Focus on

LEARNING THROUGH PLAY

1. What is it?
Play and learning have not always been believed to go together. For a long time,
learning and play were positioned as opposites. Learning was viewed as an important,
serious, and focused process that required direct instruction from a teacher. Play, on the
other hand, was seen as free and fun – a break from serious studying.
Today, plenty of evidence shows that children focus, think, and learn during play.1 As a
result, ‘fun’ and ‘educational’ now go hand in hand, and learning through play (LtP) is
recognized as a highly effective pedagogical approach. For many, LtP offers youngsters
the chance to engage their minds, use their bodies, and interact with others and the
world around them. By encouraging children to fully engage with activities, play helps
achieve learning goals.
In fact, playful learning methods are some of the most positive approaches known to
support young children’s development. However, play isn’t just for children. People of
all ages can learn effectively through play. Research has shown, for example, that using
playful approaches to train adults in the workplace is more effective than traditional
ways of training, and brings additional benefits such as increasing personal happiness
and motivation.2
Learning-through-play experiences are widely considered to bring together several
elements. Apart from the obvious element of fun, other play elements include
learner‑centredness, hands-on involvement, allowing a learner to create meaning, and
often (but not always) social interaction. The LEGO Foundation funds research around
play‑based learning, and describes five characteristics of LtP3:
• Joyful – children have fun while they learn;
• Interactive – children get to socialize with peers;
• Engaging – children are focused, and engage their mind in the task or activity;
• Meaningful – children develop knowledge and skills that apply to their everyday lives;
• Iterative – children can explore new ideas, and have opportunities to try, fail, and
try again.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Hannah Simmons is an education specialist with over 8 years’ experience working
with governments, donor agencies, and NGOs in sub-Saharan Africa. Her work
includes teacher training, development of teaching and learning materials,
and design of educational assessments, with a focus on contextualization for
multilingual and low-resource settings.

