Play and Write
A Guided-Play Writing Workshop in aSouth African Classroom•
Kirsty Paxton

The author examines guided play among students in a South African classroom using a play-and-write workshop constructed by her and her students.
She determines that the workshop displays the characteristics of playful
learning, lies on the playful learning spectrum, and fits the criteria for guided
play. She concludes that, given the benefits of playful learning and guided
play in particular, teaching involving construction with the students andallowing student-directed activity can prove valuable and should be put toservice where possible beyond kindergarten. She adds that these methods
should be employed in conjunction with other educational goals in South
Africa and elsewhere in the developing world to help mitigate such problems
as underfunding and large class sizes. Key words: education in South Africa;
guided play; play-and-write workshops; playful learning

Introduction

Research on guided play—a kind of play directed by students but chosen

and arranged by teachers (or constructed with them)—has largely focused onkindergarten and preschool classrooms in North America and Europe, andvery little research covers student-directed playful learning in the higher grades,
particularly in developing countries like South Africa. This article examines how
students in grades five and six in a South African school interacted in a guidedplay, play-and-write workshop they constructed with their teacher (me). I aim
to provide teachers and researchers a starting point for using guided play in thegrades beyond kindergarten. Then I examine a longer-term intervention using asimilar structure in another school in South Africa.
In 2021 I had the opportunity to work in a small, bilingual school in arural area in South Africa where I experimented with using LEGO play as a
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American Journal of Play, volume 14, number 2 © 2022 by The Strong
Contact Kirsty Paxton at kirstylouisepaxton@gmail.com

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story starter for student writing in the senior grades. The LEGO play seemed
to increase collaboration, motivation, creativity, and focus. I noticed that theworkshop not only appeared to have a positive effect on the quality of writingby the students, but that they also engaged spontaneously in dramatic play with
LEGO sets, taking on the roles of different characters in a story as they manipulated LEGO minifigures. This was unexpected given that most of the literature
about dramatic play and literacy (Dyson 1999; Peterson et al. 2020; Jensen et al.
2019) dealt with the kindergarten and preschool years. All this prompted me toengage in a study that might help other teachers use guided play in the seniorgrades and provide researchers with examples of particular kinds of play foundin classrooms in the developing world.
Those rare instances in which play beyond kindergarten becomes a subject of study usually involve forms of playful learning lying closer to the adultdirected end of the play spectrum (Zosh et al. 2017). Additionally, although
South African teachers increasingly use playful learning, very few studies ofsuch use currently exist (Solis et al. 2019). In my experience, a positive attitude exists toward the use of play in kindergarten (called Grade R in South
Africa), but beyond this, teachers become intimidated by the demands of curriculum, and their approaches grow less playful. I see a sharp deliniation occurring between preschool and Grade R, in which play is essential, and grade one,which exchanges play for workbooks and graded readers. However, in my own
work and research, I have found a playful approach valuable for learning andbelieve we need research and advocacy to change the attitudes of parents, teachers, schools, policy makers and nonprofit organizations working in education
both in South Africa and in the developing world.
I propose a guided-play approach to literacy learning beyond the foundation
phase (grades R through three) in South African schools using my experience witha play-and-write workshop designed by me and my students for a grade five andsix class and data gathered from the workshop to answer the following questions:
How do children display evidence of enjoyment, curiosity, and ownership (Solis,
et al. 2019) in the play-and-write workshop? And how does the teacher display
characteristics of the guided-play approach (Zosh et al. 2017) in this workshop?
I will begin by reviewing the research on guided play as part of the playful learning continuum, consider the benefits of playful learning, investigate dramatic
play and narrative development, and look at playful learning in the higher gradesin South Africa. I outline the methods used in my research and describe theintervention in detail. I analyze the research and discuss how my questions canPlay and Write

help create a pedagogy of play for South Africa and other developing countries.
I argue that such a class offers the characteristics of enjoyment, curiosity, andownership (Solis et al. 2019) and of guided play (Zosh et al. 2017), and I reflect
on the implications of this for practice. I also outline plans for a longer-term
guided play intervention in another South African school.

Literature Review
Guided Play and the Playful Learning Continuum
Having only observed teacher-directed play in the grades beyond kindergarten,
I wished to understand whether guided play could be used effectively in higher
grades. In recent years, research has focused on conceptualizing play as existing
on a continuum or spectrum (Zosh et al. 2017; Pyle and Danniels 2017) that
includes free play, guided play, games, and direct instruction. Conceptualizing
play this way broadens the definition of play-based learning, provides teachers with more clarity about this pedagogical approach, and better explains its
relationship to learning. By viewing guided play through such a lens for the
purpose of this article, I hope to discover “new avenues of exploration for thefield to study the role of learning through play across age and context” (Zosh etal. 2018, 1) and to test whether guided play can, under similar conditions, beused effectively in the higher grades.

