Increasing engagement in secondary classrooms part 2

Read on to learn much more about how to effectively use secondary classroom strategies emerging from research priming learning through play. Building on Part 1 of this article which explored the key components of play and the research behind its efficacy, Part 2 details practical ways we can bring (and scaffold!) a little more play for adolescent learners.

Making room for play in the learning

Rather than seeing play as something we have to do in addition to meaningful instruction, we seek to embed it within instruction as a powerful tool for maximising learning. The following strategies can be used to embed micro-moments of play throughout a learning period.

• Start the day with morning circle. The purpose of this consistent, predictable routine is to act as a threshold between the outside world and learning spaces, as well as to establish a collective culture for learning. As a consistent, predictable routine, circle encompasses movement, exposure to names (especially important in larger secondary contexts), sharing positive news, and collaboration. (Read our extended discussion of morning circle.)
• Positive Primers are proactive activities at the start of a day or learning period that boost positive emotion to support learning outcomes. Positive Primers can be a do now activity (ready to go as soon as students walk through the door), and can be content related (see below), which additionally puts the focus on learning as soon as the class starts.
• Brain Breaks : As discussed above, there are many brain breaks that incorporate play and laughter. Brain Breaks that centre play can include quick games (collaborative or competitive), regulating-movement or videos.
• Use games and healthy competition or collaboration to review content. This could be facilitated by technology, with applications such as Kahoot, Socrative or even Minecraft Education. If you prefer more analogue interactions, you can create and host a live game-show with your students, or use escape rooms or breakout boxes to get them interacting, thinking and moving around while they review key ideas and concepts.
• Use physical movement and roleplay to interact with knowledge. One Year 9 class significantly increased their engagement with Shakespeare’s The Twelfth Night when we started each lesson with a quick ‘Gossip Girl’ style review by one of the students, recapping what was covered last lesson. Students can also use dramatic models to explore scientific concepts – for example, getting students to take on the role of various particles, and then seeing how they behave with different reactions. Roleplay games such as charades and Pictionary are a great way to review key vocabulary.

While play-based learning may look different in a secondary context, it can still be done. ACER’s framework for playful learning highlights many practices that secondary educators already use to some degree. We increase meaning by using hooks, questioning techniques and meaningful learning intentions to connect to prior learning and students’ lived experiences. Learning enacted for a real audience, such as hands-on, community-based projects where young people get to try out different roles and ways of being in a safe and secure environment, are actively engaging. Strategies such as role plays, open questions and inquiry projects can be joyful and socially interactive.

As will be clear to many, educators who successfully incorporate these pedagogies occupy a combination of roles and facilitation types (Parker et al., 2022). They allow space for learners to act freely and independently within a structured, ordered and planned environment (in other words, they use consistent, predictable routines). For example, we can provide choice around modes of assessment and presentation, but we will scaffold and plan for students’ exploration of choices, and we may provide bounded choices (2 to 3 rather than limitless) to avoid decision fatigue for some students.

Picking the right activities

As well as fear of adults’ judgement, many adolescents describe a reluctance to engage in physical play for fear of embarrassment or peer judgement about their fitness or coordination (Connolly, 2020, p.22). We always aim for playful activities that are developmentally appropriate and age-respectful, so we want to avoid Brain Breaks and Positive Primers that feel too juvenile, especially at the start. When introducing Brain Breaks and Positive Primers to older, more reluctant students, we suggest the following:

• ask students to research their own Brain Breaks and then teach them to you/the rest of the class (of course we may want to vet them beforehand!). This way students are preselecting Brain Breaks they are comfortable with.
• start with drawing or talking activities, build up to include some limited physical movement, and then introduce whole-body activities.
• when using physical movement, start with paired activities rather than activities that involve the whole class.
• keep Brain Breaks short and sharp – we would suggest that no brain break is longer than 4 minutes! Focus on building physical, emotional, and mental states for learning.

You can also use Brain Breaks and Positive Primers that connect to content or skills. For example:

• use games and puzzles that develop students’ understanding of content vocabulary or tier two vocabulary (cross-discipline, high-frequency words often seen in academic texts).
• for maths, give students an image and ask them to find as many mathematical concepts as possible in it.
• play short, entertaining, content-related videos.
• show students images and get them to do a see-think-wonder walking routine to encourage movement. The instruction for students is: find someone and discuss three things you see, find another person and describe two things you think might be happening in the image, and find a third person and share a question you wonder about the image.
• use debate topics linked to real life to start the class with a quick debate. For example, “Overall, AI is a good thing”, “Reality TV is an accurate depiction of human behaviour” or “Vaping should be banned entirely”.
• check for understanding by incorporating play, such as quizzes or gallery walks.

Setting up a safe environment for play

We have some practical ideas for play, now how do we get students to join in?

A staff culture of positive priming for learning through play

For students to feel comfortable with positive priming through playfulness, the adults must be comfortable too. As with all strategies, this is most effective when it is a whole-school approach. We recommend you think deeply as a staff group about ways to bring play into your collective practice, so that everyone feels comfortable being silly. This could involve introducing morning circle, Positive Primers and Brain Breaks into staff meetings – both as a way of getting comfortable with play and as a way of trying out the efficacy and comfort levels of various activities.

Modelling play

When we’re comfortable being playful, we can model this and encourage it with our students. Taking the time to ground and centre ourselves in positive emotions before each lesson or day – sharing things that make us smile or laugh and, of course, actively participating in Brain Breaks and Positive Primers can go a long way to showing young people that being playful is not something they have to leave at primary school. When introducing Brain Breaks or Positive Primers that involve physical gestures, movement or general silliness, we would never ask our students to do anything that we are not comfortable doing in front of them.

Developing agency in play through values and expectations

Making play possible means setting clear expectations around play. Rather than telling our young people what the ‘rules’ are, we aim to build agency by asking our young people to co-construct expectations around play. Exploring personal and collective values is a great way to do this. As a secondary teacher, I would start the year by telling students that my personal values were rigor and fun and then ask them: what might this mean for our learning together? Statements like “we will support and be kind to one another when doing silly activities”, “no put-downs” can go a long way to easing stress around vulnerable activities. An important question to ask students (when they are Ready to Learn) is “can you opt out?” and, if so, what does ‘opting out’ look like? Are there alternatives? Invitational language can go a long way to making young people feel supported and respected in the classroom.

We know when attempting to prime learning through and with play, we will not always get it right. Or, it may be the right idea but initially at an unhelpful time. There will be times when we may accidentally devolve into chaos or attempt something that falls flat on its face. In the true spirit of play, showing our capacity to laugh it off when things go wrong, coach yourself by saying, “Well, that was a learning opportunity! I’m going to ask my students for fix-it feedback for next time.” Remember to ground, recentre and try again – that is the ultimate way to model play.