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Chapter 1
What Is Serious Fun in the Classroom All About?
Above all, life, and school, should be fun … seriously.
—Anonymous
“Above all, life, and school, should be fun.” That quote has to kindle your curiosity. School? Fun? Yes! If we can pretty much agree that life should be fun, then why not school? And we believe it’s important to be very serious about that fun.
Life is fun, and we see that so readily in our young people … mostly outside of school. Picture this scenario: it’s the third day of a week-long vacation at the beach. A large, extended family, which includes lots of young people, has come together for a reunion. A collective cry rises up, and, in unison, “WE’RE BORED!” echoes among the children. They whine to their parents about going back to the cottage to play video games. That doesn’t work. The curt, adult reply is “Just go play in the sand.”
Left to their own devices, the children gather together and hatch a scheme to create the most elaborate sand castle on the beach. They swing into action and began working together using shovels, buckets, and scoops. Natural leaders emerge from within the group, take over, and prompt the other workers. “Put more sand right there.” “This is sooo much fun.” “Dig the channel deeper in the outside moat.” “That’s perfect, Kevin.” The sounds of hard work punctuated with frequent laughter and squeals of delight begin to overpower the sound of the wind and surf.
Throughout the afternoon, every child plays a role in the construction of the grand castle, including its complex system of moats. Building and rebuilding are a constant theme as the children make changes and adjustments. As beach-goers watch the children hard at work all afternoon, they can see the children’s faces scrunched in determination, hear the urgency in their voices as they shout directions to one another, and feel the excitement generated by the children’s play and hard work. When the tide rushes in, the moats fill and the castle stands, amid the cheers of the adults and the children. Through play, a group of children move from bored, disengaged, and uninterested to energized, enthralled, and excited. And they do it on their own!
Examining how this scenario might translate into the classroom setting is worthy of our attention. There are times when students are reluctant learners—unmotivated and nonparticipatory. School is a serious place where people work hard in order to learn. However, serious work does not have to mean dreary and dour. Educators who understand the role that serious fun can have in learning work very hard to provide their students opportunities to be meaningfully involved in the learning process. This collaborative learning environment is punctuated with problem solving, exploration, creativity, and, ultimately, a higher likelihood of success.
The probability and degree of student learning increases when students work as collaborative problem solvers and are considered equal learning partners with their teacher. Students are motivated to learn when lessons are intentionally designed with seriously fun strategies and activities. When instructors create lessons that are engaging and focused on critical content and skills, students retain new knowledge at a higher rate because the lessons are meaningful and motivating. It is for this reason educators should consider filling the learning environment with serious fun.
What Is Serious Fun in the Classroom?
It’s a learning environment where academics are rigorous, students are engaged, and learning is clearly evident. The classroom setting is such that the activities and strategies employed promote higher-level thinking to gain knowledge. There is excitement, conversation, movement, and, from time to time, laughter permeating the room. A seriously fun classroom is not always “laugh out loud” funny. It is dynamic and a place where students are engaged, relaxed, and free to laugh. When the element of fun is infused into learning and the surroundings are rich with hard work and enthusiasm, students are more likely to learn and remember what they learn.
For some, a list of criteria is helpful in defining and understanding a concept. While not a checklist, the bulleted items below may be helpful in describing a seriously fun classroom. Serious fun looks different from one classroom to another and can change from day to day. There is no one-size-fits-all or cookie-cutter approach. Seriously fun teachers will vary in their lesson designs and in their approach to reaching their objectives. Some of the items on this list may be present in an individual teacher’s classroom and some will not. The degree to which some criteria exist will vary as well. For example, in a seriously fun classroom, depending on the teacher’s objectives, a visitor might see everyone moving about the room at the same time, students working with a single partner, or small groups of students excitedly playing an academically rich, content-related game. This list is meant merely as a guide to assist in planning.
A seriously fun classroom
| clearly connects to content |
| engages students |
| motivates learners |
| fosters collaboration |
| uses open-ended questions, prompts, and/or problems |
| offers choice |
| encourages movement |
| provides opportunities for reflection |
| promotes higher-level thinking (analysis, synthesis, evaluation) |
| includes real-world and relevant activities |
| cultivates laughter, humor, play … and fun! |
Let there be no doubt. The work of learning in our schools is serious stuff. Given the reality of local, state, and national mandates, the focus on 21st-century skills, the Common Core State Standards Initiative, standardized assessments, and implications for teacher evaluation, it’s critical that teachers strive to provide a high-quality, standards-based learning environment for their class. They need to be continually on the lookout for strategies and ideas that will help them to help their learners be more successful.
The strategies included in Serious Fun promote academic rigor while attending to the social and emotional needs of the young people in our charge. A number of these strategies can also be used to facilitate learning and conversation with adults at team, faculty, and leadership meetings. Each strategy is explained in narrative form. The discussion of some strategies will offer a brief example from a particular content area, and others suggest how to use that strategy as formative assessment.
Appendix A will be a valuable resource since it lists the strategies in alphabetical order in chart form. A brief summary is offered, along with codes pertaining to cost, preparation time, classroom time and the page number on which the complete strategy can be found. You might want to bookmark this chart.
One of the primary responsibilities of every educator is to learn how, when, where, and why to adapt or adopt a particular idea or strategy. Finding something that fits perfectly and can be readily adopted can be a real challenge. Perhaps that will happen with a few of the ideas put forth in Serious Fun. More likely, it’s adaptation that will rule the day. For example, in Chapter 8, you’ll read how a particular strategy, Baggage Claim, might be used in a third-grade, English language arts classroom. However, if you teach middle school science, you can take the basic tenets of the strategy and make the necessary adaptations so that they can be used effectively for your specific grade level and content area. When you make those important modifications, you’ll find that Baggage Claim still “works” just fine. In fact, it might be even more effective since it has been tailored for your specific class, thus maximizing the learning and ultimately increasing the likelihood of success. This will hold true for nearly all the strategies shared in this book.
Let’s take a peek into one school and three different classrooms:
Mr. Serious is just that. His students come to class on time. They are well-behaved and orderly, compliant. They appear to be attentive. The students sit in neat rows, taking notes as Mr. Serious lectures for thirty-five minutes. Homework is assigned. The next day, this pattern is repeated a...
