Shiloh Valley Primary puts purpose behind play

A puppet sat in a child’s lap as classmates gathered around a book.

Across the room, two kindergarteners arranged colorful pieces of pretend food on a table, taking turns and deciding what belonged on their imaginary menu. At another station, two students scooped sand into a bucket while a teacher leaned in beside them, talking through what they were creating.

The classroom was busy. It was colorful. And it was full of conversation.

It was also a place where learning was happening everywhere.

This year, Shiloh Valley Primary School is bringing play-based learning into its kindergarten classrooms, giving students more opportunities to explore, communicate, create and apply what they are learning through hands-on experiences.

“It’s purposeful play,” Principal Lindsay Williams said. “We can already see how this is going to help their self-regulation skills, their executive functioning skills and really allow them more opportunity to engage with their oral language skills.”

The shift grew out of a question the school had been asking for several years: What does learning need to look like for its youngest students?

Through their work with kindergarteners, staff saw an opportunity to give them more time and space for hands-on learning. The school began looking for another way.

The Shiloh Valley team researched play-based learning, connected with other districts already using the approach and participated in professional learning through the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction’s Office of Early Learning.

That preparation helped teachers build a structure for the new way of learning, from arranging learning centers and introducing students to the different areas to observing how children interact and progress.

It also helped clarify something important: Play-based learning does not mean teachers step back and let children do whatever they want.

Teachers are intentional about what they put into each center and how they engage with students as they play.

Kindergarten teacher Elizabeth Maramaldi said that was one of the biggest takeaways from the training.

“Sometimes people hear play and they're like, ‘Oh my goodness, this is going to be a free-for-all,’ when it's not that at all,” she said.

Consider a pretend ironing station.

A child may simply be copying something they have seen at home. But a teacher can turn that moment into a learning opportunity by asking whether the cloth is above or below the ironing board.

A simple question reinforces positional language without pulling the child away from an activity that already has their attention.

The same thing can happen at the block center.

A teacher might ask how tall a tower is, which of two towers is taller or shorter, or invite a child to give the structure a name.

In dramatic play, a pretend restaurant can become a place to practice writing, communication and problem-solving. Students might take orders, decide who will serve customers or work through disagreements about who gets which role.

Learning does not always announce itself.

Sometimes it looks like a child making a sandwich out of plastic food.

Sometimes it sounds like two children negotiating over what to play.

And sometimes it is a teacher asking a simple question that encourages a child to think a little deeper.

“We still have our plan, but it's really neat to be able to sprinkle it throughout learning centers in the classroom,” Maramaldi said. “And really see the children make meaningful experiences out of it.”

Play-based learning does not replace direct instruction, either. It is for one hour each day.

Students continue to receive instruction in phonics, oral comprehension, science, social studies and other areas throughout the school day. The play-based portion gives them another opportunity to practice and extend those skills in ways that connect to their everyday experiences.

For Maramaldi, who holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in early childhood education, that balance feels like a natural fit for kindergarten.

“At five years old, we want them to have that curiosity and come to school excited and ready to learn,” she said.

As students work together, they also have opportunities to communicate, share, take turns and solve problems. Teachers can model how to navigate those interactions and help children work through challenges when they arise.

This approach also creates additional opportunities for oral language development in Shiloh Valley’s dual-language kindergarten classrooms. Kindergarten students in separate-setting classrooms participate as well, either in their own classrooms or alongside their peers in general education classrooms.

And the learning does not have to stop when students leave school.

One of the school’s goals this year is to incorporate play-based learning into family engagement events. Parents and caregivers will have opportunities to see how the approach works and receive simple tools, such as sentence frames and handouts, that can help them use similar strategies at home.

The school is not asking families to recreate a kindergarten classroom at home. Instead, it wants parents to recognize that everyday activities can become opportunities to talk, ask questions, explore ideas and build skills together.

That could mean sorting laundry by color or size, counting items while grocery shopping, talking through the steps of making breakfast or asking a child to predict what might happen next in a favorite book.

Back in the classroom, the centers are becoming familiar territory. Students are learning the routines, making choices and discovering what happens when they turn an idea into something they can see, touch or share with a classmate.

Teachers are learning, too, looking at familiar activities through a different lens and watching for opportunities to extend a child's thinking.

Maramaldi is looking forward to seeing where those moments lead as the year progresses.

“I’m most excited to really see the children learn through play and engage through meaningful experiences,” she said. “It’s really neat to kind of watch them create, explore, problem-solve and build on their academic as well as social skills.”

Then she summed up what may be the simplest explanation for why the approach works.

“They still get to be five years old.”