Tag: play

Beautiful Weather for a Walk

St. Albans' lake, on a clear October morning.

Two weekends ago we lucked into some of the most beautiful fall weather for our walk-a-ton. We’re trying to replace our old playground that had become somewhat decrepit. While our objective is not quite up to the Skudeneshavn Primary School‘s standards, it’s somewhat closer than what we had before.

Most of the kids who walked around the lake were from the lower school – after all, they’re the ones who expected to “play”- but I expect it will gets a lot of use by the middle and high schoolers once it’s installed.

Some walked more than others, but everyone had a good time.

Sportsmanship

“Winning is the easy part, losing is really tough. But, you learn more from one loss than you do from a million wins. You learn a lot about sportsmanship. I mean, it’s really tough to shake the hand of someone who just beat you, and it’s even harder to do it with a smile. If you can learn to do this and push through that pain, you will remember what that moment is like the next time you win and have a better sense of how those competitors around you feel. This experience will teach you a lot on and off the field!” – Amy Van Dyken

Sports bring out the best and the worst in us. In victory and defeat. When the competitive fires burn fiercest they strip away facade and open windows into the soul. We’ve been playing Ultimate Frisbee on and off all year for PE and like it because it offers, in a microcosm, a remarkable view into the character of my students. Subtle behaviors in the classroom get magnified on the playing field; the willingness to quit when the score is against you versus the quiet perseverance no matter what happens. Yet, if the way we act when we play sports reflects the our character, then perhaps we can shape our character by changing the way we act when we play. That’s what “they” mean when they say that playing sports builds character.

“How a man plays the game shows something of his character; how he loses shows it all.”
-Tribune (Camden County, GA)

I’ve also come to realize that team sports can work as a substitute for co-operative games if I insist on a half-time team talk and a post game discussion by the whole group. The half-time talks are turning into pep talks and the post-game talks are proving very useful. I choose someone at random to give the talk.

There are times when you’re tired and times when you don’t believe in yourself. That’s when you have to stick it out and draw on the confidence that you have deep down beneath all the doubts and worries.” -Jim Abbot

I have not had many post-match group talks, but I am rectifying that. After each game, the group need to address some reflective questions:

  • What worked?
  • What was challenging?
  • How did you feel?
  • What did you learn?

Once again, we practice reflective thinking, although this time it’s for the group as well as the individual. We’re building abstract thinking skills as well a character, and hopefully, they both reinforce each other.

“The answers to these questions will determine your success or failure. 1) Can people trust me to do what’s right? 2) Am I committed to doing my best? 3) Do I care about other people and show it? If the answers to these questions are yes, there is no way you can fail.” –Lou Holtz

Real Play, and the ideal playground

Jungle play area at the Skudeneshavn Primary School in Karmøy on the west coast of Norway.

What I really like about the Skudeneshavn Primary School playground in Karmøy, Norway is the sheer variety of things available for the students to do (hat tip to Mary Cour). I also like the philosophy. Asbjørn Flemmen’s research on the social and motor skills benefits of play, true children’s play, is the key guiding principle behind the design of the playground. His philosophy is that:

Real play is a spontaneous and social activity, dependent upon its environment, where interaction takes place through extensive use of gross-motor movement. – Flemmen (2009)

Because it is spontaneous, real play is also intrinsically driven, coming from children’s innate motivation. Flemmen view of the role of grown-up’s is the same as Montessori’s, to direct the environment. He draws a clear distinction between the real play of children’s culture and the competitive sports that typify adult culture (Flemmen, 2009), where behavior is directed by the adults.

The Skudeneshavn playground embodies these principles by providing a variety of opportunity to challenge all skill levels and interests, and having materials that attract the interest of their students. Indeed, to stimulate interest, a key part of the playground design is to have “activities the children can not yet master and do not dare to do so”.

Jungle area. Students have the opportunity to take risks.

Real play also needs an environment that stimulates social interaction (again very Montessori), and Flemmen’s approach to conflict resolution is the let the kids sort it out. This is somewhat controversial, especially when you consider the possibility of bullying, yet there is some evidence that this approach works. The variety of the activities available make it so that the children are seldom bored.

Flemmen has an interesting chapter in the book, “Several Perspectives on Children’s Play: Scientific Reflections for Practitioners” (Chapter 11). I also find his table comparing children’s play to adult sports to be a very useful template for considering how to organize physical education.

Leadership and competitive games

“Treat a person as he is, and he will remain as he is. Treat him as he could be, and he will become what he should be.”
–Jimmy Johnson

As much as I want to offer my students near-autonomy for at least a small part of the day, I am finding it necessary to reinforce the lessons of the classroom during PE. Physical education is an important part of a holistic education not just for the fact that healthy bodies lead to healthy minds, but because it offers another domain for students to develop their leadership skills.

I’ve found that not everyone who is great in the classroom will be great on the playing field, so students who are often learning from their peers when they’re inside, get a chance to teach and lead others. Often however, because they are unused to it, they need a little guidance to recognize the reversal of roles.

It is also interesting to note that some students who are great at peer-teaching the academics can get really riled up on the field and loose all sense of perspective, forgetting those carefully taught collaboration skills. This is particularly true when we play competitive games and they have to balance competition and collaboration. Fortunately, there is a well established term (even if not gender neutral) that sums up appropriate behavior in competition, sportsmanship.