This year at IATEFL, Delia Kidd and Dr Claire Dembry from our Language Research Team will be giving a talk on developing life skills and learning through play. If you’re at IATEFL, please join them on Tuesday April 2nd at 16:55-17:25 in Hall 1C. Here, Claire gives further insights into what you can expect. Our talk centres on the value of play in learning and development. We ask the question: how can we make provision for play in the primary ELT classroom?
The benefits of play
We know that we need to prepare our students to succeed in a world that is changing fast – to encourage them to be creative, to think critically and to communicate effectively. Research has shown that play is highly beneficial in supporting the development of these life skills in children. However, we often see play being excluded from the classroom or even the home. There is a common belief that ‘learning’ should come before ‘play’ – that play is somehow different from ‘proper’ learning. From our research we’ll share findings that show how play can actually be viewed as learning. These can contribute greatly to the development of life skills as well as developing language and literacy.
Our IATEFL talk
In our presentation, we address some common assumptions – that play is often considered as something optional, or as a negative activity without intrinsic learning value. We will give examples of the different types of play – from free play to more guided and structured play activities. At the talk we will describe how these could be used in the pre-primary or primary classroom. We describe how attention is a key factor in learning, and holding the attention of a young child often happens to best effect during play.
We will show what the benefits of play are in the context of the ELT classroom, and how it can support the development of creativity, critical thinking and communication in particular, drawing on research completed as part of the development of the Cambridge Life Competencies Framework. Next, we will describe and give practical examples of how classroom activities can be adapted to include provision for play. As well as this we will discuss how teachers can incorporate pretend play, hands-on learning, and guided play techniques to existing activities from existing ELT primary courses.
If you’re at IATEFL please attend our talk, as we’re excited to share this research with you. We’ll have more information to share on the topic after the conference too. Read about what to expect on our stand at IATEFL 2019.