The job life and everyday life in the future pose challenges that require our children to develop new skills – 21st. Century Skills. We can cultivate those skills with play today and excel their academic performance in the process. Play is:
– autotelic and is intrinsically motivated
– play only occurs in a state of wellbeing and when positive emotions trigger a wider thought-and-action repertoire (Frederickson, B. L., 2002) ideal for problem solving.
– play is often in interaction with others and thus train social skills and solving conflicts.
– role-play requires self-control because the actors will have to agree on rules, props and when in play managing outbursts that are out of character.
In other words when children are in a guided play they are in the Zone of Proximal Learning (Vygotsky, 1967).
In this presentation I will introduce ways to work with play in the classroom and how to boost your students' academic performance.