Should Primary Schools Use More Play-Based Learning?
Why does learning through play feature so strongly in Early Years and then often reduce dramatically once children move further through primary school?
Children do not suddenly stop learning through movement, exploration, conversation, creativity and practical experiences because they turn six.
Yet the structure of school can change quickly.
Children who have previously been encouraged to investigate, build, create and learn through play may find themselves spending increasing amounts of time sitting at tables, completing written tasks and working through more adult-directed lessons.
Does it have to be this way?
In this episode of The Muddy Puddle Teacher Podcast, Sarah Seaman speaks with Executive Headteacher Sarah Godbold about her mission to develop a more playful curriculum across her schools.
Sarah Godbold draws on her Early Years experience and considers how some of the principles that make Early Years practice so effective can continue as children move through primary school.
This does not mean turning Year 4 into Reception.
It means asking a much more interesting question:
What are we doing in Early Years that supports children so successfully, and why do we stop doing so much of it?
The conversation is particularly relevant for headteachers, curriculum leaders, classroom teachers, teaching assistants and anyone interested in active learning, outdoor learning and creating a primary curriculum that children genuinely want to engage with.
Listen to Headteacher Sarah Godbold Discuss a More Playful Curriculum
About the Sarah Godbold Podcast Episode
Let’s Chat with Headteacher Sarah Godbold in Her Mission for a More Playful Curriculum is episode 25 of The Muddy Puddle Teacher Podcast.
Sarah Godbold joined Sarah Seaman to discuss her work as Executive Headteacher of the Churchside Federation and her ambition to create more playful learning across her schools.
The original episode specifically explores how Sarah uses her experience of Early Years practice through the wider school. At the time of the recording, the Churchside Federation was also a trained Muddy Puddle Teacher® Federation of Schools.
Sarah Godbold remains listed by the Churchside Federation as Executive Headteacher, as well as DSL Lead and Science Lead.
The episode was released on 21 October 2022 and lasts approximately 15 minutes.
What Is Play-Based Learning in Primary Schools?
Play-based learning is not simply giving children additional free time.
Neither does it mean removing teachers, curriculum objectives or expectations.
A playful curriculum gives children meaningful opportunities to explore ideas through practical experiences, movement, talk, imagination, problem-solving and choice.
The adult still understands what children need to learn.
The difference lies in how children encounter that learning.
Instead of every concept beginning with an explanation followed by a worksheet, children might first build, investigate, move, discuss, test or create.
A maths concept could be explored physically.
A historical event might be represented through role play.
A science question could begin with investigation.
A story could be developed through small-world play or an outdoor journey before children begin writing.
Play and academic learning do not have to sit at opposite ends of education.
Purposeful play can become one of the ways children develop the knowledge, vocabulary, confidence and experiences they need to succeed academically.
Explore our Complete Guide to Outdoor Learning for more ways to make primary learning practical and active.
Why Does Play Often Stop After Early Years?
Early Years classrooms are often built around the understanding that young children learn through experience.
Children communicate, investigate, construct, role-play, solve problems, negotiate and repeatedly return to ideas.
Then children enter Key Stage 1 and expectations begin to change.
There are understandable reasons.
Curriculum demands increase.
Teachers need evidence of progress.
Classes may be large.
Assessment becomes increasingly visible.
Schools feel pressure to ensure children are ready for later expectations.
But there is a danger that, in trying to make children more academically successful, schools remove some of the very approaches that helped them learn successfully in the first place.
The more useful question may therefore be:
Which Early Years principles should continue rather than disappear?
That is what makes Sarah Godbold’s perspective particularly interesting.
She is not arguing that the curriculum should be abandoned.
She is exploring how the strengths of Early Years practice can inform children’s experiences more widely across primary education.
Does Play Belong in KS1?
Absolutely.
Key Stage 1 can be a particularly important period for maintaining elements of playful and active learning.
