Play-based learning is of growing interest in many English-medium primary schools throughout Aotearoa New Zealand. I share my insights from researching play as learning, and supporting teachers with curriculum design and pedagogy in play-based contexts. Although play is a slippery concept and its value often underestimated, the evidence of the ...

Play is very “on trend” in the primary sector, but is it a suitable pedagogy for secondary students? Based on research into play-based learning in a Year 11 English class, this article provides an overview of play theory, describes a typical play-based lesson in Year 11 English, considers three different ...

Teachers have an important role to play in supporting and facilitating play-based learning for their students. This study aimed to explore one teacher’s understanding about her own intentionality within a play-based new-entrant classroom. Using observation and interview with video-stimulated recall, and key themes about play-based practice and intentional teaching were ...

This case study explores child, parent, teacher, and school-leader perspectives of a play-based learning (Pb-L) approach in one new-entrant classroom. Data were gathered through focus groups, interviews and an online survey. Findings indicate that children valued the opportunity for self-initiated, hands-on, interest-based exploration and social interaction with peers, as afforded ...

This commentary aims to encourage a research-based, critical, inquiring approach to the development of play-based learning in primary schools. I suggest that this approach could build from the wealth of knowledge in the early childhood education sector. I also invite greater collaboration between early childhood and primary teachers, particularly to ...

Over the past 7 years I have dramatically changed my pedagogy in a quest to engage junior primary students in deep, authentic learning. This article concentrates on how I have come to support junior primary students to learn to write. It explains how I developed play-based learning through the books ...

A number of converging issues provided the impetus for 12 schools in the Western Bay of Plenty to form a support network to explore and develop play-based learning for the first years of school. This article discusses what has influenced our play-based learning approach and gains we have observed as ...

This article reflects on a school’s approach to gamifying the Royal Society Te Apārangi’s First CREST Award. The article explains how CREST was reconceived as a quest using elements of live action role playing (LARP) and gamification, and the tools that were used to do this. It describes how progress ...

Digital games are responsible for turning my pedagogical practice on its head and landing me in New Zealand. My journey down the digital games “rabbit hole” started in 2007. Not having a map to follow ended up being revolutionary as I learnt to follow the learning. I describe four important ...

We are co-teachers at Rototuna Junior High School with expertise in music and digital technologies respectively. We share our experiences of using digital-game development as the context for our integrated learning module called Sound Bytes. We hope to inspire other teachers to develop their own innovative and integrated curriculum design ...