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Running Head: UNIT PAPER 4

Lindsay Irwin

Art 133

10/19/2017

Unit Paper 4

The word play is defined and brought to life in everyday living. I think of play as

having fun by using your imagination or allowing yourself to enjoy moments and be

silly doing so. To play is to act out and be willful, exultant and committed as if one

assured of ones prospects (Sutton-Smith as cited in Pink, 2006, P. 187). Often we

relate the word play with children so naturally it is very easy for children to

understand the concept of play when incorporating it into other school concepts.

Szekely in depth discussed about how one could test the world through play.

Through play children begin to discover their future in art; they test potential tools,

surfaces, and find new perspectives (Szekely, 2011, P.133). This is a great use of

how the big idea play can be tied in with the 21st century art approach of choice

based learning in the classroom for students.

Choice based learning is focused on allowing the learner to pick the best method

that will help them to understand the topic or to complete the task. This is my

favorite way to teach children in any topic of life. Showing a child many different

ways to solve a problem and letting them choose which way will result in a higher

percentage outcome of educated students. In the classroom the teacher could use
Running Head: UNIT PAPER 4

play and choice based learning constantly, keeping the lesson fun with options, but

still structured with an overall direction in mind. For example, if the teacher is

discussing addition in kindergarten he or she could have stations set up with

different materials to be used to solve the problems. One station could have plastic,

mini teddy bears, where students add them together to solve the math problems.

Another station could have worksheets and pencils to solve the problems, lastly

there could be a station with iPads and mathematic addition problems on them.

Children can choose what station they want to go to or try them all out and then

decided which they liked best. Learners choice approach can be used in endless

concepts in all grades. This concept teaches children that in life there are many

ways to deal with a situation and not everyone will handle it the same. I feel that in

order to do this with the younger grades that I want to teach, we would have to go

over what the overall goal for the lesson is, but how ever they want to reach that

goal is up to them. In art we could make musical instruments with many materials

for use. This lesson would fall under play and choice based learning.
Running Head: UNIT PAPER 4

References

Pink, D. (2006). A whole new mind: Why right-brainers will rule the future. New York,
NY: The
Berkeley Group.

Szekely, G. (2011). Testing the world through play and art. In D. B. Jaquith & N. E.
Hathaway
(Eds.), The learner directed classroom: Developing creative thinking skills
through art
(pp. 64-76). New York, NY: Teachers College Press

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