Historias del Juego: Monstruos en la Cárcel

Historias del Juego: Play Stories

These entries are just what they sound like: narratives of a certain game that a class engaged in independently. Play stories are both a way to respect and value play and a great way to watch how students grow in the sophistication of their communicative and physical worlds. As Penny Wilson puts it,           

"Somehow the storytelling process let us get closer to the playing than we could when we used adult representation of the material. Our team became very good at this and it became lodged in our shared practice. But we were only one team. I knew that the stories of these children’s play needed to be heard widely.
The playing of children with disabilities and their peers is largely misunderstood or forgotten. When we tell the stories of their play we find that people understand with greater clarity what we are trying to say."  (Playwork Primer, pg. 31)

She's pretty brilliant, no? You can see why I've been sold hook, line, and sinker on playwork.
This is also very useful for my PDP and my dossier, as I'm examining our different environments and checking to make sure different play types are accessible throughout our school.

SO! The Play Story: Monsters in the Jail edition.

Two students of mine are very intent on learning how to hang upside down on the monkey bars by their knees, so I've been spotting (and occasionally modeling) when we're playing on this playground. It's called "Morado," or... well, "Purple."

You can't see it in this picture, but the monkey bars are to the right of the sand and water table. So I was pretty focused on making sure other students didn't grab or knock into my emergent bat-hanging children. All of a sudden, however, I noted that there were no other students around - other than the two danglers. Then, I heard a tremendous roar. The rest of the children had risen from a crouch in between the two buildings (to the left of the picture) and raced to the cave (pictured), bellowing and yelping and tickling and laughing and hugging.

Soon, the other two kids joined in. Then, it was all ten of them, following a similar pattern - but improvising on the details. Sometimes they were the monsters escaping from jail; they would grab a friend or a teacher and mime eating them or roaring. Sometimes they would flee the monsters, supposedly still in jail; then they would oftener hug one another and warn their friends, "¡se están escapando!"

I asked my co-teacher and EA Monique, and she reported that two students - notably very verbal, social, bright creatures - had begun this game quietly a few minutes before. I asked them for the origin story of the game and one answered as he ran, "Pos, jugando monstruos." The other elaborated a bit more before racing off: "¡Los monstruos están en la cárcel para no se escaparan todos!"

What I was most thrilled with, however, was the innate scaffolding of the game. Several had stories, fine motor interactions, deepening play. A few other children, who although they have limited verbal comprehension and output, were able to fully participate, and even make more complex the game. Following a couple of these students, the game evolved into hiding in the cave (mientras gritaban hacia los monstruos) and then leaping from the top of the cave into the wood chips.

Even my student who struggles to walk fluidly and often does not interact with other children - preferring simple, repetitive self-games of twirling in a circle, singing to herself, and inspected metal bars - watched for a couple rounds and then joined in! They all raced from the space between the buildings and bellowed away. It was delightful.

Types of play: Rough and Tumble, Social, Communication, Locomotor, and Fantasy play. (a little bit of Deep play with the leaping from the cave)

¡Hasta pronto!