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Julia DeLapp: We've been studying toys for ten years,
so we know that toys
influence children's learning and their behavior,
and that it's important for teachers to be thoughtful
about the kinds of toys they bring into their classrooms.
What there's been less research on
is HOW those toys should be brought into the classroom.
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Julia DeLapp: When a new play material comes in,
should a teacher introduce it, formally?
Should they have a discussion about it?
And if so, what should that discussion look like?
Teacher: This is called a puppet theater.
So
Child: What's a puppet theater?
Teacher: Glad you asked!
Julia DeLapp: As part of the TIMPANI toy study,
we gave a new toy to every classroom every week,
and we recorded the children as they were playing with the toys.
And then we analyzed the level
of their play quality with those toys.
We asked teachers to introduce the toy
before they put it out during center time.
But we didn't tell them HOW to introduce the toy.
We just let them do whatever came naturally.
And we began to notice
that there were really significant differences
in how teachers conducted that introduction.
Teacher: So there's, you can see that there's
two different kinds of mallets.
What do you notice that's the same, and what's different?
Julia DeLapp: And so it really got us wondering about
the impact of those teacher introductions
on children's play quality.
So, for the next three years,
we looked at both what happens when teachers
formally introduce a toy before it comes into the classroom,
and also after it's been in the classroom for a little while.
Teacher: What did you make?
Child 1: P!
Teacher: Ah! You could make letters with them.
Robert made...
Child 2: I'm going to make a J.
Teacher: Robert made the letter P.
With most toys,
children engaged in higher quality play
when there was no discussion about the toy at all
that was led by a teacher.
Child 1: You go away.
Child 2: Hey. Be nice.
But some toys can benefit from a full group discussion.
For example, we saw that with some of the toys
that had magnets in them,
we saw higher quality play with the toy
after there was a group discussion about the toy.
Teacher: Oh! What do you notice?
Child: They're connecting!
Teacher: They are. You know why?
Watch.
[click]
Magnets. On each side.
Child: Magnets. And we can make a castle.
Julia DeLapp: It may be that some children
just needed a little bit of a demonstration
about how those magnets worked
to really play at the highest quality
when they played with the toy.
But that wasn't the case for most toys.
Julia DeLapp: Three-year-olds seemed to benefit
from some kind of group discussion.
Three-year-olds engaged in higher quality play
after there was some kind of
full group discussion about the toy.
But we did not see that for four and five-year-olds.
They were less likely to have higher quality play
after that kind of discussion.
This suggests that some classrooms
may benefit from a more differentiated approach,
so that younger children can get a little extra scaffolding
and support if they need it.
It may even be valuable to strategically pair
an older child with a younger child
when they're playing with a new toy,
because the older child may model more elaborate,
complex play.
We saw some examples of these incredibly rich,
elaborate discussions with children about toys.
Child: I made, what I made was a tower, too.
Teacher: Just like that?
Child: And I made lots of triangles stacked together
to make a BIG triangle!
Those discussions resulted in a lot of great language use;
they were beneficial in many ways.
But they didn't translate to higher quality play.
Anything over about three minutes for a toy discussion
was not associated with higher quality play.
So shorter was really better.
There were some elements
of group time discussions about toys
that were associated with higher quality play.
One of those was when the teacher
asked open-ended questions
during those group time discussions.
Child: Uh, they're building blocks.
Teacher: You think they're building blocks?
What makes you say that?
Why do you think they're building...
Child: You build.
Julia DeLapp: Open-ended questions seemed to help children
engage in some play planning.
So it got them to think about how they might play with the toy
and then to verbalize it,
and then of course they got to hear their peers' ideas
about how they might play with the toy.
Teacher: So Venus thinks they're building blocks,
and you can build a castle.
Gus, what are your thoughts?
Another teacher behavior during group time discussions
that was associated with higher quality play
was when teachers acknowledged the suggestions
that children made during those discussions.
Teacher: So if I was this creature... Child: A shark!
It would go in the water!
Teacher: Cayden thinks he might go in the water. [whistles]
And then the third teacher behavior
that was associated with higher quality play
was when teachers described
what they had observed children
doing with the toy during free play.
Teacher: I saw Galilea was a lot of the times pretending
it was a cell phone and talking on it.
Julia DeLapp: What each of these behaviors has in common
is that they all engage children in really meaningful ways.
It's not a teacher just describing a toy
or giving a demonstration of, "Here's how you play with it,"
but it is believing that children have the capacity
to find their own ways to play.
Child: Look. Ready?
[clinking]
Whoa! We knocked down your person.
I think the main takeaways from our research with toys is that,
number one, teachers need to be thoughtful
about what materials they're bringing into their classroom
and what they hope the children are going to get out of them.
But then teachers might consider just placing a new toy
in the classroom and letting children explore it
and discover it on their own.
And then sitting back and observing what they do.
Child: This is a big sword.
Julia DeLapp: I think sometimes children can really surprise us.
Sometimes they'll play with it in a way
we never would have expected.
Child: Let's see if it's taller like you?
Teacher: He wants to measure.
Julia DeLapp: If children need a little bit of scaffolding;
if they're struggling with the toy;
or if they're just continuing
to do the same thing over and over again,
then a teacher can step in really quickly,
provide a little bit of scaffolding,
and then back off and let them play.
Teacher: How will we get it to stay?
But it does make sense to pay closer attention
to the younger children
and see if they need more support than the older ones.
♫ If teachers do decide to have some kind of
full group discussion about a toy,
keep it short,
and make sure you are engaging children in a meaningful way.
Don't just demonstrate how to do it,
but really ask them for their ideas,
and acknowledge the suggestions that they have.
♫