Play Captains impacting children’s math language use on city Play Streets

• In Event: Poster Session 13
  In Poster Session: PS 13 Topic - Education, Schooling

Abstract

In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, providing city-wide programming that promotes language use and critical skill development is more important than ever. Playful Learning Landscapes optimizes the time children spend out of school by transforming spaces and activities into places designed to increase the kinds of social interactions known to generate strong language skills. For instance, a bus stop infused with puzzles prompts children’s math language more than a traditional bus stop (Hassinger-Das, Palti, Golinkoff, Hirsh-Pasek, 2019). Given the relationship between early mathematical language use and later mathematical achievement (Hanner, Braham, Elliot, & Libertus, 2019), including playful learning supports into summer programming can target child outcomes and positively address a summer slide amplified by the recent pandemic.

Play Streets, a community-based program that closes and transforms city streets into neighborhood playful learning environments led by teen Play Captains, offers one example of a Playful Learning Landscape designed as a summer pop-up activity. Trained Play Captains facilitated playful learning activities on nine Play Streets for five weeks in the Summer of 2020. We hypothesized that more children would play on the Play Streets and would generate significantly more math language when engaging in playful learning activities that were facilitated by Play Captains than when given the opportunity to freely play on Play Streets.

Children’s activity on the Play Streets was measured across 378, five-minute observations over five weeks. Children’s ages ranged from 2- to 13-years-old. All observations took place between 11am and 4pm in which the streets were closed to traffic. Play Streets with Play Captains were coded as 1 (n=190) and Play Streets without were coded as 0 (n=188). If any math terms were used by children during each observation, it was coded as a 1 (n=106), whereas if no math terms were used, it was coded as a 0 (n=272). The number of children on the streets during each observation was coded as continuous and ranged from 0-10.

Bivariate correlations indicated that the presence of Play Captains was positively associated with the number of children playing (r=.59, p=.000) and children’s numerical language (r=.49, p = .000). To ensure that the increase in math language was not just a function of the number of children on the Play Streets, we conducted a binary logistic regression. The model suggested that both the number of children and the presence of Play Captains significantly increased children’s math language use, Χ2 (1, N=378) = 101.387, p=.000. Children’s math language use was predicted by the number of children, p=.004, OR=1.22 and Play Captains incorporation of playful learning activities such as games that prompt children to add and subtract (e.g., bean bag toss), p=.000, OR=10.04.

Play Captains offers a low-cost, attractive implementation that serves to increase critical learning goals, such as the use of math language known to promote later math achievement. Targeting learning goals through playful pop-up activities holds the promise of providing safe and educationally enriching experiences that can benefit children within their communities and have the potential to protect them from summer slide.

Authors

• Rachael Todaro, Temple University
  Presenting Author

• Eliza Koren, Haverford College
  Non-Presenting Author

• Dionne Smith
  Non-Presenting Author

• Richard Ferris, Franklin & Marshall College
  Non-Presenting Author

• Roberta M Golinkoff, University of Delaware
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kathy A Hirsh-Pasek, Temple University
  Non-Presenting Author