Play-Based Learning and Self Control

This week’s article summary is Helping Children Succeed--Without the Stress.

The article is both logical and counterintuitive.

Parents, in wanting the best for their children, often schedule their kids in many after-school activities from sports to music lessons to enrichment tutoring. 

By giving children these opportunities, parents hope to ‘prime the pump' for future success. Seems logical, right?

Yet, as research shows (in particular Daniel Goleman’s work and recent book Focus), the development and demonstration of ‘self-control’ is one of the best predictors of future academic success and personal happiness.

An effective way to encourage the development of self-control is to give kids, especially those in elementary school, ample time for free, imaginative play. Counterintuitive to many parents.

As an advocate of play-based learning, I’ve always recognized how it fosters the development of imagination and creativity in kids. 

But this article illustrates an additional benefit of free play: supporting the development of self control in kids.

As the article concludes, this is not the easiest sell to parents today when most other children are over-scheduled after school and on weekends.

Yet..we teachers can help parents understand the need for free-play both in and after school—not just so kids get ample time to be kids but also in that it helps them develop important skills and habits that support future learning.

Or as we talked about in preplanning: Enjoying the moment while preparing for the future.

Joe

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In the now-famous “marshmallow” experiments, researchers at Stanford tested preschoolers’ self-control and ability to delay gratification by sitting them in a room alone with a tempting treat and measuring how long they were able to wait. Years later, those kids who resisted temptation the longest also tended to have the highest academic achievement. In fact, self-control was better predictor of their future academic success than their IQ scores.

Further research has shown that self-control also correlates highly with greater stress tolerance and concentration abilities, as well as increased empathy, better emotion regulation, and social competence. This is true across the age spectrum: From preschoolers to teenagers, kids who can regulate their own feelings and behavior are better able to stay focused on their goals and maintain positive connections with others.

Essentially, self-control underlies both academic achievement and interpersonal finesse, both of which contribute to success in life.

While parents who hope that their children will be high-achievers often focus on tutoring, advanced classes, and more study time, the research on self-control suggests that a “backdoor” approach may be more likely to succeed and that it’s also better for kids than the high-pressure path many kids feel compelled to take by well-meaning parents and educators.

Instead of focusing directly on achievement per se, parents and educators can help children be successful by helping them practice and develop skills related to self-control.

For young kids in particular, imaginative play is an especially critical part of practicing self-control, since during play, kids set their own rules and are motivated to respect those rules when the game is fun. The enjoyment of the game provides the motivation to try.

As neuroscientists Sandra Aamodt and Sam Wang note, “To play school, you have to act like a teacher or a student and inhibit your impulses to act like a fighter pilot or a baby. Following these rules provides children with some of their earliest experiences with controlling their behavior to achieve a desired goal.”

Playing is not the opposite of learning: playing is learning.

For older kids, pursuing activities and academic subjects that reflect their own budding interests—rather than someone else’s ideas about what will best position them for a competitive college or career—is critical to developing self-control because the motivation to keep at it comes from a personal goal rather than the desire to please or impress.

Self-control is a skill that can be improved through practice, so kids given more opportunities will have an advantage. Kids vary in their initial ability to demonstrate self-control, but successfully practicing self-control begets greater self-control: The more we do it, the better we get.

That said, being compared to others who are doing better, or repeated failures because a task is too challenging, may leave kids feeling inferior or resistant to trying anymore.

Crucially, this sort of practice is not about following rules in order to please others or avoid punishment.

Self-control is ultimately about learning to control one’s impulses in order to achieve personal goals.

Some parents may see this backdoor approach, with less striving and more engagement, as desirable but naive: If they stand down from the achievement arms race while their neighbors continue shuttling their own kids to coding seminars, specialized tutors, and AP classes, won’t their kids lose out in this ever-more competitive environment?

Parents may have a hard time seeing the value in, say, letting their teen who loves clothes take a sewing class instead of chemistry tutoring (“How will sewing help them get into college?”). But for this child, the sewing class offers much more than it seems on the surface: sewing skills, yes, but also the chance to be creative, self-directed, and focused on a goal of their own choosing.

My Day Was Great!

This week’s article summary is What Do I Expect from My Children's Elementary School. 

Although I first read this article last January, it is appropriate for the first days of a new school year because it reminds us of the importance of making the elementary school years engaging, interesting, and memorable for our students.

While the article’s author, a parent of an elementary student, does not speak for all parents, this article reminded me of a very important benefit of an elementary-only experience:  unlike Pre-8th or K-12 schools, we don’t get 'too much' pressure from middle and upper school teachers to increase the  content load at younger and younger ages.

Of course one of our goals is to prepare our students for the future—to develop their ‘academic and ‘character’ foundations, which will support their subsequent learning in middle and upper school and beyond.

