Full Name: Ha Doan Anh Thu

Email: hadoananhthu4603@gmail.com
Phone number: 0912055372
DISCUSSION ESSAY
Topic: Do schools should be more entertaining for children?

For decades, schooling has been an indispensable part of life which is regarded to
be the fastest path leading to one’s success and dreams. In general, people tend to
regard school as an academic environment merely. Nonetheless, other individuals
hold the belief that entertaining activities should be engaged in the curricula as they
have been proven to benefit students significantly. In my perception, the latter
opinion has a stronger point and is worth supporting for several reasons.

According to Wikipedia “A school is an educational institution designed to provide

learning spaces and learning environments for the teaching of students under the
direction of teachers”. Therefore, the main purpose of schooling is to provide
students with anything possible so that they can fully reach all the benefits of
learning. A lot of people, especially the older generations, have the tendency to think
that academic institutions should not involve recreational activities in view of the fact
that their children may get distracted and not make the most of their learning
process. For example, parents reckon when attending classes, the kids should be
focusing on books, lectures and try to memorize all the knowledge they are
supposed to absorb only.

Notwithstanding, there are people with a completely different point of view. As a

matter of fact, this viewpoint has been statistically proven to be true and there are a
number of reasons accounting for this. In reality, most of the students seem to be
absent-minded easily because they are bored of looking at lines and groups of
letters and numbers printed or written on books and boards. Attaching lessons with
topic-related images has been done to minimize this problem; still, the children are
likely to get distracted easily as they are not fully engaged in the lectures. Therefore,
it is essential that more effective measures such as including games or other means
of entertainment be taken. By way of example, there is an experiment named The
Effect of Game-Based Learning on Students’ Learning Performance in Science
Learning – A Case of "Conveyance Go" in which the card game is included in the
learning process to see whether the students taking test after attending a
game-based learning class perform better compared to attending an ordinary one.
As the end of the experiment, numbers have clearly shown that “the posttest scores
of the students (M=92.13, SD=8.80) were significantly higher than the pretest scores
(M=83.33, SD=11.43) (t=-3.319, p<0.01)”. Obviously, any forms of game-related
activities during the learning process work wonders for students as such
engagement seems to “help increase student participation, foster social and
emotional learning, and motivate students to take risks” according to Jan L.
Plass_CREATE Lab_New York University, Bruce D. Homer_Program in Educational
Psychology_The Graduate Center, City University of New York and Charles K.
Kinzer_Department of Computing, Communication and Technology in Education
Teachers College, Columbia University. The academic and educational outcomes
that game-based learning activities have brought to children are undoubtedly
advantageous. To be more specific, the top skills that can be enhanced through
game-engaging classes are mentioned in the latter paragraph.

Firstly, as stated in Front. Psychol., 13 December 2019, “playing games in the

classroom can increase overall motivation. Students become more motivated to
learn, pay attention, and participate in-class activities. They can also be a great
classroom management tool, helping to motivate a class”. Furthermore, the students’
level of attentiveness will also be enhanced. Secondly, a study conducted by
researchers at the University of Wisconsin in Madison found games are actually
beneficial for students as stuffs help them shape their attentiveness and train the
brain in how to learn” . Finally, game-based activities are highly likely to boost
self-esteem in children since “playing video games in the classroom was tied to
students’ sense of pride and emotional connectedness to their peers — although this
seemed more prevalent in boys than in girls”.

In conclusion, the world has always been developing via innovations so it is not
compulsory to stay with traditional solutions, especially in education since creativity
and new ideas are needed to bring the best results to both the instructors and
learners. Such are the benefits of game-engaging courses that I individually see no
points in being against including some entertainment in classes.

Preferences:
- Jan L. Plass_CREATE Lab_New York University, Bruce D. Homer_Program in
Educational Psychology_The Graduate Center, City University of New York
and Charles K. Kinzer_Department of Computing, Communication and
Technology in Education Teachers College, Columbia University, Foundations
of Game-Based Learning. Retrieved from
https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1090277.pdf
- Eric Zhi Feng Liu, Po-Kuang Chen (2013), The Effect of Game-Based
Learning on Students’ Learning Performance in Science Learning – A Case of
"Conveyance Go". Retrieved from
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/81980848.pdf
- Front. Psychol., (12/13/2019), Evaluating Impact on Motivation and Academic
Performance of a Game-Based Learning Experience Using Kahoot. Retrieved
from https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02843/full
- C.S. Green and D. Bavelier (3/202013), Learning, attentional control and
action video games. Retrieved from
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3461277/
- Australian Catholic University (7/28/2021), Kids' love for video games can
improve classroom learning, study finds. Retrieved from
https://phys.org/news/2021-07-kids-video-games-classroom.html