Zeka Oyunları

Fun and (Brain) Games (mental games)

Simple games, played intentionally, can make for powerful moments of social-emotional learning

We know that social-emotional learning (SEL) works best when it’s happening across the school dayand encouraged in every setting. New work is showing the effectiveness of one pathway for that schoolwide learning: the common games, songs, and transition activities that are likely already part of an elementary school teacher’s repertoire. With the right kind of framing, these simple games can become powerful tools for teaching core social-emotional skills that improve children’s academic performance and behavior and lead to success throughout the school day. And they don’t require a formal (or costly) curriculum.

Introducing Brain Games

Developmental psychologist Stephanie Jones and her team at the Harvard Graduate School of Education are building a new approach to SEL that focuses specifically on simple strategies that can be adapted to many settings.

One example is Brain Games — a set of quick, fun activities that build core executive function and self regulation skills. These games, developed with collaborators at HopeLab, can be played at any time during the school day: transitions, downtime, or as a reward for good behavior.

Brain Games build three main competencies, which the team calls “brain powers”: focus, remember, and stop and think. To maximize learning during play, teachers can be intentional and explicit about the SEL skills students are building. They can talk to students about the brain power needed to play each game, and about strategies for using that power. After the game, they can talk about what happened, “building metacognition and a shared vocabulary around the skills they are learning,” Jones says. And through a set of debrief questions, “teachers and students can think together about how to use these skills at other times of day, connecting ‘brain powers’ to work ethic in the classroom, teamwork and relationships, and successful behavior in school and beyond.”

Jones and her team have conducted a pilot study of Brain Games in three low-income elementary schools in South Carolina. The findings revealed improvements in teacher reports of children’s self-regulation and executive function, as well as improved observer ratings of classroom regulation and teacher practices. Additional study is ongoing; to learn more about the games, contact Jones’s research lab, and read on.