Children are adjusting to more formal curriculum expectations, but they are still young learners.
Continuous provision, carefully structured practical tasks, small-world experiences, role play, construction, outdoor learning and exploration can all support curriculum development.
The key word is purposeful.
A classroom does not need to contain endless activities simply to keep children busy.
Provision can be connected to current learning.
If children are exploring measurement, construction can create real reasons to measure.
If children are developing storytelling, role-play areas can provide opportunities to rehearse vocabulary and narratives.
If children are learning about habitats, outdoor provision can encourage observation and classification.
Teachers can then intervene, question, model vocabulary and extend children’s thinking.
Explore our KS1 Outdoor Learning Hub for further curriculum ideas.
What About Play in KS2?
Play may look different as children get older, but the underlying principles remain valuable.
Older primary pupils still benefit from creativity, experimentation, collaboration and practical problem-solving.
We may simply stop calling it play.
A group of Year 5 pupils designing and testing a bridge are playing with engineering ideas.
Children creating a dramatic representation of a historical event are learning through imaginative participation.
Pupils physically mapping a river system outdoors are using movement and space to understand geography.
A class designing solutions to a sustainability problem is experimenting, testing and adapting.
These are serious learning experiences.
They are also playful.
Older children do not need Early Years provision recreated for them.
They need age-appropriate opportunities to be active participants in their learning.
Explore our KS2 Outdoor Learning Hub for practical ways to take curriculum objectives beyond the desk.
Play Is Not the Opposite of Learning
One of the biggest barriers to a playful curriculum is the belief that children are either learning or playing.
In reality, children can be doing both.
Think about everything happening when children work together to build something.
They may be planning, negotiating, estimating, measuring, communicating, solving problems, adapting an idea and responding when something goes wrong.
These are powerful learning behaviours.
The teacher’s role is to understand what the experience offers and decide when intervention will deepen the learning.
Sometimes the adult needs to step in and teach explicitly.
Sometimes a carefully chosen question is enough.
Sometimes the most powerful decision is allowing children enough time to work something out themselves.
A playful curriculum therefore requires skilled teaching.
It is not an absence of teaching.
Under the Sea Outdoor Continuous Provision Ideas for Toddlers
The Importance of Active Learning
Children’s bodies do not need to become still for their brains to begin working.
Movement can become part of the learning itself.
Children can create large timelines, physically sequence stories, measure real distances, collect and classify materials, act out vocabulary and investigate scientific ideas.
This can be especially powerful when the movement has a genuine purpose.
There is a significant difference between adding a physical action simply to make a lesson feel energetic and using the environment because it improves children’s understanding.
At The Muddy Puddle Teacher®, this is central to our approach.
We encourage practitioners to begin with the learning objective and then ask:
Could movement, space, practical experience or the outdoor environment help children understand this better?
If the answer is yes, use it.
Learning Through Exploration
Adults often want children to arrive at the correct answer quickly.
Play gives children opportunities to explore the process.
A child building a structure may discover that their first idea does not work.
They change it.
They test again.
They notice something.
They try another approach.
That process contains valuable learning.
If an adult immediately shows the child the most effective solution, the finished product may improve, but some of the thinking disappears.
A more playful curriculum makes space for productive uncertainty.
Children can ask questions.
They can try things.
They can make manageable mistakes.
They can change their minds.
This supports independence and problem-solving.
Listen in to another podcast at Pownhall Independent School to learn more about their Outdoor Continuous Provision
Teacher Podcast: Outdoor Continuous Provision at Pownall Hall School
Play and Children’s Communication
Play also gives children authentic reasons to communicate.
Children negotiate.
They explain.
They question.
They disagree.
They persuade.
They assign roles.
They create shared stories.
For some children, this can feel very different from being asked to answer a teacher’s question in front of the class.
Communication develops because there is something meaningful to communicate about.
Adults can extend this by modelling vocabulary and introducing increasingly precise language.
