Course | Let's Play! Teaching Strategies for Playful Learning

Prices

The price listed reflects the Individual Registration (educators joining as individuals to be placed on a virtual team). Other pricing options are available:

• Pair Registration - $385 for educators joining as part of a team of two (from the same organization) who will be placed on a virtual team with other teams of two (as attendance allows)
• Group Registration - $355 for educators joining as part of a team (three to six members from the same organization)

Financial aid is limited and awarded on a first-come, first-served basis, and typically covers 50-70% of a course's tuition for eligible educators. Applications must be submitted and accepted prior to registration.

For further information, please visit Project Zero website.

Date

April 5-May 2, 2027

Register by March 30, 2027

Instructor

Megina Baker has over twenty years of experience as an early childhood teacher, teacher educator, and education researcher, both in the United States and in Sweden. Megina holds a Ph.D. from Boston College in Curriculum and Instruction, and degrees from Tufts University and Cornell University in Early Childhood Education and Human Development, respectively. She is currently a Program Developer for the Boston Public Schools Department of Early Childhood, where she designs curriculum and professional learning for early childhood educators in Boston's Universal Pre-K programs—building on prior work with PZ colleague Ben Mardell in writing the integrated, play-based Focus on K2 curriculum.

Prior to joining BPS, Megina was Director of Teaching and Learning at Neighborhood Villages, a systems-change non-profit dedicated to supporting childcare programs in Boston, where she helped to co-design a teaching and learning support system and a playful curriculum for toddlers. A former faculty member at Boston University, Megina mentored student teachers in the Early Childhood program, taught courses on playful learning, early childhood curriculum, and pedagogical documentation, helped to found the BU Institute for Early Childhood Well-Being, and collaborated with former PZer Stephanie Cox Suarez to run the Documentation Studio. She is a former board member of the Boston Area Reggio-Inspired Network and sits on the Editorial Board of Voices of Practitioners, a National Association for the Education of Young Children journal focused on teacher research. Megina is co-author of several books: Children at the Center: Transforming Early Childhood Education in the Boston Public Schools; Reclaiming Accountability in Teacher Education; and A Pedagogy of Play: Supporting Playful Learning in Classrooms and Schools.

Co-Designers

1. Jennifer Oxman Ryan is a senior project manager and researcher on Project Zero’s Pedagogy of Play (PoP) initiative. Funded by the LEGO Foundation, PoP is engaged in playful participatory research methods to investigate playful learning and what it means to embrace play as a core resource for how children learn in school.

Jennifer has been with PZ since 2006, having worked previously on Agency by Design, The Good Play Project, and Qualities of Quality: Excellence in Arts Education and How to Achieve It. Her current research interests include play, arts and maker-centered education, school/community partnerships, and professional learning communities. She has published in various venues, and her recent book Maker-Centered Learning: Empowering Young People to Shape their Worlds was published by Jossey-Bass in 2016.

2. Ben Mardell is the former project director of the Pedagogy of Play, a collaboration with the LEGO Foundation and the International School of Billund, exploring how play can have a central part in children’s learning in school. Ben has been associated with Project Zero since 1999, initially as a researcher on the Making Learning Visible (MLV) project, and helped co-author Making Learning Visible: Children as Individual and Group Learners and Making Teaching Visible: Documentation of Individual and Group Learning as Professional Development. After continuing his work as a preschool and kindergarten teacher, Ben returned as a researcher on MLV and co-authored Visible Learners: Promoting Reggio-Inspired Approaches in All Schools. Ben publications include From Basketball to the Beatles: In Search of Compelling Early Childhood Curriculum and Children at the Center: Transforming Early Childhood Education in the Boston Public Schools. When not at PZ, Ben enjoys playing with his family and participating in triathlons.

Description

Discover the core principles and practices of playful learning—and design and try out a playful learning approach in your own context!

Play is central to how children learn. Yet incorporating it into a formal school setting can be challenging because the nature of play and the nature of school are often at odds. Engage with the core principles and practices of playful learning, and based on these ideas, develop your own "Indicators of Playful Learning." Then, design and try out a playful learning approach in your context. Receive feedback on your experience and how you can improve.

Overview

In this course, you'll engage in the following learning experiences:

• Consider the opportunities and challenges of incorporating play into the classroom
• Explore ways to bring more playful learning into your contexts through hands-on activities, illustrations from classroom and online practice, and experimenting with playful learning and teaching tools both online and in-person (when possible)
• Develop your own "Indicators of Playful Learning"
• Design (or redesign) a part of your practice, looking for ways to make it more playful and get feedback from your team
• Try out your designed/redesigned activity, then reflect and share with your team about how it went and possible next steps for improvement

Who Should Participate

Pedagogy of Play ideas are primarily designed for early childhood, elementary/primary, and middle school educators. There has been some adaptation in high school/secondary grade levels. This course would work well for:

• Teachers, teacher leaders, and school administrators and leaders from early childhood through the end of middle school grade levels
• Museum educators and educators working in informal learning environments
• Facilitators of early childhood through middle school grades

Time Commitment

Anticipate a workload of 2.5-3 hours per week for four weeks. The course provides 12 total hours of professional learning. During each session:

• Team Meeting: This 1-hour live, synchronous team meeting happens every week, scheduled and facilitated by the team members with PZ-designed agenda.
• Reading, Practice, and Assignments: Plan remaining time for reading and individual reflections/assignments. If you are not currently working in a school or educational organization, you will need a classroom context or a consistent group of students with whom you can try out/practice the ideas you are learning throughout the course.

Schedule

Each weekly session opens on a Monday and ends on a Sunday. Participants decide when to work on the course material and when to schedule their team meetings within each session.

• Session 1: April 5-April 11, 2027
• Session 2: April 12-April 18, 2027
• Session 3: April 19-April 25, 2027
• Session 4: April 26-May 2, 2027