© Oxford University Press www.oup.com/elt/expert 1

LEARNING THROUGH PLAY
Including LtP into lessons is therefore about adding these
playful elements to activities. An effective play-based lesson
doesn’t need to include all elements at once. Some activities
will involve more creativity or social interaction than others. For
example, working in pairs to sort bottle tops according to colour
involves less creativity but more social interaction compared to
drawing a picture of a dream house.
What excites and interests learners, and what they are able to
do, might vary from one individual to another or from context to
context. When designing play-based learning activities, we need
to think about what will be enjoyable and meaningful for those
we are working with.
For a three-year-old, singing a body-parts song that involves
touching different parts of the body can be endlessly enjoyable,
while at the same time helping that child to learn vocabulary.
For an older child, such a game could quickly get boring.
Instead, activities that involve more advanced thinking skills
will likely be preferred. For example, in the game Simon Says,
learners should only follow the instructions they hear if they start
with the words ‘Simon says’. This game helps learners not only
develop listening and language comprehension skills as they
hear and interpret instructions, but it also trains higher-level
functioning because learners have to stop themselves acting on
instructions if they do not hear the words ‘Simon says’.
2. What does it mean for the ELT classroom?
The elements of play lend themselves to the ELT classroom.
However, for LtP lessons to be effective, teachers must plan
for play-based lessons and be mindful about keeping activities
playful. It is useful to think about the following points.
Learning is interactive
While play can be done alone, it can also be a social experience,
providing opportunities for individuals to develop and practise
language-based communication skills. Playful activities, like
© Oxford University Press www.oup.com/elt/expert
group role-plays or team games, encourage learners to
communicate with others. This can help learners build their
vocabulary (e.g. they might hear another person use a new word
or a word they had forgotten) and practise existing language
skills (e.g. by speaking in a role-play, or discussing a team
strategy). Play also promotes student–teacher interactions – you
may participate in play activities and ask students about their
ideas. Through these interactions, you can model language
skills and avoid ‘talk and chalk’ approaches – that is, traditional
teaching approaches in which learners simply listen to a teacher.
The classroom becomes a safe place to try and fail
Play encourages learners to try, fail, and try again through
iterative activities – that is, activities with repeated sequences.
A game such as guessing which animal another person is
thinking of requires: asking questions, guessing, getting the
answer wrong, and paying attention to what the answer is not
in order to make more accurate suggestions. Play activities like
this can further promote an environment of encouragement
and support: Failure is an opportunity to learn and improve – it
is not ‘poor performance’. Of course, this is only possible if
the teacher not only sees value in failure, but also allows for
reflection and learning from mistakes, and is able to let learners
try without interfering. Seeing failure as a learning opportunity
and creating a trusting environment helps language learners
overcome language-related anxiety by providing the freedom
they need to make mistakes. In turn, these mistakes help them
to store new information over the long term, like remembering
the meaning of a word long after a class has finished.
Content is meaningful
Meaningful experiences are at the heart of LtP. What we are
teaching should be relevant to those we teach. This doesn’t
have to mean altering curricula, but instead we should find
ways to allow learners to connect topics to their own lives.
An effective way to do this is to give learners choices and
encourage them to explore their own interests. For example,
2
LEARNING THROUGH PLAY
you could invite learners to draw a picture of what they think
they will look like in 10 years’ time and ask them to describe
their picture in order to practise using English expressions
about the future. This allows learners to connect a task from the
curriculum with their own individual ambitions and passions.
The learning experience is joyful
A core element of play is that it is fun. Because LtP feels
enjoyable, it helps individuals develop a positive relationship
with the language-learning experience and with the language
itself. This contributes to learners’ confidence and willingness
to practise their language skills. Joyful learning can also help
with the development of a good relationship between you and
your learners. This will lead to a better understanding of your
learners’ individual abilities and needs, and your learners will
feel more comfortable asking questions and seeking help when
they need it. Learning through play teaches learners vital global
skills that prepare them for life beyond the classroom.
Play helps young people improve their wellbeing
Play offers joyful experiences that can lower the heart rate and
provide a break from stressors such as money problems, difficult
family relationships, and illness (UNESCO & IICBA, 20194). At
the same time, play helps young people develop holistically,
which means their overall wellbeing improves. For example,
through hands-on physical activities, play contributes to physical
development and health by building interpersonal skills. Play
helps to establish positive and meaningful relationships with
others – relationships that are essential for young people to
cope with stress, handle challenging life circumstances, and
learn to solve conflicts (ibid). Play also allows people to grow
their problem-solving and critical thinking abilities. Such skills
© Oxford University Press www.oup.com/elt/expert
contribute to improved learning, which in the long term, can
influence salary levels and economic security (ibid).
Play allows learners to explore and expand their creativity
Open-ended play activities, where learners can choose how they
want to interpret and explore a task, are especially helpful for
developing creativity. For example, you could ask your learners
to design a tour of their town for an imagined English-speaking
visitor. Through this task, not only do you invite learners to apply
their English language skills in describing sites, you also invite
them to explore and express aspects of their own personality
and imagination as they plan a fun way of introducing someone
to their home. (A competition element could be added by
having classmates vote for the tour they most like the sound
of.) In a similar way, having learners mime the lyrics of their
favourite English song for others to guess involves the mimer
identifying English words and their meanings, and interpreting
and expressing them as body movements. Creativity is not only
essential to tackling problems (it is why we are able to ‘think
outside the box’), but it is also a key global skill and one of the
most desired skills in today’s workplaces. Giving learners the
opportunity to display their creativity therefore helps prepare
them to succeed in the future.
3. What are the challenges?
Increased difficulty for LtP activities in ELT classrooms
If activities require a lot of instructions, then, when the activity
is combined with the challenge of using a second language,
learners might find the activity more difficult to understand
and do than they typically would in their first language. For
example, performing a group role-play by heart in front of the
rest of the class may involve a lot of new vocabulary, as well as
remembering the different roles and the story plot. As a result,
learners may find it harder to act out their role-play without
a script compared to if they were performing in their first
language. Being mindful of the degree of challenge an activity
presents, and identifying ways to reduce it, can help to make it
more enjoyable and engaging for learners. With a role-play this
could mean allowing learners to use script note cards.
Learners’ language abilities in English might be at a
different level to their other thinking, physical, and social
abilities
When using play-based learning with very young children, we
typically see them developing many skills at once (e.g. speaking,
listening, problem-solving, fine motor skills, etc.). For ELT
classrooms, learners may be older, and therefore have advanced
social, physical, and thinking abilities, but less advanced English
skills. It is important to find activities that are accessible to their
English language level, while remaining engaging on other
thinking, social, and physical levels. When planning play-based
lessons, it is good to balance a learner’s age with their language
abilities. For example, for younger children, teaching a song to
build vocabulary might include teaching simple accompanying
movements; for older children, they could come up with the
movements themselves.
3
LEARNING THROUGH PLAY
As with any classroom, there are learners of mixed abilities
Developing LtP activities that will be engaging, enjoyable, and
meaningful for all learners can be challenging. Not all learners
will enjoy the same things, and some may have educational or
physical needs that limit their participation in certain activities.
It’s important to pay attention to the different abilities in the
class and adjust activities to match. Mixed-ability group work can
support student-to-student learning; having ability-based groups
is helpful when a task can be adjusted for different ability levels.
Most important is that you praise all effort and participation and
don’t just focus on mastering skills as the only goal.
Activities may require more, or specific, resources
Learning through play is often connected to resource-heavy
activities, like building models, painting, or dressing up with
costumes and making theatre props. To avoid feeling as though
you have limited resources, you could draw on and repurpose
available materials, and invite parents to contribute items from
home or the local environment. Something as simple as plastic
bottle tops can be used for fun, hands-on activities such as
counting games, creating patterns, and can be labelled with
the alphabet or phonemes to support reading and writing skills
(e.g. each bottle top has a different letter on it, so letters can be
easily rearranged).
Not all play-based activities will support development of all
skills
It’s essential to choose the right activity to match your target
learning goal. For example, group story-writing is less likely
to support learners’ phonological awareness than group
storytelling: Storytelling offers an opportunity to practise
pronunciation and listening to the sounds of a language.
Teachers should be clear about their intentions, and plan
play-based lessons with their target goal in mind. Think about
© Oxford University Press www.oup.com/elt/expert
what you want learners to achieve through the lesson and then
brainstorm with other teachers to generate fun, interactive
activities that could support this. Remember: Not all activities
need to include all play elements.
4. How can this be implemented?
Include playful activities in your lesson plan
Don’t worry about making a whole lesson play-based. Instead,
focus on including specific activities that bring together the
elements of LtP. A play activity could be used to revise content
from the previous day’s lesson, for example, having learners
change some of the lyrics to a song of their choice to use
vocabulary introduced earlier.
Choose a play-based activity that supports your target
learning goal
Identify your learning goal; consider how you could link this goal
to learners’ interests or experiences, and how you could make
it enjoyable and hands-on. For example, if the learning goal is
using the past simple tense, you could ask learners to work in
pairs and pretend to be news presenters reporting on an event
that happened in their hometown or at school.
Not every activity needs to include all LtP elements
Drawing a picture of a house and labelling the different rooms
in English might not involve much social interaction, but it can
feel meaningful for the students as it connects to their own
personal experiences.
Create an environment that encourages learners to try, fail,
and try again
Learners are less likely to express creativity, explore, and enjoy
themselves if they feel only correct answers are valued. Promote
learning from mistakes by asking learners to reflect on where
they went wrong, and praising them for coming up with new
ideas and for not giving up.
4
LEARNING THROUGH PLAY

