Hi, my name is Jason McKenna. Welcome back to the VEX Studio. Welcome back to our series on the book "Hands On Minds On: How Executive Function, Spatial and Motor Skills, Foster School Readiness."

In the previous segments, we've talked about each of those foundational skills. We've discussed how they're connected to nonacademic skills, and we've also talked about how they're connected to math and literacy. In this segment, we are going to talk about guided play. We'll explore how, with Dr. Claire Cameron, you can actually apply everything that we've learned in your classroom situation. We'll discuss how guided play is really embedded into STEM pedagogy and how you can use everything we've talked about so far, providing you with practical tips on how to use this in your STEM classroom.

If you're enjoying this series and the discussion of this book, I would encourage you to purchase the book. You can visit the Teachers College Press website to get the book and use the code CAMERON to receive 15% off and free shipping.

So enjoy this section on Guided Play, and I'll see you again soon from the VEX Studio.

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All right, segment seven, Guided Play and Hands On Minds On Learning with our special guest, Clare Cameron. So what is guided play, and how is it different from free play? Let's start with play. In my book, there's a bullet list of different features of play, but there are a few key aspects: play is fun, it involves children being able to choose either the activity or some aspect of it, and it's active. It doesn't mean you're jumping up and down, but it's active in some way—hands on, minds on, as we've been discussing.

Guided play simply means that an adult is more involved in the learning process than in free play, where children are generally playing or exploring on their own, and adults are mainly there to ensure safety. So what is the importance of guided classroom play in the foundational cognitive skills of executive function, motor skills, and spatial skills? Adult guidance is crucial to help many children get the most out of a learning activity, to help them stretch beyond their current skills, and to encourage them not to stay in their comfort zone.

Executive function is exercised when we're confronted with novelty. Sometimes novelty is fun, sometimes it's challenging and uncomfortable. Not all children will naturally gravitate toward things that make them uncomfortable or things they don't know how to do yet. I'll never forget observing in a preschool classroom a child who clearly wanted to play with Play-Doh but was just mashing it over and over. I was there to observe, so I didn't intervene, but I couldn't help but think that someone showing them how to make a ball with the Play-Doh or create an animal could have expanded their learning.

Other examples might include moving a target further away if children are trying to aim at it, doing a new yoga pose, or ensuring children adhere to the rules of a spatial game rather than making it easier for themselves.

In your book, I found it amazing that you mentioned the tenets of constructivism are rooted in play, which I had never considered before. But in your description of play, I think that's exactly right. I would take that one step further and say that the tenets of STEM pedagogy and learning are also rooted in play. STEM pedagogy is based on active learning and project-based learning, which is essentially constructivism.

We have a lot of terms in education, but they essentially mean the same thing. STEM pedagogy is also rooted in play. In your opinion, is it fair to say that STEM can play a large role in the development of these foundational cognitive skills, much like play?

Absolutely. Yeah. STEM activities can be, and I believe should be, fun, child-directed, and active. As you mentioned, project-based learning is an example, and STEM activities can also help foster executive function, motor, and spatial skills. I provide a few examples in the book, not exhaustive of course, but different games or curricula that are both STEM-focused and show evidence for improving foundational cognitive skills.

At VEX, we spent a lot of time over the last year and a half talking about the importance of starting STEM early with VEX GO, for example, and also the importance of starting coding early with VEX 123. Can you share your thoughts on the importance of starting STEM early?

Sure. Yeah. Calling back to economists and the perspective they have, if there's a skill or subject we want our workforce to have as adults, we should be providing learning opportunities as early as possible for those things. But it's also about helping children really engage in learning, become lifelong learners, and develop a love of learning. They should develop awareness of all the different careers that could be satisfying beyond just joining the workforce. Starting early is true for language learning, literacy, and it's absolutely true for STEM.

Thinking about what we touched upon earlier, how would you respond to a teacher, let's say a first-grade teacher, who says they don't have time to teach STEM? They might see it as more of a supplemental thing, or they don't have time to do as much hands-on learning because their students need to master their addition facts and sight words. How would you have that conversation with them?

I would always start by trying to see from their perspective and empathize with the pressures of standards and basic curriculum. Absolutely, it makes sense that our initial response would be, "This is what the curriculum requires, so this is what I'm going to teach." We start by acknowledging that pressure, but then we want to help support teachers to move through it. We want them to think about classroom practice as needing to reflect innovation to ensure our children are getting what they need to participate fully in today's society.

Early in my career, I studied classroom organization. I would go back to the idea that it's all about effective classroom organization. Engaging instruction and learning opportunities are wonderful ways to manage classroom behavior because children are interested and excited. Beyond that, getting our routines down for doing these hands-on activities, making sure children know exactly what they're doing with the materials, and that cleanup time is clear and adhered to, are all things that will support everyone in getting the most out of them.

No, that's really good. I'm thinking about great classrooms where I've seen this in action. When you mentioned cleanup time, they have those routines. I've seen classrooms that will play a song when there's 5 minutes left in the period. That's a cue for the students to begin cleaning up, but they also provide a visual cue. Something goes on the board, so maybe those students whose auditory skills are not as advanced as their visual skills get both sets of stimuli. This helps with executive function and spatial skills while they're doing hands-on learning.

Thank you for sharing your insights and experiences. Your perspective on integrating STEM early and effectively in education is invaluable.

Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure discussing these important topics.

You know, in business, one of the things I learned when I left the classroom is that in business, you talk about high leverage solutions. So what's the least I can do to get the biggest impact, right? And when I read about these things in your book and think about those teachers that are reluctant to do some of these things, I think about, hey, this is a really high leverage solution that you can utilize that's going to give you a lot of impact with your students, not just immediately, but also in the subsequent years.

Because as you were mentioning earlier, being able to excite different neural pathways and to expose students to those things, these are things that are going to have an impact on them much later in their academic careers also. Yes. And we want children who love school. Yes. And too many children don't love school. Yes. Yes.

So, yeah. And I would take that one step further and say yes to the music, do the lights. Can we also involve children in monitoring the transition? So they're taking the responsibility themselves. And it may be a small way, especially for the youngest children, but that helps them internalize the structure of the routine of the classroom. And that takes work off the teacher as well. It does. That's excellent.

If you have any questions or comments about anything that was discussed in this segment, please go to the Professional Learning Community and VEX Professional Development Plus, where myself and other members of the team and other educators would love to engage with a dialog about these important concepts. These things that we discuss in this book are so important. So if you want to explore further or if you just want to explore the book, please put those comments in the Professional Learning Community. We'd be happy to engage with you in that dialog about the book and about this segment.

Thank you very much.