Figure 1. A continuum of playful learning. Reproduced with permission from Learning throughPlay: A Review of the Evidence (Zosh et al. 2017).

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According to Zosh and her colleagues, playful learning (as shown in figure1), is an umbrella term used to include all types of learning—from free play
to games—on the play spectrum (Zosh et al. 2017). A later study (Zosh et al.
2018) also includes the categories of co-opted play and playful instruction in
the spectrum between games and direct instruction.
In guided play, the students direct the play chosen or arranged by teachers(or constructed with them). The adults extend the children’s learning by providing scaffolding in the form of questions or guidance, but they do not direct
the play. In guided play, a balance exists between structure and choice, and theadults provide play contexts with embedded learning goals. They seek to extend,
observe, and build on the children’s ideas and thinking. Guided play becomes
evident in the structure and learning goals provided by the teachers and in thestudents’ directing of the play (Zosh et al. 2019). Dramatic play—by which wemean the adoption of imaginary roles that draw on children’s prior experiences,perspectives, and values (Barrs, Barton, and Booth 2012)—is associated witheither guided play (Whitebread and Basilio 2013; Zosh et al. 2018) or free play.
The Play Learning and Narrative Skills (PLaNS) project describes its
approach as guided play because it incorporates both child- and adult-led elements. However, although adults may propose the activities, observe the play,ask questions, and provide scaffolding, the scaffolding itself sometimes comesin the form of direct instruction about writing (Whitebread and Basilio 2017).
The Benefits of Playful Learning
My long interest in play has centered on its benefits for academic learning andsocial and emotional development. Play provides a powerful approach to learningin early childhood and later (Zosh et al. 2018). Studies show that playful learning helps children develop the social, emotional, physical, and cognitive skills
they need to succeed academically (Pyle and Bigelow 2014; Singer, Golinkoff,and Hirsh-Pasek 2006; Zosh et al. 2013), helps actively and meaningfully engage
learners as they investigate and adopt new concepts with the support of theirteachers (Weisberg, Hirsh-Pasek et al. 2013; Weisberg, Zosh, et al. 2013), andprovides space for creativity to develop. Children who play more are likely to
be more creative (Bateson and Martin 2013).
Dramatic Play and Narrative Development
Because I encouraged the children I teach to use play as a means to develop theirwriting, both dramatic play (Barrs et al. 2012) and narrative development became

Play and Writeof particular interest to me. Dramatic play allows children to support each other as
they apply their life experiences to new concepts and develop narratives together(Altidor-Brooks, Malec, and Peterson 2020) and provides a context for them tolearn in symbolic ways (Genishi and Dyson 2014). As children interact, they learn
how meaning can be communicated and structured in narratives (Vygotsky 1978).
Dramatic play can be used to teach writing (Peterson and Senior 2019) because
learners take on roles and develop stories in ways similar to those in which theycreate characters and plots in written narratives (Rowe 2009).
Cultural contexts determine how, where, when, and with whom children
play—and when they should stop playing (Mardell 2019). Social constructivists view play as a cultural practice influenced by broader historical, social, andcultural factors (Wood 2013). According to Dyson (1999), dramatic play provides space for children’s cultural and social contexts—their “unofficial worlds”(370)—outside the classroom to enter their school world as they borrow texts
from particular people and places and then recontextualize them in their play.
This recontextualizing becomes an important feature of narrative development
and provides an environment in which children’s cultural and social contexts
can intersect with their school experience.
Providing an environment in which children are free to role play anddevelop a familiar story results in a better organized and more creative story
than one produced in a space controlled by adults (Whitebread and Jameson2010). Additionally, a playful approach to writing helps motivate children who
struggle with written composition to become more engaged and to develop themetacognitive abilities needed to master writing (Whitebread and Basilio 2013;
Hacker, Keener, and Kircher 2009).
In the PLaNS project, children are provided with LEGO bricks and follow a
structured process in stages that culminate in writing a story. This combinationof play and writing resembles a multimodal literacy workshop in which children
have a range of materials to use to create a story (Kuby, Rucker, and Kirchofer2015). However, in multimodal workshops, the activities are not necessarily
divided into stages, and the final product may not include a written text. In
both cases, though, children create stories collaboratively using the materials,
and researchers investigate how the interactions influence literacy learning in
the classroom.
Play in the Higher Grades
Although relatively little research exists about the role of play in grades beyond

