornflour and water. Apps on a tablet or phone were suggested as good play activities including physics based games like Angry Birds.
When asked “does science play have to be structured to be useful or is promoting interest and asking questions enough?” the group decided that all three are useful for types of activity. Lethandrel made an excellent point “I say “Don’t play”, I say “Explore” which implies there might be a purpose to the activity.
@TESscience mentioned role play as a possible activity and cleverfiend pointed out that his students love role play activities like hot seating. The discussion went on to talk about different apps/software that could be ‘played with’ including Beebot (See links). Paramount to the idea of play based learning is teacher confidence, and the idea of modelling play based activities in our teaching.
A wide variety of points and comments were made and I’d recommend that you read the full transcript of the chat if you are interested in taking play based learning forward in your own classroom.
Top Tweets
@cardiffscience ‘play’ means exploration and investigation, preliminary to deciding what to explore in more depth #asechat
@Mr_D_Cheng #ASEchat here’s some acids, some alkalis som ui. In ten minutes I want to know what you found out!
@agittner Does play sometimes promote trial and error rather than a systematic approach to problem solving (not necessarily a bad thing) #asechat
@cleverfiend Does science play have to be structured to be useful or is promoting interest and asking questions enough? #asechat
@Lethandrel I say “Don’t play”, I say “Explore” #asechat
@NeedhamL56 Is play best used as part of a project, ie not over in 50 mins. Certainly good for group work communication, and reflection #asechat
@agittner I think play can be powerful at second when you start to get the stdts to talk about the play strategies they used (metacognition) #asechat
@anhalf @iSciTeacher definitely..use ofblooms and question dice to genrate qns..#asechat see that som qns cannot be answrd
@RevErasmus hot and cold water and watching the hot water swirl, and chromatography. I let them play in golden time too. they love it.
Top Links
@cardiffscience Great blog post btw ks2 enquiry, literacy and science
@mrNeilButler http://fantasticcontraption.com/
@TESscience http://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/Atomic-Bomber-app-games-to-learn-about-vectors-6212877/
@iSciTeacher http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/whoami/thingdom.aspx
@TESscience http://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/Element-Book-6050645/
Summary available from ASE website or from here
Fiendishlyclever 