“The genius of play is that, in playing, we create imaginative new cognitive combinations. And in creating those novel combinations, we find what works.”
Welcome to episode 94 of The PE Umbrella Podcast, and as always thank you for giving up your time to join me on the ONLY Primary and Elementary Physical Education Podcast in the world!
In this episode, I seek to explore the concept of play, how it shapes us as human beings and how we can seek to harness it in our teaching. Reading the book ‘Play – how it shares the brain, opens the imagination & invigorates the soul‘ by Stuart Brown, had me deeply reflecting on ‘play’ in my own life and how it gets overlooked into adulthood when we are expected to conform the ‘norms of society’ and ‘grow up’.
After diving into what play actually is and highlighting some of the benefits it brings to us, I discuss the 8 ‘play personality types’. All of us have a play personality that are made up of a mixture of any of these 8, and I seek to explore how we can use this knowledge to pinpoint our own personality type and allow our students to find theirs. The purpose of this of course is to help us achieve greater self awareness and greater play in life.
Finally, I think it’s important to acknowledge everybody is different. We all have slightly different play personalities, but physical education is the perfect breeding ground to help the majority of these flourish, especially through exploring different pedagogical models such as ‘Sport Education’ or ‘co-operative learning’
So what are you waiting for? Come and join me Under the PE Umbrella!
If you found this episode useful, please tweet me @thepeumbrella and share with me exactly what you took away, I really do love engaging with all of the podcast listeners! Alternatively you can email me at ryan@peumbrella.com.
Don’t forget to subscribe to The PE Umbrella on iTunes by following the link above. I would love for you to rate and review the show there, giving me insight into what I can do to further improve the quality of the show for you! Until next time though, have a great week motivating, engaging and inspiring the children that you teach, and I’ll see you soon, ‘Under the Umbrella’.