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P L AYkindergarten, play has received increased focus in recent years. In the past, abarrier to the study and use of play in formal schooling has been the view thatplay and learning are a dichotomy (Pyle and Danniels 2017) in which play isconsidered purely child directed and unstructured and limited to preschool(Parker and Thomsen 2019). This dichotomy has been traced to the contradiction between core concepts underpinning school and play such as Piaget’s assimilation and accommodation and Vygotsky’s spontaneous and scientific concepts(Kushner 2012). Nonetheless, a number of pedagogies—such as active learning,collaborative and cooperative learning, experiential learning, guided-discovery
learning, inquiry-based learning, problem-based learning, project-based learning, and Montessori education—bring these concepts together through theirroots in constructivism. And they are widely used beyond kindergarten (Parker
and Thomsen 2019).
The use of the word “play” often faces opposition from school leaders andpolicy makers, so promoting learning through play in the formal school system
becomes complex and requires teacher studies (Mardell, Solis, and Bray 2019)such as this one. Still, a number of ministries of education around the world haveincluded play in their national policies, and three research models help define
learning through play beyond kindergarten ( Mardell, Solis, and Bray 2019). I
have already described the first, the play spectrum, which considers the teacher’srole in directing the play. The second, five characteristics of learning throughplay, defines playful learning as learning that is meaningful, actively engaging, joyful, iterative, and socially interactive (Zosh et al. 2017). And the third,
the indicators of playful learning (Mardell et al. 2016), is based on research at
schools to create culturally specific models to guide teachers in planning playful
learning in their classrooms. In these three models, researchers need to consider
local factors such as cultural values, language, and resources in implementing
playful learning (Mardell, Solis, and Bray 2019). Hence, I consider all three inthis study, looking in particular at the indicators of playful learning developedin South Africa and how they are used as a framework for understanding children’s interactions.
Playful Learning in South African Schools
Because my study took place in a South African school, I was interested inprevious research about play and playful learning there. A comparative studyof guided play in Canadian and South African kindergarten and Grade R classrooms reported that guided play took place less frequently in the South African

Play and Writeclassrooms, most likely because of the larger class sizes (Jensen et al. 2019).
However, South African teachers were more likely than Canadian teachers toextend than initiate children’s play, possibly because play in North America hashistorically been understood as a child-directed activity and educators are often
reluctant to structure the play or involve themselves (Pyle, DeLuca, and Danniels
2017) whereas in South Africa, different ideas of play coexist (Jensen et al. 2019).
As I mentioned, a different South African project investigating playful
learning mostly in the higher grades of primary school identified curiosity,

Figure 2. Indicators of playful learning: three South African schools. Reproduced withpermission from Indicators of Playful Learning: Three South African Schools (2019). Developedby Pedagogy of Play at Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education.

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enjoyment, and ownership as indicators of playful learning, using “feels like” and“looks like” to describe each (as shown in figure 2). The South African conceptof “ubuntu,” which refers to the interconnectedness of people, was consideredcentral to this definition, and additional descriptors were integrated with theoriginal three indicators of playful learning (Solis et al. 2019).
These indicators also provide evidence of children’s unofficial worlds entering the classroom as students engage in dramatic play, providing a context forthem to learn in symbolic ways (Genishi and Dyson 2014) and for play usedin narrative development and writing when learners take on roles and develop
stories. Because cultural contexts determine how, where, when, and with whom

Figure 3. Proposed indicators of guided play in South African schools.

Play and Write

children play, and when they should stop playing (Mardell, Solis, and Bray 2019),
it is important to understand dramatic play in South Africa when children’s
unofficial worlds enter school and students borrow and recontextualize texts(Dyson 1999).
Guided Play in South African Schools
In figure 3, the two models central to this study—the play spectrum and theindicators of playful learning in three South African schools—show what guided
play might look like in a South African school and what indicators might beused to determine when guided play occurs. The indicators in ovals on the leftare evidence of enjoyment, curiosity, and coownership. They are the indicatorsof playful learning.
To hone this model further to identify guided play specifically, we offered
the teacher indicators in ovals on the right. These—learning goals, structure, andcoownership—indicate a teacher who is facilitating guided play rather than freeplay or games (Zosh et al. 2018). Because the teacher and students share ownership in guided play, we call this indicator “coownership” and show it centered
between the student ovals and the teacher ovals to highlight the balance between
the structure provided by a teacher and the choice experienced by students. The
model still includes ubuntu to indicate the interconnection between students
and teacher in the guided-play experience (Solis et al. 2019).

