5. Role Play and Drama for 6-10 year olds

This is the main chapter in the book, built on my research project 1994-97. Our new national curriculum (L97) talks about play in three different versions: play as free development, play as working method in the thematic crossubject teaching, and playful teaching within the different subjects to further motivation. My video recordings are done in 6 different settings within this frame:

Play as development («free play») (child controlled)

a) «Free play» in SFO (leisure time after school)

b) «Free play» in school lessons

Play as working method («learning centered play»)

c) Drama/role play in «Workshop Pedagogics»

d) Drama as free choice in SFO

e) Drama as method in thematic teaching

Playful teaching in different subjects

f) Mathemathics, music, language (adult controlled)

Theoretically, the «play» concept in L 97 spans from the most child controlled to the most teacher controlled «play» or drama. In my textbook it was important to show examples from the whole range of the «play» concept.

Play as development

a) «Free play» in SFO

In SFO 6-year-olds in Norway are playing 69% of the total time (Haug 1996). The adult role is usual passive. The argument is that the child should have free time to do what they want, most of their time. They can play where they want, with whom, with what, when they want during the SFO period. But research shows that this often leads to stereotype repetition of earlier preschool play. The personnel have little knowlegde about play in the 6-10 year-group (Liden et al. 1994). I have followed one SFO for a year with a video camera. The focus was on dramatic play, not rule play or constructional play. From the 38 observations I have chosen 18, and have edited compressed versions down to 3-8 minutes resume of the play sequence which could last for an hour or longer. This cassette should be used in the teacher training to analyze and discuss the quality of the play from a motoric, social, emotional, aesthetic, cognitive and communicative point of view. Also the impact of the physical organizing for play and the adult role can be recognized and discussed. I give a brief description of some of these episodes in the book, to show typical play episodes and the variation of the different themes in play in one SFO.

b)Free play in school lessons time

In our new national curriculum, 247 hours during the first four years at school should be «free play», most in the first year. This is a totally new demand at school. I have followed a class of 7-8 year olds for two years, where two playful teachers dared use 3 hours each week reserved for free play, two years before this reform started. This experience has given us useful knowlegde about something now all the classes shall do, without knowing how to do it!

The classes had one hour «free playtime» two days per week before lunch. These classes was trained in group working and «workshop pedagogy», and therefore it was rather easy to arrange ten different play corners. The children chose in which corner they wanted to play, but if three or four children had chosen one play corner, no more children could choose that corner (something like Weikart´s «High scope» system for preschool in the USA). Later on the classes also used the outdoor area for these periods. I have made video programmes which show the development in this play over the two years. The book gives a verbal description of this development. Paradoxically there seemed to be a higher level of play within this more restricted time and space compared to SFO. Perhaps the narrow time schedule, a systematic choice of play corner, and a more active adult role, inspired the children to use more energy and commitment in play?

Play as working method

c) Drama/role play in «workshop pedagogics»

Workshop pedagogics (Trageton 1992) is a way of organizing teaching lessons for 6-10 year- olds inspired by the Laboratory School in Chicago (Dewey 1899) and the british «Integrated Day in the Primary School» (Brown/Precious 1969). The movement started in three classrooms in 1978 and has gradually spread across the whole of Norway. Each class is divided into 5 groups working with different art and craft materials, such as clay, sand, blocks, rigid materials and flexible materials. They should work within a common cross-subject theme, for instance «our town». The children produce through structured constructional play representations of different sides of the theme, houses, cars, people and so on. After the constructing they have to dramatize what might happen in their structured environment. Then they draw from their experiences, and afterwords they write a story about their special theme, and at last they are doing mathematics around what they have made. The main role for the teacher is to be a dialogue partner to expand concepts and language around the concepts each child is interested in. This strategy from concrete to abstract has for the last 20 years proved effective both for slow and fast learners in the classroom (Trageton 1992). As mentioned in the beginning of the paper, L 97 says that the dominating working methods for 6-10 year-olds should be creative activity, play and practical work. The workshop pedagogics is in tune with such a demand. In this new book I concentrate on the dramatizing stage in workshop pedagogics. Here I followed a class for 2 years (7-8 year-olds). I made 95 video recordings of the drama stage. From them I have chosen 24 episodes and edited on a videocassette as examples of the development over two years. In the book I describe the development in detail, with concrete descriptions of different dramatizations or structured role play. In the beginning the dramatization was of actions only. Gradually one child in the group played two roles, later two and two children played together, but it was very hard to get real cooparation beetween all the four/five children in the group. The rest of the class was the audience.

