Play - Debrief - RePlay

I love the instructional method play-debrief-replay explained in the book Serious Players in the Primary Classroom. Selma Wasserman explains play-debrief-replay as "providing opportunities for creative, investigative play, followed by helping children to reflect on their play experiences and then encouraging them to build on earlier experiences through replay."

During the “play” the teacher simply observes, it is not until the debriefing stage that the teacher takes an active role, facilitating reflection. Wasserman says, “the teacher uses the play experience as a basis for promoting reflection and increasing children’s understanding of the ‘big ideas’.”

As we’re learning about how to take care of our bodies, specifically by eating healthy foods, we tried this out and it was a lot of fun! I dumped a bin of play food out on the carpet and let my kiddos go!

As they were playing and exploring, they engaged in some interesting dramatizations. The picture below, showing three boys was an especially interesting conversation. The little boy in the middle said, “You have to eat this orange, it will make you have lots of energy and when you have lots of energy you can run fast, faster than a cheetah!” The little boy on the left replied, “But I don’t like oranges, I want to eat this ice cream cone, it’s my favorite!” The little boy on the right said, “Go ahead, but you won’t be as fast as us!”

After playing, we paused and had a whole group discussion about the foods. Then we read The Edible Pyramid by Loreen Leedy. We discussed the different food groups on the pyramid and how much you should consume of each group.

Then we re-played with the food. Th kiddos were putting the food into groups according to the pyramid and engaging in more dramatizations. One little girl said, “Do you really need butter on your waffles? Butter is from the bad group, it won’t make you healthy!”

I sent students back to their seats where they had plates of food from each of the categories on the food pyramid.

Before students could take a bite of their yummy snacks, they had to wait for my instructions. I would say, “You can now eat the thing on your plate from the dairy group! Should you eat a lot of this or just a little bit to stay healthy?” and continued for each of the food groups. It was a great way to see if they understood how foods were grouped and what foods were the healthiest. Quite possibly the most fun check for understanding we’ve done in a long time!