Research Methods
Participants and Context
The study takes place in a combined grade five and grade six class in an independent South African school located in what was during apartheid called ahomeland. As a result of the unequal allocation of resources under apartheid,
such areas are less developed and usually have limited access to quality healthcare and education. The school I study in this article is located at the site of agovernment hospital and a number of nonprofit organizations (NPO), and it
draws students both from the professional hospital and NPO staff and fromthe local community. Families pay fees on a sliding scale according to theirmeans, and the school raises funds to cover the shortfall from the lower feepaying students. The school provides bilingual isiXhosa and English instruction in all classes. From kindergarten (or Grade R) to grade four, each class

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has a mother tongue English-speaking teacher and a mother tongue isiXhosaspeaking teaching assistant. The grade five and grade six class is the smallest
in the school and only has one English-speaking teacher and ten students
whose ages range from eleven to thirteen. Three of the students are mothertongue English speakers from families of professional staff, and the otherseven students are mother tongue isiXhosa speakers from a mix of local andnonlocal families.
My own connection with this school and community—and specificallywith playful learning in this community—began in 2013 when I worked with
two nonprofit organizations based here. Both organizations received donations
from the LEGO Foundation and, prompted by this fact, I offered an after-school
play club and provided weekly training in learning through play to play groupfacilitators in partnership with one of the nonprofits. For the other organization,
I introduced playful approaches to learning with LEGO sets in its primary andhigh school programs and provided training to staff in playful literacy learning.
The independent school opened shortly before I left in 2016.
After five years of working nationally and internationally in the field ofplayful learning, I returned to the South African community for a short stint,
and I have been teaching the grade five and grade six class in the school one
day a week. In this study, I play the role of both teacher and researcher, facilitate the focus group after the workshop, and then analyze my own behavior as
teacher of the workshop. Because of the potential for bias, I also discussed myfindings with colleagues at the school and with faculty and fellow students at
the University of Toronto.

Intervention
In this article, I present the findings of a research study in which learners
in the class I have described engaged in a guided play, play-and-write workshop. Prior to the workshop, I construct the experience with the learners
by explaining the goal of the workshop (i.e., to produce a written story inEnglish) and outlining the constraints (i.e., the total time period available
and the source of materials). I then asked the learners which materials fromtheir classroom they wanted to use, how they wanted to be grouped, andhow they thought the time should be divided. The students decided that theywanted to use LEGO sets, wooden blocks, paper, and pencils and that theyPlay and Write

wanted a half hour each for building, talking, and writing. They requested
that groups be chosen randomly by drawing names and that group members
be allowed to choose whether they would submit a story collaboratively oreach would write an individual submission. I also discussed the meaning of
the word “story” with the students, and they understood that their composition might take the form of a play, a fictional or nonfictional narrative, or apoem. The workshop construction took place in English and—although theworkshop occurred during English class and the compositions were submitted in English—the children were allowed to use any language in their playand narrative development.
I set up for the workshop by moving the desks to the edges of the classroom
and placing the LEGO sets and blocks on the mat in the middle of the floor.
Learners were divided into groups of two or three by drawing names placed ina hat. However, some of the learners then switched groups afterwards. During
the workshop, I extended the learning by circulating and asking questions as thestudents built, talked, and wrote. I did not direct the students except to remindthem when each half hour had passed and to request that they pack up the large
box of LEGO pieces (not their LEGO models) and move to their desks after one
hour so that I was able to hear their conversations better.
I obtained written permission for the study from parents and guardians
and informed the children that their participation was not compulsory and thatthey would not be penalized in any way if they decided not to take part. The
children were aware that they were being recorded, so it is possible that theirplay was disrupted by the recording and that they may have changed the way
they interacted with one another accordingly. The names of the students I present in this study are pseudonyms.
Data Collection and Analysis
I collected data for the study during the workshop by video recording conversations between the learners and between the learners and myself. This recording
lasted a total of thirty-eight minutes and focused on students’ answers to questions I posed or on meaningful interactions between the students. In addition, I
held a focus group with all ten students after the workshop and recorded sixteen
minutes of questions and responses. I had both recordings transcribed into five
pages of workshop conversations and three pages of interview responses. The
students’ written assignments and written notes made after the workshop also
provided data for the study.

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P L AYI analyzed the transcriptions and the recordings in terms of the characteristics of playful learning in South African classrooms as shown in figure 2 forevidence of learners’ enjoyment, curiosity, and ownership through deductive
analysis of the “looks like” descriptors (i.e., descriptors that are externally observable) in the case of the workshop conversations. In the case of the focus groupresponses, the “feels like” descriptors (i.e., subjective experiences as describedby the students themselves) I analyzed alongside the “looks like” descriptors.
I color coded and counted the students’ focus group responses that contained
the same words (or synonyms for such words) as the “feels like” descriptors infigure 2 (e.g., excitement or fun for the “enjoyment” indicator) and the students’recorded conversations during the workshop where I noted the “looks like”
descriptors (e.g., laughing or joking for the “enjoyment” indicator). I tabulated
the results, shown in figure 4. The number of descriptors that occurred for eachindicator informed my analysis of it. I counted the descriptors in each conversation I recorded between the learners in the workshop to determine whichinteractions offered the most evidence of playful learning and how many conversations offered evidence of each indicator.
I analyzed my behavior as the teacher according to the characteristics ofguided play as part of the play continuum (Zosh et al. 2017). I used this to
identify the questions for my analysis, and hence it focused on the play context
we chose and why we chose it, how I provided scaffolding, how I embedded
the learning goals, and the degree to which I or the students directed the playitself. I analyzed the choice of play context using the questions I had used in the
preworkshop discussion. The degree to which I or the learners directed the play
was informed by how many directive statements I used during the workshop
and the recorded answers from the focus group discussion in which the students
mentioned either free choice or constraints. I analyzed how I provided scaffolding by reviewing the questions I had used in the workshop and classifying themaccording to the type of answers the students gave or I expected (i.e., were theyopen-ended or yes-or-no questions?).
I created figure 4 to provide a synthesis of these two areas of analysis, bringing together the indicators of playful leaning in South African schools and thefeatures of guided play, as distinct from both free play and teacher-directed playon the playful learning spectrum.

