Assessing students’ play, provides teachers with important information on how a student understands their world, how they interact with those around them, and how they build narrative and cognitive understandings.  However, pretend play, is often not assessed for its own sake, but rather for the learning that is taking place, such as mathematics, literacy and science (Thompson & Goldstein, 2019).  As such, the assessment of the student’s actual play skills are overlooked.

Research shows a link between a student’s level of play ability and language (Stagnitti, Paatsch, Nolan & Campbell, 2020), cognitive development (Karpov, 2005) and social skills (Reunamo et al., 2014).  Many researchers and teachers observe student outcomes such as creativity, self-regulation, social skills, language and literacy, and social understandings during play (Lillard et al, 2013; Stagnitti, Paatsch, Nolan & Campbell, 2020). However, it is also important to assess the student’s level of play abilities from simple skills, such as manipulating objects and exploring their surroundings, to the more complex abilities of imposing meaning on what they are doing and substituting an object for something else.

Watch the video (5:39) below. Professor Louise Paatsch gives a deeper overview of the research that shows the impact pretend play skills have on a student’s broader learning and development.

How to assess play abilities and skills

During pretend play, teachers can observe the student’s level of play development within and outside the classroom and can use these observations to report to parents and other teachers, to plan for future play sessions, and to determine their own role in supporting students to develop their play abilities. The research of Stagnitti and Paatsch (2018) has culminated in the development of The Pretend Play Checklist for Teachers (PPC-T), which is a non-standardised criterion-referenced assessment of a student’s ability to play. This checklist which encompasses play skills with levels of ability, provides a framework for teachers to observe the play of children and assess the student’s pretend play.

Engage and extend

Remember the children playing travel video from earlier? Use the checklist as you watch the video (3:59) below. This time play close attention to the pretend play skills that you can observe students demonstrate.

Reflect on the assessment methods you could implement to observe and analyse the learning the students are demonstrating through these play skills. Add these reflections to your learning note book or other reflective documentation space.