Storyboard AET/541

Title: Teaching with Active Play

Active play is the act of teaching lessons with movement and large and small muscle development as a priority.  This type of learning is especially important for early childhood education and satisfies the need for constant movement both indoors and outdoors.

Scene: What is Active Play and why is it important in learning?

Audio: Attached as link on blog. Plays during instruction.

Video: None

Notes:  Introduce Active Play using Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development and lead into Pretraining with vocabulary. Segment areas with large bold titles. Personalize blog with personal instructional language. Include methods of instructor involvement and problem solving at end of lesson during review.

Pretraining: 

(show video of Active Play at: http://www.easternct.edu/cece/nurturing_emotional_health.html)

Introduce Vocabulary:     

Mastery Motivation     

Confidence      

Choice    

Challenge   

Large-motor skills

Emotional development

Social development

Cognitive development

Video and Vocabulary will be pretraining to prepare students for the worked example. Add graphic of physical word game.

Worked Example:

Have students get up and visit 3 stations in rotation:

Station 1:    Catch that fly! (Literacy)

                                     

                                  Materials: Paper plate, letters, jump rope, glue stick, fly pictures, fly swatters.

                                 

                                  Purpose: Children will listen to the phonetic sound being called out and try to              whack the fly that is carrying the letter which makes the sound. 

                                  How is it played? One team will pull around paper plates with pictures of flies and letters on them. The plates will be tied to a jump rope. One team will have fly swatters. The teacher will call out a sound and the students will run around chasing the plate with the correct letter on it. When they find the letter, they swat it with their fly swatter and call out the letter.

                                  What does it teach? This activity teaches phonetic identification of letters.

This graphic is an example of the "catch that fly" game. In this picture, two children are racing to identify the correct sight word. This game can be modified by age, subject, physical activity level preferred, etc. Early learners respond better to more activity.  The paper plate number and letter game would be more age appropriate than standing in place and searching for a sight word, but this gives a good visual of how the game is played.

Station 2:    Balloon Bat (Math)

         

                       Materials: Nylon panty hose, balloons, pool noodles cut in half.

                                   Purpose: Encourages critical solving of simple addition and number problems.

                                   How is it played? A balloon is filled with air and stuffed inside the waistband of a pair of panty hose. The instructor holds the feet of the panty hose.  This will create the look of a "pinata" type object.  Students will view a flash card with either a simple number pattern, or addition problem, or integer on it. You will solve the card with the appropriate number of hits to the balloon. You will use the pool noodle to hit the balloon. If the numbers form a pattern. You will hit the numbers in turns to fulfill the pattern unit.

                                   What does it teach? This activity teaches problem solving, math, taking turns, and  pattern units.

This picture shows pre-primary children using a pool noodle as a bat to control balloons. Our balloon bat game is a little more controlled with the use of panty hose so that the balloon is more stationary.  This allows for the active play to occur indoors or outdoors.  The game can be manipulated accordingly depending on area of play, weather, age group, etc.

Station 3:     Sock Toss (Social-emotional)

                       Materials: Socks balled up, laundry baskets, duct tape, large laminated smiley face, sad face, scared face, excited face, angry face, confused face.

                                   Purpose: To encourage discussion about feelings and recognizing feelings in our friends.

                                   How is it played?  You will listen to a scenario. The teacher will ask you how this would make you feel. You will throw a balled sock at the preferred face. The sock will land in the basket.  When we are finished, we will count and discuss how many people felt sad, scared, excited, etc.         

                                   

                                  What does it teach? This activity teaches social-emotional recognition, graphing, counting and comparing. It also allows the student to discuss why they felt the way they did.

This picture displays young children in active play using socks and a laundry basket. This activity can be scaffolded based on knowledge level, concept being addressed with numbers, and number of children involved. 

This image displays a variety of learning activities which includes active play.  It shows modification, variation and manipulation of the lesson plan to fit the individual child's need.  It is important in active play to keep the children moving and learning all at once.  This gives optimal opportunity for kinesthetic learning to occur.

This worked example will give you an opportunity to experience three activities easily manipulated into the common curriculum.  It will demonstrate how to incorporate physical activity into a lesson plan for math, social skills, and literacy.

Practice Exercise:

Step 1: Watch video

Step 2: As a small group, outline 3 main aspects of whole brain teaching.
Step 3: Create a 5 minute presentation to lead the crowd in a whole brain activity like the one seen above.
Step 4: Take out a sheet of paper.
Step 5: While watching the other group's whole brain presentation, write with detail one thing you learned from this activity and write one suggestion for the group.  Suggest methods of improvement or something you noticed that can be better presented in another way. Why do you feel this way? Give the group proof that your suggestion is valid. Use the information you know about active learning. Let's brainstorm!

Speaker Notes:

This exercise gives the learner the opportunity to brainstorm, apply principles of active play in a group setting amidst peers, provide feedback, watch a synopsis of active learning in a classroom setting, define and outline the principles of this learning style, and present the information to their peers. 

As a learner, the control lies in the decision of identifying 3 main aspects of whole brain teaching, viewing an example, and applying their knowledge to a real life situation. The learner is in control of the exercise to the extent that he/she may make valid points as to the main aspects of whole brain and active learning, and that exercise is then practiced, reviewed and manipulated in an actual real-time presentation for their peers.

Review

1. As a team, decide what age group would most benefit from active play learning. Why?

2. As a team, create an active play situation for teaching handwriting.

3. Demonstrate active play using 3 other teachers. Lead them through the activity as you would a student.

(Attach MP3 player with music)

This image shows active play occurring indoors. This is important to remember for rainy days and especially for young children with unending desire for movement.

       

Active play is good for outdoor or indoor learning. Manipulate instruction to fit activity level, learning needs, weather, age and stage.

Clicking on the link below will give you access to a song that is a great example of musical integration for Active Play Learning. Moves Like Jagger provides motivation and stimulation appropriate for age and stage.  This song can be used to play a mimic game to copy teacher body movements for assessment of Gross Motor Skills.  It can also be integrated into a Social-Emotional Development Lesson Plan to teach sharing and communication skills.  Because the tune is well known and familiar, the music will pull the learner in and provide ample stimulation for the activity planned.