For our Primary 1 pupils at Ravenswood Primary School, play is the way, all day, every day. They enter our school building, take their jackets off, put down their bags and get to work for the day - in other words, they start to play.
We use play as an approach to learning across the whole curriculum, using a balance of free play and playful learning choices. With Primary 1 comes lots of new learning, one of those things being alphabet sounds. When done playfully, we have found this can truly excite and motivate the children.
While learning about the sound “n”, for example, they let their imaginations run wild in creating their very own “nnnnewsroom”. No longer are they Primary 1s, instead they are journalists reporting on top news stories, rising stars performing their latest songs and ventriloquists bringing puppets to life.
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Our Primary 1 children happily placed themselves in front of the “camera” - they opted for an iPad - and reported on current affairs, leading with the recent volcanic eruption in the Canary Islands.
The importance of play in primary school
Interviewing one another, they asked questions, listened to their peers’ responses and even made up their own hard-hitting news stories. Not content with just being news reporters, our children transformed themselves into music stars performing their new hits. This was particularly popular and led to us having a stage in our classroom - thankfully, the news reporters are always around to capture the action.
Transforming an area of our classroom into the newsroom not only allowed the children to make links to their new alphabet sound but also provided them with valuable opportunities to communicate with their peers, compromise, share, extend their vocabulary and improve their listening skills and their ICT skills, to name but a few.
The Newsroom was a busy place in P1 ?? today! Our breaking news stories were entertaining and informative! ??? @UpstartScot @canigoandplay pic.twitter.com/iV3Ve2X72h
- Ravenswood (@RavenswoodPS) September 22, 2021
Play in our classroom is truly magical: through play, children not only remain engaged and enthusiastic but they are also given the freedom to make their own learning choices, work on their social skills and peer relationships, and extend their learning. And all while having fun - something that we, at Ravenswood, have found difficult to achieve using more traditional teaching methods.
As the teachers sat back and observed, what we witnessed were children’s imaginations and ideas coming to life. Our children decided that props were essential, particularly microphones. They then went on to negotiate how to “play” at the newsroom, discussing who would have their turn when and for how long.
Through play, our children have become more skilled in articulating their thoughts and ideas, as well as actively listening to one another. This is no easy feat for four- and five-year-olds, who require time to develop and master these social skills. However, thanks to play, this is fast becoming second nature for our children, who are becoming independent communicators, thinkers and problem solvers.
For visitors in our classroom, they may just see our newsroom as a space to play. But the real breaking news is that for our Primary 1s it is a space to transform, imagine, create, communicate and - above all - celebrate the good news story that is the power of play.
Ashleigh Robertson is a P1 teacher at Ravenswood Primary School, in Cumbernauld, North Lanarkshire
