Can just 'play' be enough?

I hope that you have all had a lovely week refreshing and recharging and thinking about some things other than school!
I have just come back from a week of science conferencing in Christchurch listening to educators, teachers and those of us interested in the world of science education. It was a fantastic week and I am particularly heartened to see the move towards the nature of science and the science capabilities at a secondary school level. I think it's important that there's a strong continuity from our Y7/8 science programmes to secondary and having a focus on the nature of science is one way we can be supporting this.

Canterbury Museum model of Scott Base (one of my Bucket List places!)... the machine in the top right hand corner seems a little bit out of place!

Whilst I was there, I had the chance to visit the Canterbury Museum which was next door. Lots to see and do and I had to go back to see stuff I had missed the first time! Anne Barker came with me on one of the visits and we walked around the science interactive centre with about a hundred very noisy children! The focus was on light and space and there were quite a few different activities for students to participate in. Anne and I were leading a workshop the next day on 'play-based learning in science' so we were interested to see if children were thinking scientifically as they were playing independently.
My own feeling is that, even though we're wanting children to play/explore/discover on their own, it does need some teacher input in terms of questioning to support children to be curious, to want to investigate further. Without this teacher input, I think that students may become bored, not understand the activity and simply move on to the next quick buzz! I don't so much mean that teachers should be asking the hard science questions (that could be for lesson two instead) but simply enabling that sense of wonder and thinking to support the next session's more scientific focus.
It was interesting watching the students as they moved from exhibit to exhibit -many were simply pushing buttons, spinning dials and then running onto the next one. There didn't seem any effort to investigate the purpose of the exhibit or any wondering as to what they were seeing. At one stage, Anne did ask some questions and the child suddenly became more interested as she challenged their thinking as to what was happening.



I know there are those students who are well able to learn in these environments but I think that the majority of the students need those questions and wonderings from us, the teachers to enable a deeper questioning, awe and wonder. There are a few places like the Canterbury Museum around -the Telecom roadshow, MoTaT in Auckland and the Exscite in Hamilton. There's also lots of activities that children can simply 'do' from the internet that produces a 'wow' and that's the end! I was talking to a teacher last term who wanted to do a particular activity because the kids would love it. Of course, that's fine but is there a chance that we could grow the activity further?

At the Antarctic Centre... and yes of course all those penguins are real!

Something this year that I have been focusing on is the idea of a lesson having a part one "play" with teacher support and students simply exploring and then a second lesson with more of a scientific bent -how do we observe, gather data, form ideas behaving like scientists?. This could then be extended further with children investigating some questions and ideas and then sharing back with the class later. Visiting the Museum and watching the children at play really emphasised to me the need for those rich questions, modelling good thinking (as Anne did with the child) and growing that wonder.

I found this on Facebook and thought that there were some interesting ideas here that could be discussed further at a team meeting. It's more geared towards the younger children (I think it might even be ECE) but good for a discussion!

Keep on sciencing and do comment below!
Paul