Play and Write

Indicator“Looks like” descriptors“Feels like” descriptors

No. times

No. times

occurring in

mentioned

workshopin focus
group

Ownership

Curiosity

Enjoyment

Valuing own and others’•

Empowerment

ideas

•

Responsibility•

Seeing peers as resources•

Courage•

Confidence

•

Pride

•

Collaboration•

Freedom•

Voicing opinions•

Part of something bigger•

Considering a variety of•Engagement

solutions•

Challenge•

Discussing and debating•

Fascination•

Asking questions•

Inspiration•

Learning from mistakes•

Eagerness•

Experimenting•

Positive frustration•

Creating•

Imagining•

Huddling•

Celebrating

•

Trust

•

Smiling and laughing•

Anticipation•

Being surprised•

Belonging•Participating actively•

Excitement•

Joking•

Safe•

Singing•

Fun•

Figure 4. Indicators of playful learning in workshop and focus group.
1

11

17

18

12

9

8

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Children’s Curiosity, Ownership, and Enjoyment
Bonginkosi: I’m interested in tragedy.
Teacher: Why are you interested in tragedy?
Ayabonga: Because it’s fun.
Both boys talk excitedly at the same time, and their words are indistinguishable.
Ayabonga (manipulates LEGO as he speaks): The guy’s going to end, thenI’m going to land. Then wooooo! Poof! That’s the quality movie.
Ayabonga: People these days like bad guys to win because they want to see
what the bad guys do.
Teacher: Who are “the people these days who like bad guys to win”?
Thabo: He is one of them.
Ayabonga: I love action-packed movies.

A number of the recorded conversations, such as this one involving Ayabonga and Bonginkosi talking excitedly about their story and their enjoymentof action-packed movies, offered evidence of two or three of the South African
playful learning characteristics of ownership, curiosity, and collaboration (Soliset al. 2019). In this conversation, the children show confidence in voicing opinions, giving evidence of ownership. Their conversation also clearly evidences
enjoyment (through their excited speech and their description of their chosengenre as fun) and curiosity (through their imagining and experimenting with
the LEGOs).
One of the “looks like” descriptors of enjoyment—active participation—waspresent in all of the recorded conversations. Other descriptors such as smilingand laughing, being surprised, or joking, occurred in nine conversations. Enjoyment was mentioned by the students in eight interview responses, primarily
using two of the “feels like” descriptors, fun and excitement.
Babalwa (pointing to LEGO garden): The garden is not only beautiful but
magical. It’s where they make their riches.
Akhona: We’re gonna have two climaxes. The first one is going to be about
the garden. The second one is going to be explaining how Alicia got married
to the prince.
Akhona (pointing to LEGO bricks): Here in the castle, we’ve got like a door,and here is like a beautiful decoration, and we’ve got a kitchen and a sitting
room. It’s not ready yet. And we have one bedroom, a shared bedroom ’cause
we didn’t have enough space.

Play and Write

Esihle (pointing to page): And I’m also writing the story and planning it.
Teacher: How are you planning it? How did your building help you withthis story?
Esihle: We are copying the building, like making it into a story so that it canmake sense.

As the learners developed their narratives further, many of their conversations evidenced strong ownership. Such evidence in the “looks like” descriptorsof ownership—valuing their own and others’ ideas, seeing peers as resources,
confidence, collaboration, voicing opinions—also occurred in eleven recorded
conversations from the workshop and in thirteen interview responses. In addition, the “feels like” descriptors of empowerment—freedom and leading learning—came up in four interview responses.
Teacher: What’s this inside the building here?
Thabo: We call it “The Burning Maze,” and that is the title.
Sarah: Because there’s lots of fire in places you’re not supposed to go, so you
have to get through the maze. It’s a lot harder than it looks, and if you don’t
get through you can either go here (pointing to place in brick maze) andget burnt.
Thabo: Or like you can go to the end (pointing to end of the maze), and thecrocodile will eat you.
Sarah: Yes. And here is . . . if you touch it, you get shocked very hard, so likeyou’ll faint.
Thabo: If you touch the brick that has fire on top, you will be burnt, but it
won’t burn you like to death. It will just make you feel pain.
Teacher: Where did you come up with the idea for this?
Thabo: Because, like at first, we were building, we didn’t know what we werebuilding so like we were just putting walls and we were like, “Why is it like amaze?” And we were like, “Why don’t we call it ‘The Burning Maze?’”

