Through the Window

    

Once a week, students at St Matthew’s have the opportunity to participate in Mr Pollard’s Friday Club. If you were to walk past the window, you’d see a large group of loud, boisterous and excited students playing together—and sometimes independently—with a variety of toys and games in the hall. You’d notice some children engaging in pretend play, using their toys as protagonists in imaginative situations. Students sit together in small groups, huddled around a card or board game, calling out instructions to one another to help with the next move. Others engage in a very serious discussion about why someone’s remote controller is directing the movements of another student’s car...and they then try to figure out how to solve the problem. Mr Pollard walks amongst the students and he laughs with them and engages in conversations with them: How can you solve that problem? What are the rules here? Who is hurt and how can you fix it? And the children try to avoid tripping him up as they roll toy cars, fly imaginary unicorns, and flip toys over. It’s noisy. And it seems a little chaotic. What’s going on here?

This type of club has many, many benefits. Play is an essential strategy for learning. Play is meaningful, joyful, actively engaging, socially interactive and iterative. Play and learning are not static. Children play to practise skills, try out possibilities, revise hypotheses and discover new challenges. This leads to deeper learning. Play allows children to communicate ideas, to understand others through social interaction, and  paves the way to build deeper understanding and more powerful relationships. Watch children playing, and you will usually see that they become deeply involved, often combining physical, mental and verbal engagement. They are often smiling and laughing. Disagreements during play are a very normal and helpful part of life when you’re in primary school (or part of a large family!). Of course, play may have its frustrations and challenges (Who gets the first turn?  What is the rule here and who decided that? Why can’t I make this construction stay up?), but the overall feeling is one of enjoyment, motivation, thrill and pleasure. Children play to make sense of the world around them, and to find meaning in an experience by connecting it to something already known. Through play, children express and expand their understanding of their experiences (UNICEF, 2018).

Yes - you thought you were watching a loud, boisterous group of students playing with their toys, but it really was so much more than that.

Petra Cole
Assistant Principal
Petra.Cole@cg.catholic.edu.au