A teacher observing a construction task might introduce words such as stable, structure, balance, support or foundation.
The vocabulary now has a real context.
Children can see what the words mean.
Playful Learning and SEND
A more flexible curriculum can also provide alternative routes into learning for children with SEND.
Some pupils may find long periods of sitting, listening and writing difficult.
Practical activity can give them different ways to engage.
A child might demonstrate understanding by building, sorting, moving, matching, pointing, explaining or manipulating real objects.
That does not mean every child with SEND automatically prefers play or outdoor learning.
Individual sensory, communication and physical needs still need to be considered.
Some children may need greater structure and predictability before participating successfully.
The important principle is flexibility.
Children should not be expected to demonstrate learning through only one method.
Explore our SEND Outdoor Learning Hub for practical inclusive strategies.
What Can Primary Schools Learn From Early Years?
There is much that wider primary education can learn from strong Early Years practice.
The Environment Can Teach
In Early Years, adults think carefully about what children will encounter within the environment.
Resources are selected with purpose.
Children can often access them independently.
The space itself encourages particular kinds of interaction and learning.
This principle can continue.
A KS2 classroom does not need continuous provision throughout every lesson, but the environment can still support independence and curiosity.
Experiences Come Before Recording
Young children often experience a concept before being expected to record it formally.
This principle is valuable throughout primary school.
Talk about the story.
Experience the setting.
Investigate the scientific question.
Build the mathematical concept.
Then record.
When children have something meaningful to write about, writing becomes easier.
Children’s Interests Matter
Teachers cannot build an entire statutory curriculum only around children’s current interests.
But interests provide incredibly powerful gateways into learning.
A skilled teacher finds the bridge between what children care about and what they need to learn.
Learning Does Not Always Look Quiet
An engaged classroom may contain movement, conversation and activity.
Quiet can be productive.
So can purposeful noise.
The question is not:
“Are the children silent?”
It is:
“What thinking is happening?”
Two Ways to Make Your Curriculum More Playful Tomorrow
Try a Practical Starting Point
Choose one objective you would normally introduce from the front of the classroom.
Before explaining it, consider whether children could first encounter it practically.
For example, before teaching perimeter formally, ask children to mark and measure the boundary of a real outdoor space.
Before writing a setting description, visit an outdoor location and collect vocabulary.
Before studying materials, give children materials and a problem that requires them to compare their properties.
The practical experience does not replace teaching.
It gives the teaching something to connect with.
Replace One Worksheet With a Challenge
Choose one task children would normally complete on paper.
Ask whether they could demonstrate the same understanding another way.
Could they build it?
Sort it?
Represent it physically?
Explain it?
Act it out?
Create it on a large scale?
Keep the learning objective exactly the same.
Change the method.
Then compare the quality of thinking.
What Does a Playful Curriculum Look Like?
There is no single model.
A playful curriculum should reflect the children, staff, space and community of each school.
It might include more outdoor learning.
It might involve continuous provision in KS1.
It could include practical challenges across KS2.
Schools may develop stronger role play, construction, collaborative problem-solving or pupil-led investigation.
The important thing is not creating a school that looks playful for photographs.
The important thing is creating learning experiences that feel active, purposeful and meaningful to children.
Play should not become another initiative that teachers feel pressured to perform.
It should make teaching and learning more effective.
Headteachers and Playful School Culture
For playful learning to become embedded, school leadership matters enormously.
Teachers need to know that purposeful movement, exploration and practical learning are valued.
If staff believe every successful lesson must involve children sitting silently and producing written evidence, they are unlikely to take creative risks.
Leadership can create permission.
That does not mean removing expectations.
It means being clear about what matters.
Is the priority the amount children have written?
Or is it what they have understood?
Can evidence include observation, conversation, photographs, models and practical application where appropriate?
Can teachers choose the method that best serves the learning objective?
A headteacher who understands playful learning can help create a culture where staff feel confident trying different approaches.