The imagination and creativity displayed by Sarah and Thabo in this conversation proved typical for the indicators of creativity evident throughout theclass. The “looks like” descriptors of curiosity occurred in eighteen recorded
conversations. Of these, sixteen primarily denoted two of the descriptors—imagining and creating—and seven denoted discussing, debating, asking questions,considering a variety of solutions, and experimenting. Nine interview responses
mentioned the “looks like” descriptors of curiosity and three additional responses
evidenced the “feels like” descriptors of challenge or positive frustration.
In addition to evidencing playful learning, two recorded conversations and

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one focus group response seem to suggest the occurrence of dramatic play. During one conversation in the workshop, Akhona referred to the LEGO minifigures
as actors, and a blurring of lines between reality and story occurred when Thabo,
Bonginkosi, and Ayabonga argued about a LEGO structure they called a “bank,”
which seemed to have been stolen. It is unclear whether the bank had been stolen
by one of the characters in the story or one of the students. These interactions,did not involve the teacher, except for scaffolding questions. During the focus
group interview, Ayabonga—a member of the group that wrote its story in theform of a play—said, “We had to push ourselves into the character of the play.
We had to push the people. Like we had to act the people.”
Teacher’s Role in Guided PlayI analyzed my behavior as teacher in the study according to the characteristics
of guided play in the play continuum, characteristics replicated in the proposedmodel, indicators of guided play in a South African school (see figure 3) I developed for this study. I initiated the workshop itself and set goals to address theneeds of the learners such as practice in collaborative writing, play writing, group
work, and creativity. Knowing that the students were interested in LEGO sets,
I made sure they were available as choice of a play material. I created a balance
between structure and choice by constructing the workshop with the students,
setting the end goals and time limits but letting them choose how to structure
the time, the materials they used, and which groups they joined.
As the quotations from recorded conversations show, I extended the students’ learning by asking open-ended questions. They directed their own activities during the workshop, deciding what to build, how to interact with theirgroup members, what form their story would take, and how their narrative
would be developed and written. I was present at all times and interacted withthe students. In the transcribed recordings, I asked a total of twenty-nine questions about the LEGO builds, the stories, and the ideas behind the stories. I
recorded only one statement and one instruction—about how the students were
responding to my question rather than to the direction of play in the workshop.
For the first hour of the workshop, I did not direct the actions of the students
but simply reminded them of the time constraints at the end of each half hour.
After one hour, I directed them to pack away the box of LEGO bricks (not theirmodels) and move to their desks to lessen the noise caused by the rattle of the
LEGO pieces.
In figure 3, I show the two proposed teacher indicators—learning goals

Play and Writeand structure—were present. Ownership by both the students and the teacher
also became evident in the balance of structure and choice. I provided such
structure by setting up the classroom, keeping time, and asking scaffolding questions. This was balanced by the freedom and choice apparent as the students
directed their own play and made choices about what to build and write andhow to function as a group. Three of the students also mentioned freedom andchoice in the postworkshop focus group. One student, Daniel, highlighted theimportance of this freedom to his creative process when he said, “It felt, like,really good because we could just do what we wanted, build what we wanted tobuild, and make a story out of it. You didn’t have to make the same story. You
could just take the idea and then change it to what we want. We don’t have thesame thing, and we don’t have to do exactly the thing we’ve built. Because thenwe can put some more imagination in. Because if you don’t have a piece, you
can just pretend it’s there in the story.”

Discussion
The prevalence of the descriptors of enjoyment, curiosity, and ownership in thestudent’s conversations and interview responses indicate that this workshop fits
the description of playful learning in South African schools described by Soliset al. (2019). However, there are also significant differences between this workshop and the three classes described in the study by Solis and her colleagues.
In two of their examples, which take place in a grade two class and a grade fiveclass, the teacher directs the learning and offers few opportunities for learners to make choices. The third example includes a high degree of choice andopportunities for the learners to direct the activity but takes place in a Grade R
class. Additionally, no means exist to compare the frequency or quantity of theindicators of playful learning in the two studies. Hence, it seems that we need away to integrate their contextualized understanding of playful learning in South
Africa with the different points along the playful learning continuum and toinvestigate whether particular points on the continuum are more appropriate
for different grade levels. My indicators of guided play in a South African school
is a proposed first step toward doing so. Once tested in other schools, it could
provide a framework for more easily identifying guided play in South African
schools and hence allow us to investigate this approach at different grade levels.
I also found it difficult to ascertain whether a higher degree of choice yielded

