Browsing by Subject "yhteishenki"

Children have an intrinsic motivation to play, and play is an essential part of the versatile development of a child. A child learns, for example, social, emotional, motoric, and cognitive skills through play. The same skills are taught in Finnish schools. It is justifiable that play is a visible part of the Finnish elementary school curriculum, in which play is encouraged to be used as one of the methods in teaching. The significance of play decreases in the curriculum for the 3-6th graders even though that age of students are still children who play. The aim of this research was to study how play appears in 4-6th graders’ actions and speech in the school context, to give a voice to the school children. In addition, the aim was to study how play appears in learning and motivation, and how it appears in the building of the sense of community in a new group. This master’s thesis is qualitative research, and it is conducted through an ethnographic method. The data was collected from a class of 25 students in grades 4-6th in a Finnish ele-mentary school in August and September of 2021. The collected data had field notes, video material, photos, and interviews. The data was analyzed by coding it in themes to answer the research questions. The concluded themes discussed how play appeared in the school con-text and what kind of role play had in the building of the sense of community. The research results indicate that the students experienced play to be an inspiring and moti-vating way to learn. The students felt that play was a refreshing break from the ordinary book-oriented studying even though they were also studying while playing. The results also show that the teacher had a significant role in building both the sense of community and the learn-ing of the students. With the teacher’s support, the students learned while playing and had the courage to play with the classmates who they did not know before.