Play Debrief Replay

Teaching Method

Play Debrief Replay

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PLAY DEBRIEF REPLAY

Background

This teaching method was developed by Drs. Wassermann and Ivany. (Yes, this is the Dr. Ivany who was the president of the University of Saskatchewan. Did you know he used to be a science teacher?) Both Wassermann and Ivany were working at Simon Fraser University at the time they developed the method and wrote Teaching Elementary Science: Who's Afraid of Spiders? This book has the play / debrief / replay method clearly described, as well as the theory behind it. More importantly, more than half the book describes different play / debrief / replay activities.

In this section on background, I will discuss play, thinking, sciencing, and my experiences using this inquiry teaching method. Although I discuss play, thinking, and sciencing specifically in this method, it applies to the other methods, and especially to the inquiry ones.

Play:

Wassermann and Ivany write that their teaching strategy is oriented towards the "creation of investigative play centers to promote inquiry and higher-order thinking skills in the area of science" (p. 52). They argue that play is an excellent opportunity for children to learn from personal experience. Two of the most influential educators in the United States, John Dewey and Jerome Bruner, both argued that play was important for children's development. Bruner reported the results of experiments:

The group of children who had the opportunity to engage in previous free play with creative materials were better prepared to solve the subsequent problems that experimenters presented to them than were the groups of children who were (a) allowed to handle, but not play with the materials; (b) were only shown the principles underlying the solutions by an adult@ (Wassermann and Ivany, p. 17-18).

Consider children playing with driftwood on a beach, making themselves a ramp to launch themselves into the sand. While doing this, the children learn that having two children on the ramp at once moves the log grounding the ramp. Later, these children, along with children who have not played on the beach, are all told about levers. The children who have played with the driftwood will be able to make connections the other children can't. You, as a teacher, should be providing as many experiential opportunities for your students as you can.

Thinking:

But play is not all that is involved in learning. If it were, the children from the beach would not require any teaching about levers. And they do. They will not even necessarily connect levers to their activity. They will likely make a subconscious connection, but this cannot really be considered true learning. The students must also be thinking. You have probably heard of Bloom's taxonomy of thinking; that there are six different levels of thinking from mere memorization through to evaluation. The higher levels of thinking require the students to analyze what they have learned, to make connections between ideas, to make decisions based on evidence. Louis Raths, quoted on page 21 in Wassermann and Ivany noted that children who have not been invited to engage in higher level thinking are characterized by:

extreme impulsiveness (moving into action before thinking about what is to be done); very dogmatic behavior (insisting one’s idea is right even in the presence of contradictory evidence); rigidity in their ideas (the inability to connect means with ends; and inability to comprehend ("I don't get it!"); an inability to take the next step, remaining dependent on the teacher for direction ("I'm stuck. What shall I do now?"); and a lack of confidence in their ability to put forth new ideas.

Sciencing:

Wassermann and Ivany would like children to be sciencing, rather than studying science. They characterize the traditional mode of studying science to be memorizing words and facts. They want children to be playing and thinking. They say that sciencing involves:

making predictions, setting up an experimental design in which hypotheses are tested, gathering data, making observations, examining results and evaluating their validity. In sciencing, the emphasis is on finding out. We don't look for answers we already know.

Sciencing calls upon the ability to use several higher order thinking skills: observing; comparing; suggesting and testing hypotheses; gathering and classifying data; interpreting and evaluating results. We would like to suggest that science plus thinking equals sciencing.

My Experiences:

I have used play/debrief/replay at all age levels, with all kinds of students. As long as the materials are safe, the students will be active, will be excited about learning, and will be learning.

As described under the section on inquiry, play-debrief-replay is a particular kind of inquiry. It is very student directed. To compensate for the degree of student direction, Dr. Wassermann prefers all the debrief to be carried out in one large group with all comments to be directed at the teacher and re-interpreted by the teacher. I prefer students to discuss amongst themselves and to have smaller groups at least for a time, so that all students can talk. Consequently, my description of the discussion (debrief section) of play / debrief / replay is a little different than the true model. (When I want all student comments to go by me for my interpretation, I have the students write. That way, all students have their say, and each child will have my focussed attention for a short while.)

