Once a month, Le Devoir d’enseignement wants to offer enriching contributions, whether they come from researchers and practitioners in the education sector or from other people who have reflected on the state of our education system.
Fun teaching. Two words that, at first glance, seem contradictory. The first evokes learning, rigor, work and effort. The second evokes pleasure, play. What if learning could be a source of pleasure, happiness and pleasure?
We have to go back to early childhood to understand the importance and role of play. Play is the main tool through which the child learns. By playing, he discovers the world around him and acquires mastery over certain elements of his environment. It is therefore normal to think about integrating games into learning, regardless of the level of education.
However, due to our past in education where religious communities had control over programs, it is not easy to democratize education. It was not until the Parent report, in the 1960s, that the State was made responsible for education.
We are then witnessing a major movement of deconfessionalization or secularization in the world of education. We then see a somewhat timid open-mindedness on the part of teachers and management.
The taste for learning
I remember two original activities during my five years of high school. The first, in physics, where our teacher took us out of the class in small groups of ten students into the corridor to show us what a wave looked like that moved using a ten meter long spring. The second, in English, where the teacher made us listen to the song Hotel California in which we had to complete the words in a dictation with gaps.
For the first time, my teachers did original and fun activities that had meaning for me, and which made me want to attend these classes even more. I found these teachers very stimulating and original, they gave me the desire to learn and surpass myself while having fun.
During my university teaching training, in certain courses we had to create original activities and present them in the form of oral presentations. I was very interested in the situation of boys’ performance at school, the dropout rate and their motivation. So I decided to introduce games and quizzes that focused on sports.
I remember my first game made in mathematics, in which I recreated a baseball field (when the Expos were popular!) with two teams, where each question, with different degrees of difficulty, allowed the players to advance, if the answers were correct, by one goal, by two, by three and even by a home run! I had the chance to experiment with different games during my internships and found that they were very popular.
Reform
Then came, towards the end of the 1990s, the school reform which aimed to refocus the school on its primary mission which is to educate, socialize and qualify young people.
To do this, it is necessary to review the study programs in order to return to essential knowledge, to raise the cultural level of the programs and to avoid compartmentalizing knowledge. Teaching has moved from “the teacher at the center of the class” to “the student at the heart of his learning”. This new paradigm redefines teaching, sees the student as a whole in which we develop knowledge, skills and interpersonal skills.
Gone are the days when the teacher was content to only transmit knowledge. It is now necessary to implement and lead meaningful teaching and learning situations, taking into account the diversity of the students, organize and ensure a mode of operation of the group favoring the learning and socialization of the students, make educational differentiation, develop skills.
You will understand that due to the constitution of the “new” class, in which we find students who have special needs, students with intervention plans, students with an attention deficit, etc., this task becomes increasingly complex. It was also at the center of one of the main demands during the demonstrations and teachers’ strikes.
In this context, I believe that teaching must return to its base and allow the student, and the teacher, to have fun. This implies a teacher who is passionate about his subject and who has pedagogical autonomy. The game then becomes an opportunity to transmit knowledge, know-how and interpersonal skills.
Stimulate
Historically, the game has always generated interest. Martin Gardner comes to mind, who was known for creating and maintaining interest in recreational mathematics. Aren’t mathematicians the first to play with numbers, cards, dice, puzzles of all kinds? Because playing almost always means encountering and practicing mathematics.
We must also take into consideration the generation of social networks and online games in which our children are growing up. They spend a lot of time in front of screens, and interfaces change quickly. It becomes difficult for children to concentrate on a task for several minutes since they are used to quickly changing interfaces when they are no longer stimulated.
Playing in class allows you to maintain a higher level of interest, create connections (for team games) and learn while having fun. Think about the training you have already received in your workplace. I am convinced that you remember those where the facilitator was dynamic, used humor and had people do original and fun activities.
I see the same effect in my workplace. I think of the mathematics teacher of 5e secondary school which makes students draw self-portraits using mathematical formulas using software, to the French teacher of 3e secondary school which makes the mathematics teacher of 4th grade listen to and analyze texts from a Quebec rap group, then go see it perform during classes.e secondary school who measures the height of the school using mathematical concepts learned with a homemade theodolite and to the physics teacher who builds bridges using small wooden sticks and then tests their resistance with very high loads , all in the cafeteria in front of an impressive crowd.
Batman
For my part, I use a lot of review games that involve sports (with the Super Bowl in February and the Stanley Cup in May and June), music, holiday themes like Halloween, Christmas, St. Valentine, etc. My Batman activity involves setting up a rope that runs diagonally across the classroom from top to bottom, to which a Batman is attached on a pulley; Students must calculate how long it will take Batman to get to a monster that is located at the other end of the classroom.
Needless to say, the great interest aroused at the end of the lesson when I deployed Batman on his pulley to watch him cross the classroom and calculate the actual time it takes to reach the monster! My end game in June is for the students to pile up math books on the floor, with each correct answer, and watch the teacher skateboard over those books at the end of class (luckily, I have already competed skateboard when I was a teenager!).
All these activities, games and original situations allow you to learn while having fun and create bonds with the students. It is important, however, to understand that these activities must be carried out sparingly and must complement the material covered.
I believe that success lies in the balance of different teaching strategies, between lectures, team work, activities, exercises, homework and presentations. This allows students to develop knowledge, skills and attitudes in order to be able to succeed in a stimulating environment and to meet the challenges of their generation by becoming good, accomplished and fulfilled citizens.
Suggestions ? Write to Dave Noël: [email protected].