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Can a game help you learn ? | |
For many of us, the word «game» seems to mean the contrary of the word «work». And who says work says seriousness: work is serious. And yet, aren't we serious when we play ? The player is completely taken by the game and he must be concentrated and pay attention if he wants to win or succeed. Look at how serious children are when they play. A little girl will be very «serious» when playing with a doll. So games and seriousness can perfectly well cohabitate. Games and learning are indissociable. You always learn something, be it throwing a ball, dressing a doll, building a Lego vessel or learning the rules of card games. The real question is this one : can a game help with learning in school ? Indeed for many people, school is synonymous with work. Can you play in a place where you have the feeling that all you do is work ? Can games and work go together ? Work is essential for whatever you learn, be it in school, in music or in sports. However, for the last two, the feeling of working is different because they are often close to leisure or games. In school, children learn English (conjugation, spelling, reading, grammar rules...), mathematics (arithmetic and geometry), history, geography, science and foreign languages, as well as arts. This means they must learn a lot of things in a short period of time. And the days seem long to them (in France children get out of school between 4 and 5 pm). So a game is a very welcome break. To them, to play means you don't work. But you always learn something. Teachers look for games that make children use what they have learned during their lessons, but that also have a fun side and aren't stressful like school is. Of course, some games can be stressful because they require lots of concentration, memory or speed, or all three. But the stress is different. In this case, it's about winning and children are going to concentrate hard, which is sometimes difficult to get from them during worktime. A game can be an excellent way of learning school work. Indeed, it's not graded so there is no stress due to grades. Here a mistake is not sanctioned with a grade and few players win without making the slightess mistake. For a game like Addi Cat's, the mistake is when a player makes a mistake in an addition. Of course, according to the rule, he receives the upturned cards of his opponents, and so has less of a chance of winning by giving away all his cards. But the impression of the player is not the same. And the next time, having understood his mistake, he will pay attention so he doesn't have to pick up all the upturned cards a second time. A mistake can also be noticed by another student who then tells his opponents and explains why it's a mistake. The teacher can be there only as an observer. A game also gives interactivity between students. For instance, take games like Ortho Cat's with the «One for all» rule where the teacher reads the sentence and all the students must hit on the right ending. There is a lot more interactivity then if the teacher simply asks a student for the answer. The equivalent of the «One for all» rule would be the chalk board game, where all the students must write the right answer as fast as possible and show their chalk board to the teacher. A game is also a way to see how students react between each other. All the players must respect the rules of the game, and also respect the other players, which means be good players. So a game is also a way to learn how to behave well. You can sometimes learn more about a student by playing a game with him for an hour than through 6 months of school. Games are very important in speech therapy. Indeed, children have already spent a whole day in school and they don't want to do the same thing over again. So speech therapists use games in order to keep them interested and to keep them learning. But children have to think the games are really fun. And if the child likes the game, then for him it's fun and not considered work. In Junior High School, games should have a more important place than they usually have. Indeed, it's a way of getting children interested again in subjects they use to completely dislike,as well as a way to come back on difficult notions which were not understood. It's up to the teacher to find the right game. The Cat's Family games were created particularly to help children with problems. Ask students. All of them would prefer learning with games. Of course, there are limits : you can't learn everything without doing exercises and without memorizing your lessons. Teachers must check you have learned your lessons properly and must have grades to decide on the level of the students. But a game is perfect to correct mistakes or to check what you have learned. It would be interesting to develop educational games for all subjects to offer another way of learning languages, science or arts. In my opinion for learning french as a foreign language, games are very useful. The students are indeed older but not much more motivated by exercises only. |
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