Nal Experiences Unstructured Play One

Nal Experiences

Unstructured play

One of the most striking aspects of the informal observational experience was how much the teacher learned and noted from simply watching the students during a period of unstructured recreational activity. Although she did not take formal notes, by keeping an eye on children's social interactions, she was able to gain additional insight and information for formal classroom instruction. For example, the teacher noted that she was concerned about the level of some of the student's social skills and attention span. She noted how one boy, when the children were playing games of basketball or soccer would often cheat and get upset if he was challenged, noting his anger management difficulties and his low level of frustration tolerance. She also noted the students with few friends who spent much of the time engaged in solitary activity. While she did not keep a formal log, if some students had trouble manipulating objects like blocks in the classroom or playground equipment, she said that she made a mental note of this fact and might attempt to get them extra help, to bring their physical educational skills on par with their peers.

The teacher also tried to observe what games were popular in general with the class, to gain a sense of the class character -- whether they preferred to stay together as a group engaged in team, physical games, or smaller group activities. Some groups, such as the one I observed, had some gender-based subgroups, like girls who preferred to stay with their friends and play quieter activities or simply talk. Other groups were characterized by more blending and boisterous plays. Noting the cohesiveness of the class, said the teacher, helped her to decide how often and what kind of team-building activities to include, and even the gender breakdown of the class' playgroup guided her in what activities to select -- in a class with friends more divided by gender she would try to select crafts and other activities that would distinctly appeal to both boys and girls to avoid a 'girls against the boys' accusation on the part of the students, as in 'you like the girls best.'

Although the play was unstructured, there were clear rules that the students often devised for this unstructured play, if only to pick up pens and pencils with their feet, while drawing at a table. If the rules were violated for more formal games, students grew very indignant about fairness. I noted that students seem to like 'rules' when they played, even though they sometimes may chafe at these rules when imposed upon them by an adult.

Structured Instruction

The teacher solicited input during her lecture from the students, to ensure that they were paying attention. Sometimes she did call on students whose attention appeared to be wandering, or who seemed confused about the material. But overall, she tried to use positive reinforcement such as praise, using mnemonic devices to encourage students to remember material, and asking them to repeat what they had learned. In other words, observation was an instructional tool used in structured as well as unstructured settings. An additional tool was repetition and reinforcement.

Students kept their corrected assignments in folders, which enabled the teacher to look at past assignments, and see if certain concepts were proving to be persistent problems. It also ensured that assignments could be more easily sent home for parental review and would not (hopefully) get lost if they were taking home loose in a backpack. Assignments spanned a wide range of workbook assignments, encompassing more open-ended and creative activities like compositions, as well as tests and quizzes.

The teacher said she often made frequent use of team-based activities that drew upon a full range of student's artistic as well as verbal and spatial elements, like building a replica of a building from history (the Egyptian Pyramids), answering workbook fact sheets as a group, or presenting lab experiment findings to the class. Other in-class challenges included smaller and less elaborate assignments like answering questions about a story together. Students were graded both individually and as a group for these team assignments. Although I could not observe all of these activities during my short visit, I did notice there were some on-going assignments, like cutting out news articles of interest and posting them on bulletin boards, relating to the upcoming election and other world events.