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more creative or better narrative development as has been shown in previous
studies in Europe (Whitebread and Jameson 2010).
The overall standard of the written work produced from the play-and-write
workshop was not significantly higher than other stories the students had written, although the students themselves noted that they took longer to produce
their final stories. However, the workshop did give them a context to develop
social and emotional skills such as collaboration and group work, which theyrarely use in writing classes. Learners also engaged in some dramatic play, which
is often considered important in children’s narrative development (AltidorBrooks, Malec, and Peterson 2020) but is seldom studied beyond kindergarten.
Additionally, students’ engagement and motivation were high, which has been
considered important for the development of the metacognitive abilities needed
to master writing (Whitebread and Basilio 2013; Hacker, Keener, and Kircher2009). Hence, a number of the descriptors of playful learning in the context of awriting workshop could indicate that some kinds of narrative development are
taking place. For example, “valuing others’ ideas,” “seeing peers as resources,”“collaboration,” and “discussing and debating” all give evidence of collaborative
narrative development. Other descriptors such as “engagement,” “eagerness,”“participating actively,” and “belonging” might be thought to give evidence ofengagement and motivation (Solis et al. 2019).
My students borrowed from a diverse range of texts and people as they
composed their stories. They borrowed from the ideas of their peers, both intheir own groups and in the groups playing around them, and they borrowed
from movie and book texts. In one case, a group borrowed one character’s namefrom a book written over seventy years ago in the UK, a second character’sname from a popular, decade-old Disney movie, and the setting from a fairy
tale. Another group talked about tragedy and adventure, which they said theywanted to include because these were in the movies they liked best.
In both instances, learners borrowed genres and actions and recontextualized these in their own stories. This recontextualization is another key feature ofnarrative development and shows that as the children’s unofficial worlds were
given space to enter the classroom through guided play, they enjoyed a richer
context in which to develop narratives and write creatively than they would havethrough direct instruction. Nonetheless, my fellow students in Canada seemed
to find differences between this cultural context and the contexts in which they
worked. The age of the children in my class was higher than the age of children
in Canada who would be likely to play with LEGO sets. And the media from

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which my students borrowed characters and themes (e.g., Disney princess movies) was likely to appeal to children of a younger age in Canada.
The degree to which the students in the workshop were able to direct theirlearning caused some tension for me as the teacher because I did not knowwhether directing the students to move on to the next stage of the workshop
would dilute the experience of guided play. Time management proved a challenge for the learners, and perhaps we could have focused more on the writing if I had shifted the balance of structure and choice slightly to align moreclosely with the PLaNS lesson structure. However, this, in turn, may have had aneffect on the quantity of playful learning indicators displayed by the students. As
noted by Solis and her colleagues (Solis et al. 2019), “Play feels timeless (players
lose themselves in play), while school is timetabled. . . . In play children are in
charge, while in school the agenda is often set by adults. These paradoxes canderail efforts to have children benefit from learning through play” (8). These
paradoxes, then, are important to keep in mind as teachers weigh the benefits
and costs of bringing play into their classrooms. Figure 3 provides the proposed
framework for teachers and researchers to balance between structure in choice,to maintain structure without undermining student autonomy, and to provide
choice without negating the learning goals and structure.
Solis and her colleagues (Solis et al. 2019) include the South African concept of ubuntu—summarized by the phrase “a person is a person through otherpersons” (Tutu 1999)—in their playful learning model and provide three sentences that integrate this concept with each of the three indicators (see figure 3).
Although these were not included in my analysis, anecdotal observations fromthe workshop indicate that all three sentences integrating ubuntu are in keepingwith the characteristics I observed in the play-and-write workshop. With respect
to ownership, learning appeared to be a “communal effort in which learners
feel encouraged to lead their learning and support each other” (26) throughthe collaborative process learners used to develop their stories and directed
their activities. The recordings also included numerous examples of curiosity
integrated with ubuntu through “inquiry, risk taking, and exploration of ‘wild
ideas’” (26), the best example being a conversation in which learners debatedwhether their stories could include swearing. Some teachers might consider thisconversation the opposite of ubuntu. Indeed, they might think it the point at
which they should step in and direct the learning. In this workshop, however,it became an example of learners using discussion to lead each other towards a
respectful, shared agreement. Lastly, with regard to enjoyment and ubuntu, an