That is one reason Sarah Godbold’s perspective in this podcast is so useful: she approaches playful learning not simply as an individual classroom technique, but from the position of school leadership.
Get to Know the Guest: Sarah Godbold
Sarah Godbold is Executive Headteacher of the Churchside Federation in Norfolk.
She is currently listed by the federation as Executive Headteacher, Designated Safeguarding Lead and Science Lead.
The Churchside Federation includes Mundford Church of England Primary Academy and Gooderstone Church of England Primary Academy. Norfolk’s school information service lists Sarah as Executive Headteacher at Mundford, while the 2024 Ofsted report for Gooderstone also identifies Sarah Godbold as the school’s Executive Headteacher.
Sarah has spoken publicly about her leadership journey and the development of her schools through the Diocese of Norwich Education and Academies Trust.
In her Muddy Puddle Teacher Podcast conversation, Sarah discusses her Early Years experience and how she uses that thinking through the wider school in pursuit of a more playful curriculum.
The Churchside Federation has also developed imaginative learning environments indoors and outdoors, with DNEAT highlighting the development of Mundford’s learning spaces.
Find Out More About Sarah Godbold and Her Schools
The Churchside Federation Website
Meet the Churchside Federation Team
Listen to Sarah Godbold on The Muddy Puddle Teacher Podcast
This short episode is ideal for headteachers, senior leaders, Early Years practitioners, primary teachers and teaching assistants who are interested in creating a curriculum with more space for play, movement and practical learning.
Sarah Godbold talks to Sarah Seaman about her mission to create a more playful curriculum and how her Early Years experience has influenced practice through her schools.
The episode lasts approximately 15 minutes, making it easy to listen to during a commute, lunch break or staff-development session.
One question to take away from the conversation is:
What do children experience in Early Years that we could afford to keep for longer?
That question could spark a fascinating discussion at your next staff meeting.
Listen to Sarah Godbold: A Mission for a More Playful Curriculum
Explore the Outdoor Learning Hub
Visit the SEND Outdoor Learning Hub
Join Our Free Outdoor Learning Magazine
Frequently Asked Questions
What is play-based learning in primary schools?
Play-based learning gives children opportunities to explore concepts through practical activity, imagination, movement, investigation, communication and problem-solving. It can sit alongside direct teaching and curriculum objectives rather than replacing them.
Should children still learn through play after Reception?
Play and practical exploration can continue to support children beyond Early Years. The form may change as pupils become older, with more age-appropriate challenges, investigations, role play, construction and problem-solving.
Can you use play-based learning in KS1?
Yes. KS1 can include purposeful continuous provision, practical curriculum challenges, role play, outdoor learning, construction and investigative tasks alongside explicit teaching.
Can play-based learning work in KS2?
Yes. In KS2 it may look more like practical investigation, engineering challenges, drama, collaborative problem-solving, outdoor learning and creative curriculum experiences rather than traditional Early Years provision.
Does a playful curriculum mean children do less academic work?
No. A playful curriculum can maintain ambitious academic objectives while using more active, practical and engaging routes into the learning.
How can teachers make lessons more playful?
Start with the curriculum objective, then consider whether children could explore the idea through movement, investigation, role play, construction, discussion or practical experience before formal recording.
Is outdoor learning part of a playful curriculum?
It can be. Outdoor spaces provide opportunities for movement, real-world investigation, large-scale learning, communication and practical experiences across the curriculum.
Who is Sarah Godbold?
Sarah Godbold is Executive Headteacher of the Churchside Federation in Norfolk. She joined The Muddy Puddle Teacher Podcast to discuss her mission to create a more playful curriculum and how her Early Years experience influences wider primary practice.
Author
Written by Sarah Seaman PGCE MA
Founder of The Muddy Puddle Teacher®
Teacher for over 19 years
Bloomsbury author
Trainer of thousands of teachers across the UK
