How Do I Love Thee: Play

Play emerges quite frequently within my topic of figurative language, especially this semester. It is easy to simply have students sit back at their desks and read, but at what point will students become bored and disengaged with the work? As a language arts teacher, I have found it is important to include times to “play” as a means to engage students in the material in ways that are not necessarily traditional. I agree that “When rule bound work does not yield the insights or results we want to achieve, when conventional thought, behavior, and disciplinary knowledge become barriers to our goals, play provides a fun and risk-free means of seeing from a fresh perspective, learning without constraint, exploring without fear” (Sparks of Genius, pg.268). Play has emerged through center work, art projects, and role playing activities in my classroom; but I think the most important place that “play” occurs is on field trips. When students are given the chance to learn in a unique environment outside of the classroom, the possibilities for play are endless.

To me, play is about having fun while seeing things in a new way and ultimately gaining knowledge from the experience. It allows for students who are not always able to learn the traditional way to internalize the information through a means that works best for them. For my introductory activity I chose to create a Google Drive presentation derived from the annual fifth grade overnight field trip my class took this week. Each year, students visit Hard Bargain Farm in Accokeek, Maryland. It is a wonderful place to get away and learn something new on the shoreline of the Potomac River. The naturalists at the farm teach specialized classes to the students depending on the season, weather conditions, and other key factors. Lessons taught correlate with science, social studies, and math.

This year on the trip I planned to take the learning a step further. I did this by involving my students in mini lessons throughout our time spent on the farm. These short lessons focused on figurative language. According to Jean Piaget this type of play can be categorized as “symbolic play” which “fosters tools such as analogizing, modeling, play-acting, and empathizing by invoking a make-believe world where one thing stands for another” (Sparks of Genius, pg. 249). Although the farm is a real place, the examples of figurative language that were identified and used ask students to think about life on the farm in a very different way. We “played” with words as we created examples of similes, metaphors, personification, alliteration, onomatopoeia and hyperbole.

As an end result, I used photographs and discussions from the trip to create a presentation to share with my colleagues as well as students who were not able to attend the trip. My students this year are already well versed in figurative language, but this activity provided students with further reinforcement. In addition, I will be able to use this presentation as a way to introduce figurative language to students next year. New fifth grade students will also get a glimpse of what awaits them on the trip! This activity is meaningful because it allowed my class to play with words and phrases through exploration of life on the farm. I developed this activity as a way to share this amazing learning experience while relating it to figurative language on the farm. My work can be viewed by following the link below.

Playful Introduction to Figurative Language