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seemed present for most of the workshop, and although there were instancesof disagreement that lacked warmth, these were negotiated by the learners tocreate an overall atmosphere in keeping with the quote.
Studies show that guided play provides a context for children to develop thesocial, emotional, physical, and cognitive skills they need to succeed academically (Pyle and Bigelow 2014; Singer, Golinkoff, and Hirsh-Pasek 2006; Zosh etal. 2013), provides a meaningful way for them to become actively engaged while
scaffolding is provided by the teacher (Weisberg, Hirsh-Pasek et al. 2013; Weisberg, Zosh, et al. 2013), and provides space for creativity to develop (Bateson andMartin 2013). The use of guided play in a class such as this offers the potential
for holistic skill development and creativity in writing in ways that may not be
possible through teacher-led instruction. Hence, a model such as the one shownin figure 3—which shows clearly when guided play takes place—offers a tool
teachers can use to enhance creativity, narrative development, and social andemotional skill development through a play-and-write workshop such as mine.
However, figure 3 does not show guided play as part of a continuum orspectrum that includes other forms of playful learning. By nature, a continuum
includes areas of overlap in which guided play starts to become free play orgames. Additionally, a continuum provides an expanded definition of play thatprevents the historical dichotomy between free play and direct instruction.
Hence, although this model may provide guidance useful to a teacher, it must
be understood in the context of a broader discussion about playful learning.

Conclusions and Implications
As already noted, the quantity of indicators displayed by the students showsthat my workshop fits well within the framework of playful learning in a South
African context (Solis et al. 2019). My behavior as the teacher also fits the criteria
of guided play because the workshop was initiated by me, but it was led by thestudents based on the scaffolding I provided by asking questions (Zosh et al.
2018). The five indicators of guided play in South African schools are consequently in evidence as these indicators are drawn directly from my two models.
The implications for practice by teachers and researchers are that guided
play, although rarely used at this grade level, is possible in a class of this size. In
short, a workshop such as this provides ample opportunities for playful learn-

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ing. Given the benefits of playful learning and guided play in particular, teaching that allows for construction with the students and student-directed activity
proves valuable and should be explored where possible in the grades beyond
kindergarten. However, in South Africa, teachers do not usually receive training
in playful learning unless they are Grade R or preschool teachers. Thus, we needmore in-service and preservice training to equip teachers to bring more playful
and open-ended approaches into their teaching.
As other studies have indicated that guided play may occur less frequently
in South African classrooms because of the large class sizes (average thirty
students), extra facilitators or teaching assistants may be needed to make thisapproach feasible. These are just two of the paradoxes noted by Solis and hercolleagues (Solis et al. 2019) that might challenge efforts to increase children’saccess to playful learning in South Africa. This study adds further weight to theargument that we need a pedagogy of play to support educators in negotiatingthese paradoxes to leverage the potential of learning through play in South
African schools and in similar contexts elsewhere in the developing world.
To address the challenges of teacher training, class size, and scope of thestudy, I planned a follow-up intervention using playful learning (including freeplay, guided play, and games) as a regular feature of teaching. This intervention
was to occur at a low-fee private school, one of a group of schools at which I
began working in 2021. This group of schools uses a blended learning modelthat incorporates videos and e-learning on computers in class, with tutors andteaching providing one-on-one assistance as required. My role was to designa bridging program for students who had passed grade seven (the final year of
primary school) but who needed intervention in literacy and numeracy before
they could transition to high school. The bridging year makes up a full year
program, and it is one of the first of its kind in South Africa. It was importantthat I find—in addition to the blended learning model—innovative ways forstudents to develop creativity, collaboration, problem solving, and communication skills in an environment fostering a love of reading and writing. To this end,
we allocated two hours a week for play with LEGO sets and board games. For
the first term (January to March, 2022), this was offered as a free play activity,
and the students responded extremely positively to the LEGO sets. Once we
had established that LEGO sets were viable as play material for this group, weplanned a series of workshops in the same format as the play-and-write workshop presented in this article.
In this follow-up intervention, we included teacher training so that teachers

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could become familiar with some of the theory behind the use of playful learning, and we provided them a sample format for guided play writing workshops.
We ran the first training session in January 2022 and, in addition to the training content I have identified in this article, we also trained teachers in the useof games for literacy, numeracy, and life skills learning. The first phase of thefollow-up intervention will take place in a class of twenty bridging-year students,
a larger group than in the initial study. Once the feasibility of the LEGO play
and the indicators of guided play has been established for a class of this size,
the next step will be to test the approach in larger classes of twenty-five to thirty
students at the same school.
Hence, through this study and ongoing research into the use of guided
play in the higher grades in South African schools, a clearer pedagogy of playcan be tested and developed, using the combined teacher and student indicators
proposed in figure 3, to serve as a guide to teachers for including and structuring guided play in the higher grades in similar contexts. Showing them the key
elements for which they will be responsible—embedding leaning goals, choosing
the play context, and scaffolding the play and learning—and of the indicators
they can expect to see in the students’ interactions offers them a usable guidefor learning through play. In addition to what this research offers to teachingpractices, it provides a clear model that researchers in South Africa and similar
contexts might use to identify different kinds of play and understand how thesetake place in the developing world.

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