In another school the teacher documented the effect on written language. From a beginning of 10-12 written words, the texts grew rapidly to an average of 80 words in February in grade 1. (now grade 2). The class performance ranged from 12 to 310 written words! To give you an impression of an advanced level let´s take a story from the theme called «Skudesneshavn» (a tiny town where the children live). The children had made some houses in town and family members who wanted to buy the house. In the dramatizations the figures representing husband and wife went into the house to look. They tried to go through the door but the door opening was too narrow for the figures. They improvised and went down the chimney instead. Much laughter! One of the stories composed afterwards was like this:

Once upon a time a man and his wife wanted to move to another house. But they did not know that they had ordered such a small house. They had to creep in the door. But the man got a good idea, he said that they should try the chimney. But the chimney was narrow, so it was hard to get through, so they wanted to find another house. They went to the man who owned the biggest house in town. But he was a real miser, and he said no. So they began to search for another house. At last somebody showed the way to a house of just the proper size.

d) Drama as free choice in SFO

Among 6 different courses of 2 hours a week for 12 weeks, the 8-9 year-olds could choose a drama course. This drama course was very structured by the teacher. They should follow a family who travelled from Norway to the US around 1880. This family was followed in 12 episodes, first the farewell at home, then the sailing trip, the immigration problems in New York, how to find a farm in the Mid-West, fighting with Indians, inventions like the steam engine, spinning machine, and in the tenth episode they moved to Chicago to produce cars. All the time the teacher practiced the teacher-in-role principle. She dramatized and made the children dramatize and role play the proper roles but within these narrow frames. The groups built their creative, original cars of old school tables and chairs, cardboard boxes and other scrap. Then the teacher is a director who wants to give a prize to the most original car. Afterwords there is a car race, where specially the boys show a deep commitment in their playing& According to our new national curriculum, this could also have been a good type of lecturing in science, social science, language, mathematics, art and craft. But this drama course was in SFO. Is the children´s dramatizing real play? According to L 97 this is play as working method.

e) Drama as method in thematic cross-subject teaching

According to the new national curriculum (L 97), drama should have a strong position as working method among 6-10 year-olds. One example I have videorecorded is the cross-subject theme of «Stone Age» in the grade 3 (9-10 year-olds). This theme lasted for four weeks. Here the drama teacher together with the classroom teacher also used the teacher-in-role tecnique. The drama teacher is the stone age leader, and the children acts as the tribe who go outdoors making stone weapons in the little forest outside school. Then the classroom teacher comes as a representative for a Bronze Age king , and the adults build up a conflict where the children have to choose if they want to become the slaves under the bronze age king and learn to make bronze swords and jewellery, or be fought by the modern bronze warriors and fleeing back to their stone ageThe children themselves have to solve this conflict, because now the old Stone Age leader (the drama teacher) is so old and sick, that he cannot give them any advice. By systematically playing stone age roles and bronze age roles, combined with reading about these ages in books, making stories around the theme, making stone carvings, paintings and so on, this drama or structured play as working method should make the stuff more attractive and engaging for the children.

