With so many demands on educators, it can feel daunting to find, understand, and implement new practices. That’s why I’m debuting a new series of blog posts – Playful Power Ups – that will offer simple tweaks you can make to inject more play into your (STEM) classroom. Small shifts can lead to big changes!
First up, Tinker Time.
What is Tinker Time?
Tinker Time is an opportunity for your students to gain familiarity with materials before they’ll be used in a design challenge (or any learning activity). To be effective, Tinker Time needs to be both open-ended and self-directed. That is, students should not have a particular prompt or goal and should be allowed and encouraged to follow their curiosity during their exploration.
Why Offer Tinker Time?
When we introduce unfamiliar materials during a STEM challenge or alongside a learning activity with a particular objective, we may limit students’ abilities to use items to their full potential because they are focused on accomplishing a goal or feel the pressure of a time constraint. Also, kids are easily distracted (aren’t we all!) and can find it difficult to focus on the task at hand if they haven’t had time to adequately explore or play with a new material. Letting them tinker can let those curiosities about the materials play out ahead of time, ultimately leading to more engagement when you do move into the learning task.
Giving students the opportunity to explore materials outside of the context of a STEM challenge – even for just a few minutes – can maximize their creativity as they develop a richer understanding of how a particular material works and how it might be used. When we introduce a challenge after Tinker Time, students can then use what they learned during their exploration as a launchpad to more complex and (typically) more effective ideas.
Getting Started with Tinker Time:
I make Tinker Time a regular part of my work with students of all ages. Follow the steps below to get started with your students:
- For an upcoming challenge or project, identify an unfamiliar (or less familiar) material.
(Note: This also works brilliantly for digital tools, like Tinkercad or Scratch.) - Allot time for students to participate in Tinker Time.
(Hint: For simpler materials, like clothespins for kindergarten students, just a few minutes may suffice, but for more complex materials, like K’nex or a new digital tool, giving up to a whole class period may be helpful). - Explain Tinker Time to your students. Try: “Today we’re going to be exploring a new material. What can you learn about how it works? How might it be useful for projects or activities?”
- Have students share their learning. (Optional, but recommended). This can be as simple as having pairs or groups of students do a quick demonstration of something that they learned or sharing ideas out and creating a list of “Ways to Use _____” as a whole group.
Dos and Don’ts:
- Do use Tinker Time regularly. Students become better at it with practice.
- Do use Tinker Time when you’re revisiting a familiar material that hasn’t been used in a while or if you notice students aren’t engaging with it as you hope.
- Do take part in Tinker Time alongside your students!
- Don’t have students explore too many materials in one session. Tinker Time can work well if there are two materials that you want students to explore interactions between, but having them explore a handful of different materials in one session can be overwhelming and undermine the goal of a rich exploration of the affordances of a particular material.
- Don’t turn it into work by requiring them to take notes or fill out information sheets on the materials. Let it be playful – I promise they’ll remember their ideas when it comes time to work with the material again in the future.
I hope this is a helpful starting point for implementing this simple practice in your own setting. Stay tuned for future Playful Power Ups to learn more small changes you can make to add more play in your classroom.
Lightbulb Image Credit: REDQUASAR on Pixabay.