Learning While Playing

I’ve written about Caroline Pratt before. Pratt was the principal of City and Country School, a play-based campus located in New York City. She also wrote a seminal book titled “I Learn From Children.” Look it up and read it this summer.

When we launched our personalized learning lab school in the Houston Museum District some years ago, we promised our young learners and their families that they would have an opportunity to partake in “mobile” learning every day. That is, the kids wouldn’t learn just in a classroom, but they would experience learning everywhere and anywhere. We found it was the mobility associated with those young people’s learning that made a big difference when it came to building strong reading, writing, problem-solving, and character development skills. Pratt’s work at the City and Country School was influential to our work in Houston’s museum district.

Recently, it seems like play-based education has become more popular. The 74 online ran an article earlier this month titled “From Bus Stops to Laundromats, Cities Embrace Play to Help Kids Learn.”

Here are excerpts from that article:

“On a tiny triangular lot in Philadelphia’s Belmont neighborhood, kids waiting with their parents for the No. 40 bus can also work on their executive functioning skills, playing a hopscotch variation designed to train their brains.”

“In Chicago, a wooden game mounted on the wall of a laundromat teaches children, in two languages, how to find color patterns in a lineup of detergent bottle tops.”

“And in Santa Ana, California, a basketball court doubles as a giant, real-time fractions lesson.”

“These are three examples of an unusual model of on-the-fly learning mixed with urban design, one that has emerged from decades of research on the role of play in kids’ lives.”

“The installations, overseen by the Philadelphia-based Playful Learning Landscapes Action Network, come compliments of a unique team of researchers, educators and urban planners who are exploring how cities can support the learning kids do in school. In the process, they’re experimenting with how to turn ordinary adult-child interactions into opportunities to lift even the neediest kids – especially those whose parents can’t afford expensive afterschool and weekend activities.”

“Preliminary research on the effort is promising, with nearly 20 studies pointing to the efficacy of the approach. A supermarket project, for instance, addresses a problem that besets low-income families: Research shows these parents talk informally with their children less often than middle-class parents do. And even when they do, the conversations tend to be shorter. The supermarket project significantly increased both the frequency and length of those conversations, especially among low-income families, one study showed. Adults were nearly four times as likely to chat with their kids if a store had the signage, bringing their level of conversation up to that of middle-class parents.”

“Playful learning advocates are quick to emphasize that these interventions are limited, not meant to replace school but support it.”

“’The reality is that kids, particularly in their earliest years, only spend about 20% of their waking hours in those formal learning environments,’ said Sarah Lytle, a developmental psychologist and Playful Learning’s executive director. ‘And so the idea is: How can we capitalize on that other 80%?’”

“That key question long puzzled a pair of researchers in the Philadelphia area: Temple University’s Kathy Hirsh-Pasek and the University of Delaware’s Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, who have spent nearly 15 years studying the centrality of play and non-school factors in children’s learning. Much of the bedrock theory for this effort comes from their research.”

“’We are increasingly learning that education is a ‘surround-sound’ issue,’ Hirsh-Pasek said. ‘It’s not an issue that stays behind brick walls, but it seeps out into the community.’”

“Humans learn best, Hirsh-Pasek noted, when we’re active and engaged, usually with other people. School lessons are typically passive, she said, and not really built around meaningful questions. ‘I mean, frankly, I don’t care if the train is traveling 30 miles an hour and the ball drops off the train. Learning abstract content is important, but we learn more deeply and in ways that ‘stick’ when examples are meaningful. We can do better.’”

“When it comes to measurement, Hirsh-Pasek said schools typically don’t focus enough on what families want most: Good communication skills, creativity, critical thinking and knowing the basics. They want their kids to be able to learn from failure and cultivate what’s become known as a ‘growth mindset,’ persevering in the face of hardship.”

When we launched our mobile school, our motto was: The City is Our Classroom.

Imagine if businesses, community-based organizations, non-profits, parent groups, and others could come together to build a learning plan for our youth, one that would incorporate reading, writing, problem-solving, and character development skills.

Most probably think “learning through play” is a nice to do, but I’m not so sure. It seems like young learners, no matter what their age, learn best when that learning is personalized and meaningful.

Til tomorrow. SVB