Playing Around

Olha Madylus

Opposites Game

LoveHappyLearnWork

How important is play to you?

The healthy individual is someone who can work, play and love effectively

G. W. AllportPattern and Growth in Personality, 1961

In teaching children…

need to encourage free expression and natural playfulness…Jean Jacques Rousseau, 1762

Piaget

play leads to consolidation of newly learned behaviours… exposing the child to new experiences and new possibilities for dealing with the world

We encourage students to play with English:

To make them feel comfortableTo help the language be memorableTo practise languageTo facilitate involvement It’s motivatingBecause we recognise that language learning is affective as well as cognitive

learning is affective as

well as cognitive

Why play games?get attention

change paceget ‘into’ Englishmaximize practicestress-free

gameschallenge / competitionmakes language memorablecollaborative learningappeal to multiple intelligences

it’s it’s serious funserious fun

Csikszentmihalyi The theory

of flow

laughter and yoga

Laughter raises blood pressure just long enough to increase oxygen and blood supply to tissues. It alters the breathing cycle so that oxygen is inhaled and carbon dioxide exhaled. Muscles throughout the body tense and relax during laughter in exactly the same way as with stress reduction techniques such as yoga.

Thinking

…need to empower learners to think for themselves, Von Glaserfield

The fifth skill, John McRae

short versus long-term memory

The process of transferring information from STM to LTM involves the encoding or consolidation of information. This is a process of organization, the meaningfulness or emotional content of an item plays a vital role in its retention into LTM. As instructional designers, we must find ways to make learning relevant and meaningful enough for the learner to make the important transfer of information to long-term memory.

Woody Allen on Death

I’m not afraid to die.I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

‘Granny, have you lived here all your life?’

Not yet, son,not yet.

Humour in language teachingA good vehicle for providing cultural information

Builds bridges between culturesPractices language in genuine contextsBrings students closer togetherReleases tensionDevelops creative thinkingProvides memorable chunks of languageGenerates a happy classroom

Peter Medgyes, Laughing Matters, CUP