ABSTRACT
Teachers will also recognize the instilling of routines and setting of expectations that must precede such behavior. The same game or puzzle can serve many different purposes, and those purposes change with increased exposure. Students have several opportunities for follow-up play in teams during the exploration stage. During this exploration, students’ learning deepens, and some generalizations are formed. This practice stage supports automaticity when such reinforcement is needed, and students often prefer such an activity to a traditional worksheet. Shared ownership is particularly important when the purposes of playing or solving include opportunities to develop conceptual understanding. Learning while playing games and solving puzzles requires clear expectations for accountability, for perseverance when the content is considered challenging, and for appropriate game-playing and puzzle-solving behavior. Encouraging students to relate those experiences to playing games and solving puzzles helps them to push through a difficult problem or a misunderstanding, because they know that it will allow them to improve.