f) Playful teaching in different subjects

Our national curriculum uses this formula with the argument that although this is not «play» in the ordinary sense, a «playful» teacher can use «playful» methods to motivate children for spesific learning activities. Here my examples are borrowed from my students taking further education in 6-10 years pedagogics. One student organized a shop in the classroom corner to teach the children the numbers from 1-9 and the addition of these numbers. All the prices in the shop were from 1-9 Norwegian krones, and the children played shopping in a structured manner, and took notes of the results of the shopping in their mathematics book. Another example was music lessons where the teacher wanted to teach the children a classical song, while the 8-9-year children were most interested in heavy metal music. The result was a playful combination of the classical melody, where the children played that they were a heavy metal band and with the help of the teacher composed the rhythm and beat they found suitable to brush up the ancient song. A third examle was where pupils in grade 1 at school played with personal computers and text programmes to make texts. The teacher «played back» comments, and so the children could make a new and better version of his text, in fact process oriented writing in grade 1 (now grade 2).

Final comments:

The danger by expanding the play definition as far as to «playful teaching» is that teachers can say that by referring to «playful teaching» they cover the demands about play in school. I try in this chapter to show the readers that according to L 97 the teachers have to use the whole range of the play concept. Classroom teachers have to train themselves specially to accept and master «free play» at school. Preschool teachers on the other hand have to accept that also play as working method and playful teaching should have their place inside the play concept at school.

6. The teacher´s tasks in play

I have divided this chapter in two:

a) Play observations.

While preschool teachers have a long tradition of play observastion, classroom teachers have not. To train teachers to make play observations as a new routine at school is a radical new task. In this chapter I try to offer strategies for very simple descriptive/interpretive observations, and short daily logs, and spontanous reflections. For the busy teachers I think it is better to train them to make observations and short logs as a simple daily routine than to teach them so complicated observation forms that the average teacher find no time to make such observations. The most important thing is to train the teacher to draw consequences of the observations for structuring the total learning climate in the classroom. As I said, we have no tradition for play observations in Norwegian schools. Therefore I have used the play observation tradition in English primary school (5-11 year olds) to give examples of good observation schemes (Moyles 1994). Her book is just now translated into norwegian.

b)Adult roles in play

In my opinion a strict routine about observation of play is the best way to change the ordinary teachers´ attitude to play, and to different adult roles in play. Here I refer to the classifications by Wood, Mahon and Cranstoun (1980) and Christie´s scale from ignoring to dominating roles in play (Christie 1992). Also the adult roles of Hartmann (1988) are referred to in my book. Also here the most important thing is that the teacher not only learns the different adult roles to stimulate higher quality in play, but to practice these roles. Only then is a better understanding of the play possible.

7. Physical frame factors.

The chapter is divided into school building, classroom and furniture, out door arrangement and time organizing. I raise the question if we want an auditory school or a laboratory school. The Norwegian school history shows that the auditory school with traditional classrooms and students listening to the teacher´s lecture still has a strong position, in spite of the national curriculum plans about the opposite.

The preschool in Norway and the Integrated Day in Primary Schools in England on the other hand are much more like a laboratory school ideal with children´s concrete

activities in the centre.

English classroom

When our new national curriculum says that creative activity, play and practical work should be the dominating learning methods for 6-10 year-olds, the school and the classrooms ought to be more laboratories than auditories. Because 6 year-olds up to now have been in preschool, it has been accepted that their classroom should be quite similar to a preschool room. The problem is to convince all teachers that this would be a good classroom also for 7-10 year- olds, instead of a more auditory setting. Here follows the structure of two classrooms for 7-8-year olds, where I videorecorded «free play» in school lessons.