5. Over to you 6. Further reading

Learning through play is an effective approach to delivering a Mistakes help you learn – freedom to fail in games and
curriculum, and it can work well when mixed with other teaching language
styles or as the main teaching strategy. Through its emphasis www.cambridgeenglish.org/blog/mistakes-help-you-
https://

on making learning enjoyable and meaningful, play-based learn-freedom-to-fail-in-games-and-language-learning/

learning helps people of all ages develop a love of learning.
At the same time, its celebration of exploration, learning from Learning through play and the development of holistic
mistakes, creative problem-solving, and social relationships skills across childhood
prepares learners to succeed in an increasingly globalized and cms.learningthroughplay.com/media/qjndcaea/holistic-
https://

ever‑changing world. skills.pdf

Learning through play: Strengthening learning through

play in early childhood education programmes
Talking points www.unicef.org/sites/default/files/2018-12/UNICEF-Lego-
https://

Think about the games you played as a child. What skills
do you think they helped you to develop?
To what extent do you agree that play can be an
Foundation-Learning-through-Play.pdf
P.O.W.E.R.: Games for child development and learning
righttoplay.com/en/landing/power-games/
https://

important approach to teaching and learning? Learn English through games

What challenges could you experience when using www.cambridgeenglish.org/learning-english/parents-
https://

learning through play in your classroom? How would and-children/your-childs-interests/learn-english-through-

you go about overcoming those challenges? games/
Do you think your learners’ parents would support Learning through play
learning through play in the classroom? How would you www.twinkl.co.uk/teaching-wiki/learning-through-play/
https://

introduce this idea to them?

Are there any traditional or cultural games in your
context that you could adapt for learning through play? Related titles by Oxford University Press

How can you ensure learning-through-play activities are

inclusive for all learners?
How can you adjust learning-through-play activities for
large class sizes?
How could learning through play be an enjoyable
experience for you, as a teacher?

Endnotes
1 Zosh, J. M., Hopkins, E. J., Jensen, H., Liu, C., Neale, D.,
Hirsh-Pasek, K., Solis, S. L., & Whitebread, D. (2017). Learning
through play: A review of the evidence [White paper]. The ISBN 978 0 19 442596 4 ISBN 978 0 19 289416 8

LEGO Foundation, DK. cms.learningthroughplay.com/

https://

media/wmtlmbe0/learning-through-play_web.pdf
2 Gauntlett, D. (2007). Creative explorations: New approaches
to identities and audiences. Routledge.
3 Zosh et al., Learning through play.
4 UNESCO & IICBA. (2019). Play and resilience: A toolkit
for teachers, caregivers, and other stakeholders. https://

unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000370734

To cite this paper:

Simmons, H. (2023). Focus on learning through play [PDF]. Oxford University
Press. www.oup.com/elt/expert

Acknowledgements
The publisher would like to thank the following for permission to reproduce
photographs and other copyright material: Corbis (Gideon Mendel); Getty
Images (Photodisc); OUP (MM Studios).

© Oxford University Press www.oup.com/elt/expert 5