Decades of early childhood research demonstrate that play is essential for child development. Play supports growth across developmental domains, allowing students to practice oral language skills, test physical abilities, develop cognitive understandings, and interact with their peers.1 Play also helps children develop the 21st century skills needed for success in today's workplace and world.2 As such, organizations like the American Academy of Pediatrics and the United Nations recognize play as a fundamental right for children.3 To meet this critical call, REL Northeast & Islands has been working with educators in the U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI) to integrate playful, joy-filled learning into all prekindergarten (preK) through grade 3 classrooms.
In our spring blog, we explored why joyful learning is important for all learners and suggested ways for teachers to integrate play in their classrooms--strategies that stem from our work in the USVI. This blog introduces three new online micro-credential learning modules (Login Instructions) designed to infuse joyful learning in early childhood classrooms in the USVI and beyond.
USVI Joyful Learning Modules: A Dual-purpose Training Resource
In 2019, the USVI legislature passed a new law requiring all preK through grade 3 teachers to obtain early childhood certification. At the same time, educators on the Islands recognized a need to bring joy back to early childhood classrooms. The national emphasis on standards and testing has decreased the time available for singing, laughing, and playing. To meet the needs for both teacher certification and more joyful classrooms, the Virgin Islands Department of Education and REL Northeast & Islands established the U.S. Virgin Islands Partnership to Strengthen the Early Childhood Workforce. Our first task was to design three evidence-based Joyful Learning in Early Childhood micro-credential modules.
These fully online and asynchronous modules allow educators to learn about research-based best practices for bringing play and joyful learning into early childhood classrooms, while earning professional development hours and continuing education units (CEUs). For teachers in the USVI, these CEUs can be applied toward certification to be eligible to teach in preK-grade 3 under the new law.
A Resource for Early Childhood Educators
The Joyful Learning in Early Childhood modules explore the value of:
- Play and strategies for incorporating joyful learning into required curriculum and activities
- Relationship-building between teachers and students
- Family engagement
- Continuous, formative assessment in elementary classrooms to meet individual student needs
- Assessing children's knowledge and understanding and designing pedagogy around group and individual student needs
Although the modules are customized to the USVI context, all teachers can use the play-based strategies, which are grounded in evidence. Each strategy makes learning more engaging and fun and targets specific developmental areas such as social skills, cognitive abilities, language, literacy, creativity, and mathematical understanding.
Each module includes various modes of learning to engage adult learners in multiple ways, including:
- Videos from experts in the field
- Readings that are evidence-based, engaging, and focused on a problem of practice relevant to the topic
- Hands-on learning activities, such as flashcards and role-playing through various scenarios
Educators are asked to respond to discussion prompts in a virtual Reflection Notebook, where they can jot down notes, capture screen images of key concepts, and brainstorm ways to implement these ideas in their own classrooms.
Module Title | Ages Covered | Content |
|---|---|---|
Foundational Relationships, Discovery, and Learning | Birth to age 3 | Fostering children's growth and development through strong adult-child relationships |
Supporting the Joy of Learning | Ages 3 to 5 | Supporting school readiness |
Growing Independent, Joyful Learners | Ages 6 to 8 | Maintaining a joyful approach to learning even as time devoted to instructional content and assessment increases |
Building Support for Joyful Learning at Every Level
During our visits to schools in the USVI, teachers were eager to implement joyful learning techniques, but also shared with us concerns about how these techniques would be perceived. Their main worry? These methods might seem too noisy and unstructured, making district leaders, administrators, and parents unlikely to support them.
In addition, both teachers and administrators expressed a strong interest in receiving guidance for fostering school-wide collaborative learning around joyful learning strategies. In response to these needs, we are working to create supports for both teachers and administrators as they implement joyful learning in their schools. The partnership is focused on practical implementation of the playful learning strategies recommended in the modules and building a robust support network across all educational partners to promote sustained change over time. Our REL Northeast & Islands team is helping the partnership meet its goals by:
- Developing a facilitators' guide. To encourage implementing the modules in the USVI schools, we created a facilitation guide to establish school teams so teachers can complete the modules collaboratively, celebrate their successes, and troubleshoot any challenges. Our team is piloting this guide in November 2024 to fine-tune strategies based on real-world needs.
- Training facilitators. After refining the facilitation guide, the partnership will share the guide with administrators throughout the Islands to encourage the creation of learning teams at each school. Our team will train administrators on how to create their own learning teams to help them implement play-based learning strategies.
- Gathering resources. Our team put together easy-to-digest resources for teachers, administrators, and parents to help spread the word about the benefits of joyful learning. From video snippets to handy PDFs, the content is designed to take no more than 10-15 minutes to consume but to leave a lasting impression.
Looking Ahead
The partnership's long-term goal is to make sure that joyful learning practices are not just a passing trend but a lasting part of classroom culture. By helping establish district- and school-level facilitators who can create and sustain learning teams, we are ensuring that--even with staff turnover--momentum continues, and joyful learning stays at the heart of early childhood education on the Islands. These learning teams will offer spaces for teachers to support each other, learn together, and ultimately create classrooms filled with joy.
Accessing the Modules
The USVI Joyful Learning in Early Childhood micro-credential modules are available to all educators here, thanks to funding by the Community Foundation of the Virgin Islands. Users can use these instructions to create a login and register to use the modules.
References
1 National Association for the Education of the Young Child. (2020). Developmentally appropriate practice (DAP) position statement. https://www.naeyc.org/resources/position-statements/dap/contents.
2 Hirsh-Pasek, K., Golinkoff, R. M., Nesbitt, K., Lautenbach, C., Blinkoff, E., & Fifer, G. (2022). Making schools work: Bringing the science of learning to joyful classroom practice. New York: Teachers College Press.
3 Ginsburg, K. R. (2007). The Importance of Play in Promoting Healthy Child Development and Maintaining Strong Parent-Child Bonds. Pediatrics, 119(1): 182-191. http://dx.doi.org/10.1542/peds.2006-2697.