Yet an equally important student outcome is continued 'engagement, interest, and excitement’ toward learning—which rarely results from more work sheets. (Check out the humorous article in the online satirical The Onion about elementary students taking a ‘gap year’ before middle school.)

While we prepare for the future, a gigantic advantage of being elementary-only is we simultaneously savor the special moment of childhood—like PreK students hunting throughout the school for the elusive Gingerbread Man!

The article below a great reminder of the qualities of a exceptional elementary school!

Thanks for a wonderful start to the school year and enjoy the weekend!

Joe

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When I put my children on the bus in the morning, the wish I call out to them after kissing their heads is, “Have a good day!” Pure and simple.

Now, I know that not every day can be a birthday party, and not all things in life should be made into a fun activity. My wish is simply that they enjoy their day at school.  It is my hope that even if there are moments of the day when things don’t go well, or times when they are frustrated, or they find something to be particularly challenging, the overall feeling when they return home is not negative.

I want them to have had enough positive experiences, enough moments of engagement, enough creativity and fun built into their day that “good” is the predominant mood descriptor.

That is not currently the case.

The children that I get off of the bus are exhausted. They are frustrated. They are overworked.

They are burned out. Their teachers are trying to inject as much fun into the day as possible, but are obligated to keep up with deadlines, adhere to the curriculum and meet the standards.

For my elementary-school-age children, I care more about whether or not they love going to school than I do about their academic progress. I am clever enough to know that if they are enjoying themselves at school, they will learn. Academics follow naturally if the proper environment for learning is there.

A good learning environment is one with positive energy. The teachers want to be there, and the children want to be there.

From an educator’s perspective, an environment that is engaging, hands-on, with opportunities for meaningful learning, practice, discussions and creativity, makes kids happy. When kids are happy, they learn more.

We can’t expect them to do work in the same way that an adult does work. We are not the same. They don’t have to pay a mortgage, and I get to stay up as late as I want to. One is not better or worse than the other; they are different.

Just because students may have to sit in an office for eight hours a day when they are adults, doesn’t mean that they should have to start practicing it now as children.

Why has elementary school become the time for instructional and assessment methods that are more appropriate for high school and college students? Why are we expecting them to be able to concentrate for hours at a time to take multiple-choice tests?  They aren’t ready, and they shouldn’t have to be ready.

There are gigantic gaps in elementary education when the emphasis on academics is pushed down to the lower grades. Young children need time to develop skills that are a crucial part of the foundation of a solid education, and that time has been taken away. Maybe the focus should be on teaching them how to learn instead of on what to learn.

It’s backwards logic that is being hailed as the solution to low test scores. Forcing more and more curricula on students at a younger age and a faster pace doesn’t make them better students. It doesn’t teach them skills. It gives them a shallow pool of non-relevant information that they may not remember past the test and don’t know how to apply in real life.

Elementary school should be about exploration and exposure to vast amounts of very well-written books. Writing should be an opportunity to capture observations and imagination in a tangible form. Elementary education should include learning about history through storytelling, art and music. It should be about dancing and singing and playing while developing social skills, communication skills and interpersonal awareness.

Elementary school science should be about questions and wonders, experiments and all things messy. Math should be taught as part of nature and daily life, and if it were introduced that way, children would not be afraid of it when the numbers show up. There should be no limit to the topics that can be explored in elementary school. It should be about how to become a learner … not about curriculum, and definitely not about testing.

I want a school where both of my children, two vastly different learners with different strengths, want to go to learn. I want a school where creativity is cherished, and there is ample time for thinking, connecting, discussing and enjoying what they’ve learned. I want a school where the question isn’t “What did you get on the test?” but “What did you do with what you learned?”

Above all, when I see their sweet little faces get off of the bus, and I ask them how their day was, I want to hear, “My day was great!”

Start of School!

For those new faculty and staff, I typically email every Friday a summary of an article that is particularly appropriate for the moment  (It’s a summary in that I remove the extraneous parts of the article so it can be read quickly.)

For this week the ‘moment’ is the start of the school year.

The article below--5 Lessons Effective Teachers Teach--Without Explicit Instruction--is about the first days of school and the responsibility we as teachers have in creating a safe, warm, and inclusive classroom and school. 

The article begins with Haim Ginott’s iconic quote—that is both inspiring and frightening.

In my first year of teaching, I taught middle school English/Language Arts: 3 sections of 6th and 2 sections of 7th.

I still remember my first few days as a teacher, trying to find the balance between classroom drill-sergeant and push-over (the humiliate or heal of Ginott’s quote or the firm and kind of Positive Discipline).

My first year was tough from a classroom management standpoint—I vacillated between the extremes and stumbled and bumbled with how to control a classroom.

