A 'Journey' into Loose(ish) Parts Play / NLP through Storytelling

Before I get into the unit, I would like to thank Zack Smith (@mrzackpe) for the inspiration to attempt to use storytelling as a provocation for learning in PE. In addition, the wonderful Tracy Tuttosi (@Readervator), for making sense of my babble, in helping me select a book for the unit. 

The What: 

• For students to learn how to play together (listening to the ideas of others, advocating for oneself, resolving conflict, inclusion etc.) 
• To cultivate student creativity and imagination 

Assessment Outcomes

• Demonstrates leadership & teamwork 
• Demonstrates self-management
• Actively engages in learning experiences. 

The How 

• Aaron Becker's "Journey" is a picture book that 'tells' the story of a young girl who is lonely and has no one to play with. She finds a red crayon, that she uses to draw a door into a world of her imagination. 
• Using a combination of loose parts and regular PE equipment (in a non-traditional way), students will engage in collaborative play in re-creating scenes from the characters imaginative 'journey', as well as create scenes of their own.  
• Attempt to apply principles of non-linear pedagogy to engage students in development of various locomotor skills.  This is a new area of learning for me, much of which has been influenced by the work of James Rudd & colleagues

The Why 

• Learning how to advocate, resolve conflict and listen to one another is an important part of being able to play in a variety of environments such as recess or within the community. In reflection, I find the way I've traditionally approached this to be teacher-centered / controlled and not reflective of how students would engage with each other outside of class. 
• The desire to build/imagine/create is something that is innate/intrinsic to young children (I thinks so at least - didn't we all love building forts?). I believe this connects with Kretchmar's conceptions of joy/delight. In addition, due to the socially interactive nature of play, I hoped that through democratic practices found in this unit, these features would work together to facilitate a meaningful experience for students in the class. 

Lesson 1 

• ​We introduced the book, and went over the first pages which introduce us to the character. We talked about how the character (whom we named 'Annie') was feeling and made connections to times we may have felt the same as her. (SEL Connection)
• ​When Annie first uses her red marker, she draws a door with enters into a forest, which was our first scene. 
  • Which animals have you seen in the forest? How do they move?  You'll notice in the video that students have their own ideas of which animals move in which ways
  • Variations of Animal Tag / Grasshoppers, Shrew, Falcon were played

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Lesson 2 

• As you can see in the photo, I built an arch out of red pool noodles to represent the door into our imaginary word. Before entering, the students came up with essential agreements that they would uphold when stepping through the red door. 
• We continued with the story, as Annie comes through the forest to a river, where she draws the a boat. 
• Students used the equipment provided (a mix of loose and 'traditional parts") and were tasked with creating a boat. The only instructions for the boat were that every one in their group needed to be able to be on the boat. 

Lesson 3

• During this lesson we introduced the first of our 'assessment criteria' which was listening respectfully to the ideas of others. We discussed as a class what that means and what it might look like. 
• From the previous lesson, the story continues where Annie's bought takes her to a castle. Students task was to work together to build a castle.
• After they completed the castle, we talked about who lived in castle? Students identified Kings, Queens, Soldiers as well as some mythical animals. Students had to create a frozen pose that represented one of those figures. We then played a game called 'Castle Guard' (similar to to Wax Museum) for the Castle Guard was an inspector looking for students moving. 
• At the end of the class, students used a sticker to self assess themselves on whether they were respectful listeners or not. 

Lesson 4-7

• For brevity's sake, we continued to follow the story for a number of lessons. When Annie rides a hot air balloon to leave the castle, we used the parachute to get every student underneath so we could fly away. When Annie rode a magic carpet to escape the cage she ended up in we rode on yoga mats. On the right, you'll see some of the student self-assessment on components of playing together. 

In one particular lesson, Annie rescues a purple bird (my students insist it was a phoenix) from a cage by passing along a bridge. Students use loose(ish) parts to make a series of bridges to retrieve the laminated birds I stuck to the wall. This problem solving task resulted in a various solution involving asymmetrical balance. 

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Lesson 8

• ​The book ends, by Annie discovering the aforementioned purple bird actually belongs to a boy, whom she befriends. We discussed as a class, how can we can be good friends to one another, but also that friendship will occasionally involve conflict. 
• Succumbing to the student requests, students had a choice of which scenes they wanted to revisit, some wanted to use the parachute again (hot-air balloon), others wanted to get back on the carpet while others had a new conception of a fort or castle they wished to create.  

Lesson 9

• Now that the story had ended with Annie finding her new friend, we discussed some journeys they might go on together (this actually continues in Beckers' sequels, Quest and Return but we did not read those). We took the opportunity to go outside, and using sand buckets / avalanche shovels either built up the walls of an igloo or made a mini-castles.

Lesson 10

• Connecting back to one our assessment outcomes of "demonstrates leadership & teamwork", students were provided the opportunity to work in groups and design their own journey scene. In the following lesson, students would take turns as leaders, directing other students in the class to help them build their 'scene'. 

Lesson 11-12

• As mentioned above, the final two days were devoted to the student creations. For example, on the first day, Group 1 would lead in the creation of their scene, with Group 2 in support, and the next day they would switch roles. Prior to beginning we discussed as a class ideas about what a good leader and a good supporter would do. At the end of class we discussed the challenges of each. 

Lesson 13 - Student Reflection 

• Finding ways to help young learners articulate their experience can be quite challenging (for me, anyways). At the end of the unit, we had a couple class discussions: 
  • How might our experience in Journey transfer to the real world? 
  • What did you like / dislike about the experience? 
• In addition, I had students complete a word association 'survey', in which upon reflection they circle words that they associated with this unit. This serves a couple different purposes, including expanding their vocabulary when it comes to describing experience (more than just 'fun') as well as connect to some of the vocabulary we've built in previous units. The frequency in which the words were selected are summarized in the table below. 

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My Personal Reflection 

In my (biased) opinion, this was the most authentic attempt to guide students to learn to play together that my students have been apart of (I've only been teaching ES for 2 years so take that with a grain of salt). Due to the imaginative nature of the task, it was difficult to tell students exactly what to do, how to do it or roles to take.  It was their creation of an idea presented from a picture book that due to resource availability, required group consensus and collaboration to bring to life.  To me, the student drawings for the final task look like a bunch of scribbles on a page, but they were none the less able to articulate their vision to one another, where I would have been pretty useless at that task. Additionally, students who I would identify as being somewhat difficult to engage during other units became very eager to contribute to the group project. Early on, students would ask me for help, to lift a mat or to put a tarp roof on, and I remained fairly consistent in suggesting they ask a classmate for help. Over time students began to approach me less and less, and I rarely intervened unless something was becoming unsafe or a conflict escalated. 

I was pleased with the student responses in their reflection, and not just the positives -  but also that 'frustration' was prevalent for a lot of students, and that they were able to separate that from other negative emotions.  Frustration is normal, and led to a lot of rich discussions about how it can feel when someone doesn't agree with our ideas, or when we aren't sure exactly what we have been instructed to do by the 'leader'. This led to more discussion about how to cope with frustration. 

I am interested in learning more about non-linear pedagogy and was really intrigued in parts of the lesson where students moved in response to the provocation of the book. For example, when students build their idea of a bridge to retrieve the bird (or to cross the sea from one fort to another), students end up naturally working on their balancing skills and problem solving in an asymmetrical environment without me explicitly instructing them to do so.  However that was only a few of the lessons and even thought I understand the holistic aims of PHE there is still a part of me that wonders if I should focus more on the acquisition of skills through this unit.