Practicalities

As described in the page on inquiry, you must first decide on the materials and collect them. Since this has already been addressed, I will not address it here. For this particular model, the three stages are the Play, the Debrief, the Replay.

Stage 1: Establishing your groups:

Put your students into groups. Consider which students are likely to work well together. When I set up groups, I like to have a balance of:

intellectual ability. Don't put all the high achievers into one group. Don't make the spread too great though. The highest achieving student should be placed with two moderate achievers.

a balance of social ability. As above. Spread the social ability around but not too much. As the year progresses, expand the groups so the most liked will be placed with the child that the other students rejected at the beginning of the year. The reason is that, by mid year, your students shoul have learned the social skills you are teaching. Also, by now you should be able to expand your intellectual groupings, since all students will have more experiences and will be thinking.

and a balance of genders. Boys and girls need to learn that other sex is not ichy, and they need to learn how to get along. Generally, boys and girls have different social norms, which leads to different overt behaviours. Both boys and girls will behave differently in mixed groups, and will be more able to be "themselves".

Stage 3: Debrief:

Call your students to debrief. Have them leave their materials for this part of the strategy. If they are still near their materials, they will still be playing, and they should be focussing on what their peers have to say about what they have learned.

This time should be a safe time for all students. All students should be able to describe what they have learned without anyone else making a judgement on what they observed. When students tell their peers what they have observed, you can comment by reflecting the comments back to the individual or to another student. For example, if one student tells you that she saw the bran jump up to the balloon, but when another balloon was put near it, the bran jumped to the other balloon. You could reflect the comment back to the student by asking why the student thought the bran jumped, or you might redirect the comment to "Ian, I saw your group doing something similar with the bran. What did you learn about the bran and the balloon?"

Wassermann and Ivany do not suggest that students discuss with one another how they have interpreted their observations. I think this can be a very useful aspect of having students make their own decisions. I encourage students to engage in respectful debate. If one student suggests the bran jumps from one balloon to another because the bran would rather be near a red balloon, and another student has a different interpretation, I encourage the student who disagrees to tell the other student that s/he disagrees and to explain what s/he thinks and why. I teach the students the conversational skill of arguing, and of agreeing. They should build on what others have said. They say things like "I saw the same thing that ... described, but I think a different reason than ..." Or, they can say "I agree with what ... says, but I would like to add just a bit to that explanation." If students learn respectful words for debate, they will engage in respectful debate. And that can only enhance their thinking, their sciencing, and their control of their own learning.

Stage 4: Replay:

Wassermann and Ivany suggest that the replay take place in the next science period, perhaps the next day, perhaps in two days. The way I do this is that I have the students write what they have learned after the play / debrief. I read their writing, and return it to them. After the students have had a chance to read their writing and my comments, I present the materials to them again. Hopefully, they will come up with explanations more consistent with the science concepts in their replay, as they investigate some of the comments I have made.

Wassermann and Ivany suggest that you give your students a more specific and more challenging goal for the replay than you gave them for the play. This more specific and challenging goal will address some of the issues that arose in the debrief. For example, two students might have interpreted events differently. The whole class might be challenged to determine what they think is the correct answer.

Of course, after the replay, you will have another debrief. And for me, after the debrief, my students will rewrite their experiment, in a second draft, addressing some of the questions I posed for them.

Hints:

Tell your students what your pedagogical reasons are for using this teaching strategy, and what you expect them to learn. For this teaching strategy, you expect them to learn how to hypothesize and test their hypotheses, as well as expecting them to make interesting observations.
Choose materials that are easy to obtain and inexpensive. Ideally, you will not have to construct any. Some great lesson plans are never carried out because collecting and constructing the materials is too complex. So don't choose too ambitious a plan.
During and after each inquiry lesson, think of ways to modify the lesson so that it will go more smoothly. There might be some materials that are too messy to use. There might be some groupings of students that just don't work. There might be some activities that are better conducted with larger or smaller groups.
Check to see if your students enjoy the particular activity. If you find two years in a row (or two different groups of students) who don't like the activity, the activity needs modifying or rejecting.