Back then (1980), grade-level teams (let alone team teaching) didn’t exist, morning meeting was nothing more than basic attendance taking (a la Ferris Bueller’s Day Off), and there was little discussion in faculty meetings of “getting to know the kids as individuals” and attending to their social-emotional needs. Advice from veteran teachers was in the vein of “Don’t smile until Christmas."

Fortunately, education, schools, and classrooms have come a long way since then—with the first days of school devoted to creating a positive, safe, cooperative, honest but respectful classroom culture. (Studies show that devoting time at the beginning of the year to develop communal rules, norms, and procedures with student input leads to greater academic focus during the remainder of the year--although post winter vacation reminder is needed.)

The article below is a reminder of some vital qualities we all need to model and demonstrate to our students every day, so we can can ensure, a la Ginott, that “in all situations a child is always humanized."

Thanks to all for a great first week of pre-planning—inspiring presentations, provocative discussions, and focused attention!

Joe

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Here are five classroom practices that make the biggest difference to student learning:

Clarity of purpose: At the beginning of a curriculum unit or project, students need to see why they’re doing it, the learning goals, the criteria for success, and models of high-quality end products.

Classroom discussion: Teachers need to frequently step offstage and facilitate entire-class discussion. This allows students to learn from each other. It’s also a great opportunity for teachers to formatively assess (through observation) how well students are grasping new content and concepts.

Feedback: Students need to know how they’re doing as individuals and as a class. They also need opportunities to give their teachers feedback to allow for adjustments in pedagogy and materials.

Formative assessments: Minute-by-minute, day-by-day, and week-by-week checks for understanding are essential to students knowing how they are doing with respect to the ultimate learning goals.

Metacognitive strategies: Students need opportunities to plan, organize, direct, and monitor their own work – and to reflect as they proceed. When we provide students with time and space to be aware of their own knowledge and their own thinking, student ownership increases. Research shows that metacognition can be taught. 

Start of School!

For those new faculty and staff, I typically email every Friday a summary of an article that is particularly appropriate for the moment  (It’s a summary in that I remove the extraneous parts of the article so it can be read quickly.)

For this week the ‘moment’ is the start of the school year.

The article below--5 Lessons Effective Teachers Teach--Without Explicit Instruction--is about the first days of school and the responsibility we as teachers have in creating a safe, warm, and inclusive classroom and school. 

The article begins with Haim Ginott’s iconic quote—that is both inspiring and frightening.

In my first year of teaching, I taught middle school English/Language Arts: 3 sections of 6th and 2 sections of 7th.

I still remember my first few days as a teacher, trying out different classroom management systems somewhere between drill-sergeant and push-over (the humiliate or heal of Ginott’s quote or the firm and kind of Positive Discipline).

My first year was tough from a classroom management standpoint—I vacillated between the extremes and stumbled and bumbled with how to control a classroom. We talked a lot this week about student learning and I must admit that I learned more than students in my first year of teaching.

Back then (1980), grade-level teams (let alone team teaching) didn’t exist, morning meeting was nothing more than basic attendance taking (think Ferris Bueller’s Day Off), and there was little discussion in faculty meetings of “getting to know the kids as individuals” and attending to their social-emotional needs. Advice from veteran teachers was in the vein of “Don’t smile until Christmas."

Fortunately, education, schools, and classrooms have come a long way since then—with the first days of school devoted to creating a positive, safe, cooperative, honest but respectful classroom culture. (Studies show that devoting time at the beginning of the year to develop communal rules, norms, and procedures with student input leads to greater academic focus during the remainder of the year--although post winter vacation reminder is needed.)

The article below is a reminder of some vital qualities we all need to model and demonstrate to our students every day, so we can can ensure, a la Ginott, that “in all situations a child is always humanized."

Thanks to all for a great first week of pre-planning—inspiring presentations, provocative discussions, and focused attention!

Joe

------------

Here are five classroom practices that make the biggest difference to student learning:

Clarity of purpose: At the beginning of a curriculum unit or project, students need to see why they’re doing it, the learning goals, the criteria for success, and models of high-quality end products.

Classroom discussion: Teachers need to frequently step offstage and facilitate entire-class discussion. This allows students to learn from each other. It’s also a great opportunity for teachers to formatively assess (through observation) how well students are grasping new content and concepts.

Feedback: Students need to know how they’re doing as individuals and as a class. They also need opportunities to give their teachers feedback to allow for adjustments in pedagogy and materials.

Formative assessments: Minute-by-minute, day-by-day, and week-by-week checks for understanding are essential to students knowing how they are doing with respect to the ultimate learning goals.

Metacognitive strategies: Students need opportunities to plan, organize, direct, and monitor their own work – and to reflect as they proceed. When we provide students with time and space to be aware of their own knowledge and their own thinking, student ownership increases. Research shows that metacognition can be taught.