​Ever since the last episode, I have struggled with a gnawing feeling that I was not quite right in my ideas.  As I have unraveled the concept of play, I must admit that my friend Mondrea Mitchell was correct.  What I consider play to be in the older years, is actually a form of playfulness.  What is the difference?  Play is truly an open-ended construction of meaning and making sense of the world.  While Playfulness is using the concept of play to bring about more opportunities for learners to explore concepts deeper.  There is a foundational difference. 

​In her book, Mind in the Making: The Seven Essential Life Skills Every Child Needs, Ellen Galinsky explores how making connections requires learners to think differently. I think these connections can be used to describe the purpose of play for early learners.  

​We learn how things are similar to each other by sorting and classifying objects by size, shape, color, texture, and function.

​In order to understand how things are different, we must classify objects to determine their similarities. For example, emus and penguins are both birds, but they do not fly.

​Learners build connections by understanding how things are related. For example, a ball, bat, and a mit are different objects, but they are used together to play a game.

We are learning to build relationships with other people outside of our family and learn how to function in different social circumstances.  This allows us to create generalizations of how one operates in a community. 

​Learners are able to combine relationships, similarities, and differences to make unusual connections. For example, singing in a rock band and dancing in a ballet are both performances. They may have performed to a different type of audience, but both are designed to entertain.

​As learners interact with each other, materials, and situations, they begin to make generalizations about the world.  This process naturally comes alive through purposeful play.  

As we age, we have a consciousness of how basic things work in the world and our role in making it happen.  It is through playfulness that we continue our journey towards self-discovery and inquiry learning. 

In looking at the idea of playfulness, I found a thought provoking article titled Defining Playfulness from Psychology Today.  The link can be found here.

Playfulness is, in part, an openness to being a fool, which is a combination of not worrying about competence, not being self-important, not taking norms as sacred and finding ambiguity and double edges a source of wisdom and delight.

When I used to imagine play in the upper grades, this is what it looked like in my mind.  We are acting like fools to play and create without restrictions.   This playfulness allows for learners to take risks, solve problems with alternative solutions, and create something new. 

Regardless if you call it PLAY or PLAYFULNESS, the underlying concept is the same.  Learners are exploring loose parts to spark inquiries in different directions. 

I hope you’ve enjoyed this series as much as I have.  It’s taught me a lot about myself as an educator and how to be more playful.  I do suggest using the conceptual lesson cycle into your practice to invite more playfulness into your practice.

​​This past week, I had the most lively debate with my friend Mondrea Mitchell over play and it only being in the early years.  Don’t you love it when you can respectfully share your ideas with a friend and they push back with ideas you hadn’t considered before?  I love this!  I don’t want to be coddled, especially since I’m full of a lot of opinions, as you can tell if you have been listening long. 

The topic we were discussing is play in the early years.  She purported that true play is unbridled and truly engineered by the learner.  For this to happen authentically, there should be minimal guidance from the teacher.  I completely agree with this, but I think play can also happen for older learners.  We just need to get out of their way. 

Two weeks ago, I moderated a professional interest group about Play-Based Learning for the Toddle Inquiry Education Summit.  Based on a poll, most of the educators attending the session were early years teachers. What does that say about play in the upper years? 

As a hard headed person, I am going to still claim that play can happen for the upper elementary/primary learners and here’s how we can make it happen. ​

​One possibility of incorporating more play into your practice as an upper elementary teacher is a conceptual lesson cycle.  What the heck is that?  It’s something I made up while engaging with a variety of approaches to deliver content to our learners.  There are five main parts that allow learners to take more ownership of the process by playing with the ideas and we get to observe their thinking process. 

​This sounds very intuitive, but you would be surprised how many teachers begin a lesson with a statement or objective.  Even within international schools, I saw this happening at the beginning of a lesson cycle. 

More importantly, the question we ask is not just an ordinary question.  Huh?  What I mean by that is the question is crafted with the content in mind, but is open-ended for learner exploration.  At this point, there are NO teacher directions.  You are sitting back observing, asking questions, and getting learners to monitor and document their own progress. 

Unlike most questions I pose, I will not give my answer.  I ask the learners to reveal what their answers are to the provocation and leave it at that.  This leaves an air of mystery and allows learners to ask more questions without feeling like that portion is finished.  Pure magic.

​After posing a question, I will present an open-ended task with no directions.  I usually show an image, diagram, empty organizer, or provide manipulatives.  I ask the learners, “What can you do with these materials?  How are they connected to the question we just explored?”  Once again, the task is quite open-ended and I allow the learners to come up with their own wonderings and possible solutions. 

We will often share through gallery walks where groups compare and contrast how materials were used differently and reflect using visible thinking routines. 

Notice, I have not presented any new content until this point.  Learners are simply playing with ideas and creating their own inquiries, their own conclusions based on the information they have up until that moment.

​At this stage, I present the new content in a short mini-lesson of 20 minutes or less.  I want the learners to understand the importance of the concept and be able to synthesize it on their own.  

At the end of the mini-lesson, I ask them to tell me how the open-ended question and warm-up activity connect to the new content.  I want the learners to make the connections; my role is to simply deepen their ideas through questioning and to clear up misconceptions. 

