Comments on: Teaching students that it’s okay to play

By: Shaun Loeppky

Shaun Loeppky — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 19:30:37 +0000

We certainly do not play enough in our profession, and probably in our personal lives…I had a recent conversation with Dr. Schwier about that very topic..I have chosen, for now, to remain in elementary because I feel there is a little more freedom to play than the content driven upper grades. I was trained as a secondary teacher by the way.

I have found some of the best opportunities to connect with students and yet develop valuable learning experience are with the online games, such as Runescape (Sharon Peter’s mentioned in her presentation) when I taught grade 7.
Students create an avatar of their choice, then they must develop skills in order to advance their character’s “level”. They must trade (monetary skills) chat (spelling skills) interact with others in quests (net etiquette), access other web sites to achieve goals (literacy)… and a host of other skills.
Cool game. Too bad our computers cannot access the site anymore since they upgraded the game. Sun systems have their limitations.

By: Kimberly Brown

Kimberly Brown — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 04:07:58 +0000

I include a 30 minute math games class in my schedule each week. I even have it written on my timetable as that. I think math games are a great time to build number sense, show students real life math applications and have fun with math. We play math bingo, use math games online and play cards.I keep meaning to buy Yahtze and cribbage boards. I talk to the students about how there are number patterns in games, use of positive and negative integers in scoring for cards along with the mental math practice they get. My students are in grade 6&7 and I want them to enjoy math.

By: Kyle Lichtenwald

Kyle Lichtenwald — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 00:44:55 +0000

Good post Dan. Who wants to do anything that is not fun? Involving games and play into our learning makes it engaging. During my internship, my grade 6’s were bored with text book drill and practice, but when I included demo’s and center based activities and games they eyes glazed over with glee and they became new learners. The challenge was that this play invoked more talking and laughing, how do we manage that? I will be fine with it in my own class, but I felt the guilt and worry of other folks assuptions/judgements of this practice.

How did we fall into this trap that learning needs silence?

By: Ken Meredith

Ken Meredith — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 20:51:06 +0000

When I used to teach math, I would try to change the regular classroom tasks anytime I could. Using technology, games, puzzles, projects were very useful (although, most students would have preferred to do more questions lol)

Most students enjoyed these activities. The students who enjoyed them the most were generally the toughest kids to teach in the classroom. It was nice to see those kids somewhat engaged in the class.

By: Dave Bircher

Dave Bircher — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 21:58:06 +0000

I do not do enough games in my classes. However, I do play Canadian trivia when teaching History. I am interested in how a SMARTboard can be used in social sciences to incorporate specific games as well.