Universality of Games

Just as the ancient and primitive religions of the world show profound similarities in their fertility rites and their sun and moon worship, many games appear to be common property to human beings everywhere. Indeed, the comparison is not at all farfetched: many games now thought to be mere children's pastimes are, in fact, relics of religious rituals, often dating back to the dawn of mankind. Tug of war, for example, is a dramatized struggle between natural forces; knucklebones were once par...

 All Play Takes Place in Temporary Worlds

All play moves and has its being within a play-ground marked off beforehand either materially or ideally, deliberately or as a matter of course…. The arena, the card-table, the magic circle, the temple, the stage, the screen, the tennis court, the court of justice, etc., are all in form and function play-grounds, i.e., forbidden spots, isolated, hedged round, hallowed, within which special rules obtain. All are temporary worlds within the ordinary world, dedicated to the performance of an act...

 Game Play Informs Real World Play

For Molly, computer play in a simulated world connected strongly with off-line play. It reinforced her desire to create fictional worlds of her own. And it helped sharpen her understanding of that creative endeavor. In evaluating the imaginative and creafive worth of childhood activities, of course, this is the gold standard: that reading or watching television, that trips to the theater, to art and science ce museuns, an and id yyes, that play with computer games should stimulate personal en...

 How Literacy Impacts Reading and Gaming

For Ellie, that charade contributed to her waning interest in computer games and simulations fi-om its highpoint in middle childhood. Reasonably versed in computer technologies and a fan of emerging online forums such as Tumblr, she agreed to talk about her play in virtual worlds not as an enthusiast, but as something of a philistine. She enjoyed Second Life—but only up to a point. "The imaginative part stopped for me when I stopped designing my avatar," she told me. Further opportunities f...

 Wonder and Awe as a Habit of Mind

When students approach me with amazement in their new knowledge, I can hear the awe in their voices for all there is to learn about the world and I ask myself, “How can we inspire such excitement every day? How can we identify the best vehicles to facilitate student learning by fostering wonder and awe in our classrooms? Some of the true experts in fostering a habit of responding with wonderment and awe are early childhood and primary grade teachers. Teachers of our youngest learners fill th...

 Despair, Cynicism, and Absurdism

Whereas modern cynicism brought despair about the ability of the human species to realize laudable ideals, postmodern cynicism doesn't — not because it's optimistic, but because it can't take ideals seriously in the first place. The prevailing attitude is Absurdism. A postmodern magazine may be irreverent, but not bitterly irreverent, for it's not purposefully irreverent; its aim is indiscriminate, because everyone is equally ridiculous. And anyway, there's no moral basis for passing judgment...

 Cosplay as Empowerment

"Cosplay is a form of empowerment for all children and adults," says Stanford Carpenter, president and cofounder of the Institute for Comics Studies, who says that he used to be dismissive of cosplay. But after attending dozens of ComicCons, he witnessed the dress-up affair changing masked heroes indefinitely. "It's about empowerment. It's about the possibility of what you can be or what you can do. And when you see people in underrepresented groups, it takes on the empowerment fantasy of not...

 Canons and Fugues

The idea of a canon is that one single theme is played against itself. This is done by having "copies" of the theme played by the various participating voices. But there are means' ways to do this. The most straightforward of all canons is the round, such as "Three Blind Mice", "Row, Row, Row Your Boat", or " Frere Jacques". Here, the theme enters in the first voice and, after a fixed time-delay, a "copy" of it enters, in precisely the same key. After the same fixed time-delay in the second v...

 Choral Reading

Choral reading gives students the experience of reading aloud without the stress of reading alone. Based upon the previously described research demonstrating that repeated stimulation of neuronal networks increases their efficiency, it makes sense that the experience of reading aloud together reinforces patterns. When we start the choral reading, I ask students to whisper the words as I read aloud. Th is process continues until students become more confident. As the reading progresses and I ...

 Blending and Segmenting Sounds to Instill Phoneme Awareness

One activity is segmenting sounds and then blending them together using both real words and nonsense words. This activity gives students practice manipulating phenomes and is consistent with the research supporting stimulation of both posterior processing systems (McCandliss, Cohen, & Dehaene, 2003). Another activity is oral blending and segmenting paired with letters. This process may help students practice the alphabetic principle (the establishment of a correspondence between a phonem...