"Who knew that we learn empathy, trust, irony and problem solving through play, something the dictionary defines as 'pleasurable and apparently purposeless activity'?" — Krista Tippett, On Being ("Play, Spirit and Character")

Some whisper, some laugh and guffaw, some argue. They gesture wildly, demonstrate their ideas with their hands or drawings. From the air, from their minds, from their partners, they search for the English words they need. They are furiously engaged in play, and they have forgotten that I — the teacher — am in the room. It is just as education should be.

As the final project in my ESL reading course for precollege students, I chose to have students create a game based on the novel we had read. The project worked so well I repeated the assignment the following term.

The significance of play in childhood development is well-established, well-researched and long-accepted. However, only recently is the value of play throughout our lives — including and perhaps especially in higher education — receiving the attention it deserves, even though the value of adult play has been documented as far back as ancient Greece.

Research demonstrates that "play enhances creative thought, fosters trust, helps develop divergent and conditional thinking, and reduces stress — all of which can lead to increased learning." In "Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture" (1938), cultural historian and linguist Johan Huizinga examined the role of play in history. Play is "a significant function ... which transcends the immediate needs for life and imparts meaning to the action." Ethologist, painter and writer Desmond Morris has long known that "play is vital to the acquisition of complex skills."

More recently, psychiatrist Stuart Brown has noted, "Nothing lights up the brain like play. Three-dimensional play fires up the cerebellum, puts a lot of impulses into the frontal lobe — the executive portion — helps contextual memory be developed."

In Brown's book, "Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul," in his TED Talk, "Play is More than just Fun," and in his many interviews, Brown observes "that humans are uniquely designed by nature to enjoy and participate in play throughout life."

As founder of the National Institute for Play and the former clinical director and chief of psychiatry at San Diego's Mercy Hospital and Medical Center and associate professor at University of California at San Diego, Brown found in the course of a lifetime of research that those deprived of play are "fixed and rigid in their responses to complex stimuli."

"They don't have a repertoire of choices that are as broad as their intelligence should allow them to have, and they don’t seek out novelty and newness, which is part of an essential aspect of play in both animals and humans," he said. Brown cites no fewer than five types of play — body play, rough and tumble play, spectator play, ritual play and object play.

As a committed Freirean, I believe authentic education is transformative and liberating, and because I embrace multiple intelligences and learning styles pedagogy, it was easy for me to design a final course project based in play. Research demonstrates that problem- and project-based learning (PBL) "situate(s) learning in a meaningful task" and is "part of [the] tradition of meaningful, experiential learning" espoused by Kilpatrick and Dewey. "The evidence suggests that PBL is an instructional approach that offers the potential to help students develop flexible understanding and lifelong learning skills."

Here are the steps I took to develop this play-based project.

With about two weeks left in the term, I introduced the final project. In the first term during which I used the final project game, students and I read Gary Paulsen's coming-of-age novel, "Hatchet." In the next term, we read Lois Lowry's teen and young adult dystopian novel, "The Giver." For most students, the course novel was the first and only novel — in any language — they had read.

I asked students what games they had played and do play. On the board, I created a graphic organizer (brainstorm web) of their responses: soccer, Monopoly, Risk, video games, card games, dominoes, Clue, etc. On the screen, I projected pictures of board games. Next, I asked students, "What characteristics do games have?" Answers included: rules, pieces, dice, questions, prizes, points, cards, a name.

From there, I explained that in their groups, students would create a game based on the novel and other material we covered during the course. We reviewed the requirements (rubrics; see attached): Not only did students have to create the game, but they also had to present the game to the class, and all class members — including me — had to play, even if it were for only one turn. I brought to class scissors, butcher paper, glue sticks, colored paper, a stapler and many colored markers, all of which students could use to create their games.

In the next two weeks, I gave students a minimum of 20 minutes per class (class meets five days/week for 80 minutes/class) to work on their projects. Once students began, most were autonomous and fully engaged, working eagerly, assiduously, attentively, collaboratively. I suggested they exchange contact information should they want to meet outside of class to work on the projects.

Ultimately, students had at least three hours of class time to work on their games, and nearly all groups spent time outside of class on their projects. In class, they drew, crumpled their drafts, threw them away and began again. They debated which questions they should ask. They debated whether they should use dice or a game spinner. They investigated where to get dice or a game spinner.

They debated the game name, the rules, the points, the pieces, the design, the artwork, the prizes, the carrying case. They identified group members' interests and strengths and delegated duties: This one would be the artist; those two would choose the vocabulary words; that one would comb the novel for questions to ask.

In a way that was absent from other lessons — no matter how lively and engaged those lessons — the classroom burgeoned with learning, critical thinking, education.

Not in my wildest imaginings did I envision the results the students produced. Clearly, they had internalized and demonstrated the major themes in the texts, but what I was even more impressed with was their attention to detail:

Look, for example at the "The Giver" game (above): Color appears only in the images of memory, which is a central point of the novel.

Look at the detailed faces of the game pieces representing the main characters in "Hatchet" (above left). Likewise, look at the tiny hatchet on the spinner (above right).

Look, too, at the survival bag (right) in the game "Survive" based on "Hatchet." In the game, the bag holds question cards and other game pieces that players can use to help them "survive" the game. In the novel, the protagonist relies on a survival bag, which he retrieves from his downed plane, to live.

You can see the varying levels of artistic skill in the games; I did not evaluate artistic skill. For one, I am not an artist (I happily draw stick figures to illustrate my ideas, and my students have a grand time attempting to decipher my scribble. My camel has been mistaken for a dinosaur). Moreover, it was essential that students know they were free to express themselves in any way that best suited them and their groups, and they should be proud of any artistic expression. And they were.

If history is our guide — as it should be — the benefits of play will hold these students in good stead as they move into their careers.

Brown asserts that Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) — a high-tech company specializing in robotic space exploration — as well as NASA and Boeing will not hire employees "even if they're summa cum laude from Harvard or Cal Tech — if they haven't done stuff with their hands early in life, played with their hands [because] they can't problem-solve as well. So play is practical, and it's very important."

Although George Bernard Shaw — unlike Brown — was not a scientist or brain researcher, he did know the value of play, observing, "We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing." Many decades later, Brown concurs and implores, "I would encourage you all to engage not in the work-play differential — where you set aside time to play — but where your life becomes infused minute by minute, hour by hour, with body, object, social, fantasy, transformational kinds of play."

And there you have the doctor's orders: Play!

Note: This article also appears in the UK online education magazine Creative Academic.