Two Norwegian

classrooms

The classrooms are constructed for small groups of children doing creative activity, play and practical work. The classrooms and group rooms is constructed for workshop pedagogy where small groups of children are working with clay, sand, blocks, rigid and flexible materials to construct different concepts in relation to the cross-subject theme going on this month. The groups are also the bases for other practical work and their work books in different subjects. For «free play» lessons mentioned earlier, children use the different corners as play opportunities to choose among. Here they also can choose among the three corners in the wardrobe. This extra play area may class A use on Monday, class B on Thuesday. To smothen the pedagocical barriers between the 6-year-class with preschool teachers, and the 7-year- class with classroom teachers, an ideal structure would be to have the 6-year-olds in classroom A and 7-year-olds in classroom B, and have a mixed pedagogical programme for both classes and teachers some hours a week, for instance in the «free play» periods and in workshop pedagogics with a common theme for the two age groups. This is now becoming a common structure many places in Norway. What about the auditory function of the classroom? The block corner is so big that the teacher can gather all the 20-28 children around her to tell a story, sing a song, or discuss a common plan for what to do in the workshops this day, or evaluate the work the children have done last week. In this chapter I also give a lot of advice about the furniture, materials and tools for learning in the different subjects.

Planning the out-door area.

In Norway out-door activities have had a high status. Our children have a long tradition for out-door sport activities and play. But in recent years, children in Norway have spent more and more time indoors. The play possibilities outdoors in forests, in open fields and so on are strongly reduced, children sit more in front of TV, video, radio and computers at home. Because the school now expand the time radically for 6-10-year-olds, the tendency to inndoor life is strenghtened. Therefore there is a movement in Norway to stimulate «out-door school», out-door play and so on. But in practice the out-door environment often is a black asphalt square. Here the school follow a piagetian thinking that rule play, hop schot and organized sports like football dominate the play possibilities. Areas for constructional play and dramatical play are almost nonexistant. Here we have a hard job to do to make the out-door environment at school more attractive for 6-10-year-olds. In my book I discuss the physical demands for better possibilities for out-door play. In relation to the new reform many communities and schools have bought play apparatus from commercial firms, like climbing threes, slides, swings, carousels, without reading all the research reports which show that this costly apparatus occupies only a few children for a short time, when they are new. Most research shows that what children really need, is an out-door space divided into small corners with the help of plants, walls etc. to shape a safe environment and framed corners for small play groups to organize their own play. A lot of unstructured play materials is also necessary where they can form their own play environment.

The most important thing is to stimulate a «building playground», a Danish tradition I have tried to implement in many Norwegian schools. In my book I give some concrete examples. If there are 150 children 6-10-year-olds at school, you have to plan an area for 30 huts, 5 children per hut. The parents (or 13-16 years children at school) construct the skeletons for the huts, and reserve the building area for the children. Plain asphalt is fine building ground, because the «streets» then are ready beforehand! The children have to make a general plan: How to put 30 huts into that restricted area? I show one example of huts and one of town planning.

Cheap materials makes the cost of this «town» a minimum compared to the permanent, commercial play apparatus few children are not playing with at all. Here 30 groups of children can play both constructional play and role play at the same time. In the cross-subject thematic teaching that shall dominate for 6-10-year-olds, «Our town» would be a good theme for several months. Also the social learning has shown good results and bullying at school has been reduced. Most school subjects could be integrated in that theme. After three/four years the town has to be deconstructed and so the newcomers at school have to build their town. Much of the materials can then be used for a second time.

To expand the traditional physical/motorical play to be more than football, many schools try to make use of real trees and a natural environment combinated with ropes, climbing possibilities and so on. The third important area is «learning through landscape» movement, inspired from England (Titman 1994). This stimulates the biological/ecological thinking in children. A greater stress on these qualities will give better possibilities for children´s play. At last I have an example from the north of Norway about snow as play material. Two students in further education in 6-10-year-pedagogics showed that in their climate with snow 6-7 months of the school year, there are many possibilities to play with that free material. This is not developed before in a systematic way. For instance they used the material in a similar way as in modern concrete buildings, where the children with the help of formwork could could «mould concrete» with snow and make a perfect house with a pillar row in the front in 20 minutes! With snow as «concrete» they could strip the forms immediately. Afterwards the role play in the house started at once. Another group used a rectangular plastic bucket to form snowblocks to make a roman arch, the same principle for igloos, barrel roofs, gothical churchs etc. The children also made huge sculptures in snow, tunnels and holes etc. This project showed how to use the snow systematically to stimulate diverse playing over a long time, and not only as a «happening» some times.

