On a cool, crisp fall day, when the leaves on the trees in Mountain View's school courtyard were the colour of ripe pears and ready to drop, some Grade 3 and 4 students scampered through a concrete breezeway on their way into class.
Some of the boys and girls at the Coquitlam elementary school jumped on to a maze of mixed up letters painted on the ground and started following them from A to Z while still others stood on a spelling game and tested one another's knowledge of 120 of the most commonly misspelled words in the English language.
Some mysterious initiation into playground culture? In a way, yes, says literacy game developer Peter Stainton.
The retired School District 43 educator wants to change the way children and teachers think about literacy and play by bringing the two concepts together in an outdoor playground.
"Some of the kids who go to school spend over 20% of their time at school on the playground," Stainton said, "so if you can put games out into the culture of the playground and, if it hits them appropriately in the sweet spot developmentally, they'll engage."
As an educator who has studied curriculum development and taught at-risk and vulnerable students, Stainton understands well what it takes to teach children to read. Many learn best when they are moving their bodies or socializing in a relaxed environment.
At the the same time, the playground is a vastly under-utilized space for learning, he said. Schools have acres of concrete and sometimes the only game you see is an old-fashioned hopscotch.
Stainton has developed several different games that he sells online through his business, Literacy Playground (www.literacyplayground.com). The game stencils include a verb trail, where children hop onto words such as "laugh" and "dance" and do the actions; and a variety of rhyming squares, where children learn spelling and vocabulary by identifying word "families" (words that sound similar but are spelled differently and have different meanings), as well as the alphabet and spelling games.
So far, the games have been piloted at Mountain View and another school in Delta that Stainton is working with and the response has been positive, he said.
"You can add balls and things and bean bags," he said. "It doesn't take anything, you just move your body."
The games can be used for co-operative play as well as to challenge students, and the stencils are available in French, Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch.
Principal Marsha Arnold said she appreciated Stainton's volunteer efforts - he also reads to the children in his spare time - and his church, Coquitlam Presbyterian, has adopted Mountain View and helped it beautify the courtyard.
"Peter has really stepped up and he understands the principles of play," Arnold said.
As for the children who hopped through the mazes, skipped along the verb trail and tested one another's spelling, they had fun without realizing they were also learning something.
"Even the admission that playgrounds can be used for educational purposes, if that's all it accomplishes, and if it becomes part of the culture of the playground and something they engage in and and want to be part of," Stainton said, then he has accomplished his goal.