​With new information in their hands, learners are hungry to test it out.  I provide a more complex open-ended task for them to solve.  They work collaboratively to solve the problem and I provide various prompts (concrete to abstract), so they can apply their thinking in a variety of ways.  Being in the United States, I also have a responsibility to prepare them for the end of year assessment, so I include prompts to test their ability to transfer the learning to a new format. 

The key here is TIME.  I know we all complain about not having time.  To be honest, it’s because we are filling the time with a lot of separate activities instead of focusing on the big conceptual ideas.  Thinking from a transdisciplinary lens, all of the open-ended tasks can involve more than one subject to make it more connected to real-life.  Nothing is stopping us besides our imaginations.

Speaking of time, don’t forget to do this last part.  I think it’s one of the most important steps in the process, but it’s often removed due to running out of time.  

Reflection is where the magic of metacognition, making relationships happen, having aha moments, recognizing misconceptions, and drawing new conclusions.  I think of reflection like a phone call.  We are having a nice chat with a friend and all of a sudden the line goes dead and they don’t call back.  Inside, you are wondering, “Are we done?”  This is the same feeling at the end of a lesson cycle.  Learners want to know, “Are we done?”  Reflection naturally wraps up ideas and helps the learners to synthesize the big ideas.  Don’t let another lesson cycle end without reflection. 

Well, I don’t know about you, but I saw a lot of play happening in that lesson cycle.  Remember, play and inquiry are very interconnected.  Play is allowing learners to play with materials and ideas to find their use in various contexts.  Inquiry is taking these materials and using them in unique ways driven by learner wonderings.  If we want meaningful inquiry to happen, we need to incorporate as much play as possible.  

This concludes our series on learning space design and play.  I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this process even amidst all of the craziness of my work life.  Stay tuned for a new series…I’m still sorting out what I’m going to tackle next.  Something tells me it may be concepts or design thinking.  I keep going back and forth.  

Let me know what you’d like to explore next @thinkcha2020 on Twitter and @Lu Gerlach on LinkedIn. 

We are ready to pop it up with Pop-Up Studio by Misty Paterson.  Join the CITL book club as we unpack this beautiful book about the relationship between agency, inquiry, and conceptual understanding. 

You will need a copy of Misty's book to uncover the deep concepts.  You can purchase your copy here. 

This will be a completely virtual event: Zoom.us/my/liggettcitl

See you at the book club!  

A big part of my Toddle TIES 2022 journey was sharing with other educators about how to create a transdisciplinary library.  We met in small meeting rooms to share ideas and connect with educators from around the world.  

Here we are exploring in-depth how a transdisciplinary library looks and feels and how to replicate it in our own context. 
​

This morning, I was fortunate to moderate a session for Jessica Vance.  She is an educational leader in Austin, Texas that just wrote a book on inquiry driven leadership. 

I really engaged with this session, because Jessica allowed her participants to choose the topics to be explored through various online tools.  This set the stage for learning more about inquiry-driven leadership and our reflective practice.  This is definitely a game-changer for PYP schools.  

​I can't wait to get a copy of her book in May!

The legendary Ron Ritchhart led a master class for Toddle TIES 2022.  Over the past year, I've taken several courses from him, including a multi-week training with Chapters International.  This session did not disappoint. 

One of the highlights for me was using the understanding map and thinking moves.  This map has changed my planning process and allows learners a success criteria to govern their own thinking.  It's genius!  

If you haven't used the understanding map, get your copy here. 

Due to Toddle TIES, I had to create a general services guide and one for library design.  This process really helped me to think about what services do I offer and how I can help fellow educators.  What an amazing experience!  I wouldn't have been able to do it quickly without the help of Misty Paterson, the author of Pop-Up Studio. 

​Check them out!

I had so much fun leading this professional interest group for Toddle TIES 2022.  I met educators from around the world discussing the importance of play in our practice.  We even had participants from upper grades that want to incorporate more play into their practice.  This warmed my heart. 

Unfortunately, these sessions were not recorded, so the experience stays in my mind and heart. 

For the past few months, I worked with CB Jennings Elementary School in New London, CT to redesign their library.  We had the idea in mind of sorting the collection by the PYP transdisciplinary themes, using learner input with design of the space and artwork, and teacher contribution to the space.  The space truly transformed over time and we have been able to participate in the Toddle TIES Showcase to share our journey.  

March 6:      6:30 PM GMT/ 10:30 AM PT/ 1:30 ET
March 11:    7:00 PM GMT/ 11:00 AM PT/ 2:00 ET

I had the pleasure of hosting a job alike session for the Toddle TIES pre-conference.  It was a small group, but we explored teaching and how it has been affected positively by the pandemic and ways it has helped us to grow.  I loved engaging from the lens of the PYP and MYP.  

I had the pleasure of redesigning the library space for CB Jennings International Elementary Magnet School in New London, CT according to the transdisciplinary themes.  Take a peek at my process in transforming this space into a dynamic learning center as part of Toddle TIES School Showcase. 

By the way, it was so much fun!