8. Local innovations. Inspiration for new ones?

I have already mentioned some of these projects. In our further education in 6-10 year-pedagogics students shall make a little research experiment and project innovation from a special area within 6-10 year pedagogics at free choice, say into language, mathematics, music, cross-subject themes etc. The last 3-4 years more and more students have chosen something about play in primary school. About fifty students have made small projects documented in reports of 20-30 pages. Many of them have been most useful for me in writing this book, and this chapter should also function as an inspiration for different schools to start new projects at their own school.

9. Does play pay? Experiences from other countries.

The revolution in Norway with our new national curriculum saying that play now shall have a dominating place for the first four years in primary school, is a political compromise.To get political accept for lowering school start, originally to begin the academical training at an early age, Parliament had to write the programme for the lowest level in a radical «playful» tone. Many people now ask anxiously: Does play pay? We have no answer, because we have not tried this programme in practice yet. I think this radical pedagogical experiment should be followed by a huge evaluation research programme for the coming 5 year period, to show to what degree this programme is realized, and what effect this has also on the academic learning. Because we have little Norwegian research about play in school, in the following I concentrate on spread experiences from other countries.

England has a long tradition for informal education and learning-centered play as the dominating method. As we know, with Thatcher´s policy and the Education Act 1988, formal academic learning in English and mathematics, and testing of the level were favoured, and the informal education was reduced. But the results now show that the level in English and mathematics has been lowered, when the school stressed more formalized teaching in these subjects in school (Pollard 1994, Galton 1995). In addition social problems and bullying in school expanded.. England is an interesting example as to what happens if you reduce play and playful learning i school.

Austria went the opposit way. The Wienna play programme in school (Hartmann 1988) led to a revision of the National curriculum of 1987, which was the most «playful» curriculum in Europe, before Norway´s new national curriculum 1997! I now use Hartmann´s research as a good argument for why also the Norwegian curriculum may give good results in creativity, social collaboration, and that they possibly will reach the same level in their academic study as the non-play classes before 1997 in Norway! But we have no Norwegian research yet to show that this is true.

In Portugal Pessanha´s (1995) convincing research showed that the drop-out percent in mathematics and language was heavily reduced after introducing her play programme in school.

Denmark has for 25 years had the 6-year-olds in separate classes at school, with their preschool teachers. During the eighties Denmark tried to bridge the gap between this preschool class and 1. and 2. year at school. Preschool teachers and classroom teachers for the 7- and 8-year-olds built a team to make a common teaching programme for the 6-8 year-olds for 20-50% of the total time in school. Workshop pedagogics, and a combination of practical and theoretical/academic subjects was preferred, and much structured constructional and role play as working method, within a common theme which lasted for 1-3 months. This strategy has been inspiration for the Norwegian reform. Evaluation research showed that these children just like the Austrian were more creative, better in cooperation, wrote more intersting stories, liked school and reached the same level in academical studies as the control group.

From Arizona I refer to the «early literacy» movement (Christie 1995). His language programme based on role play in language stimulating play corners is documented to give good effects on academic level in language.

So, does play pay?

I think the Norwegian «play revolution» for 6-10-year-olds in school have possibilities to become a success, on one condition: All teachers/preschool teachers for these children must have a thorough training in play pedagogics. My book and other literature in the same area is intending to help. Our national curriculum says that the Norwegian school shall foster the meaning-seeking, creative, hardworking, allround educated, cooperative , mileu-conscious human being. All these parts should together become the integrated human being. In my opinion the most integrated human being is HOMO LUDENS.

Play is culture creation and a necessary fundament for learning in primary school.

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