GAME FOR ANYTHING
| books |
As well as assisting learning, playing games at home can help develop a wide range of social, thinking, and memory skills, and create opportunities for success that are particularly important for dyslexic children who may be struggling in school.
Before I
started working with dyslexic children in 1988 I was a French teacher. The
French word for board games, card games etc is “jeux de société”, which
translates as “social
games”. In our high speed, hi-tech world, traditional family entertainments
such as sitting down together to play cards or board games are disappearing from
view. And a raft of valuable social skills are disappearing with them:
turn-taking, patience, tolerance, right attitudes to wining and losing,
self-control and communication skills, attention, concentration, memory, and a
whole range of visual and auditory skills which are particularly valuable for
the dyslexic. By ignoring “social games” we are closing down one of life’s
important training grounds.
Probably
the most valuable commercially available game resource a family can possess is a
pack of cards. If you don’t know any card games go to W H Smiths and buy a
paperback for about a fiver that will teach you as many as you need to know, and
buy a couple of packs of playing cards while you are in there. If you don’t
know where to start on that road take a slightly different track, and go and buy
a pack of “Uno” and play that: you won’t regret it. Not only does a card
game meet all the above criteria for “social games”, but young children
playing card games are learning and practising foundational mathematical skills:
counting, sequencing, recognising clusters of “pips” as different numbers,
to name a few. A simple game of “pairs” is good for visual memory. “Go
Fish” and “Happy Families” develop auditory memory. Rummy combines memory
with reasoning (“I’ve just picked up a six. I remember she discarded one a
few turns back. Therefore she might discard another one and that will give me a
set.”) Trumping games, like whist, are excellent for memory and attention. Our
favourite family card game is called Racing Demon. It’s the best game I know
for speed, visual attention and concentration.
A bit of
personal history. We’ve played cards, and racing demon in particular, with all
our children; and certainly in the case of the two youngest since before they
started school. My eldest daughter, (dyslexic) was being given secondary maths
work by the time she was in year 4. She’s
now at University studying medicine. The middle one was two books ahead of her
peers in the infants and in Y8 was being called “an outstanding
mathematician” by her maths teacher. The youngest was again streets ahead
at Primary school, got level 5 at KS2 SATS, and maths is now her best
subject. Since neither my wife nor myself are particularly strong mathematicians
I suggest that all their hours spent playing cards have had an effect.
For all the
commercial games available, you often can’t do better than some of the old
standards. For pure reasoning, combined with the right amount of luck and
guesswork to make it sufficiently unpredictable, I don’t think you can beat
Master Mind. If you’re reading this before Christmas, it’s a great idea for
a stocking present: compact and inexpensive. Like many other games, Master Mind
can also be played online. Another perennial that is excellent for strategy and
reasoning is Rummikub. So is Othello. So is Draughts. These are two-player games,
and as such provide you with the opportunity of giving a child some exclusive
attention for the duration of the game. There will be emotional benefits
alongside the cognitive skills gained.
The best
games are often the simplest, and one of the simplest and best is Rummy. It is
an excellent game for adaptation, as the point of the game is the collection of
sets, and much learning also involves
sets. (Apologies for repetition to those who
have been on one of my courses!) Basic Rummy is played as follows: 7
cards each are dealt, the remainder are placed face down in the centre and the
top one turned up and left next to the pack, thus starting the "discard
pile". Players must collect two sets of cards, which can either be 3-4
cards OF THE SAME SUIT in sequence, or 3-4 cards OF THE SAME VALUE in different
suits. This is done by taking turns to pick up one card at a time, either from
the top of the unseen pack, or from the top of the discard pile, and then
discarding one card. The discard may be the card that has just been picked up,
or it may be another card. Through this selection process, players alter their
hands until the winner lays down all his cards, discarding the last one.
So now you
can play rummy. (Reasoning, memory, communication, social skills etc.) To adapt
this for learning specific sets, play with just four cards, to make one set, not
two. Your four colours are your four suits; and on the cards you write spelling
families, topic vocabulary, or whatever needs to be learnt. To make a winning
set you need one word in all four colours, or all four words of one colour. You
can also add a further memory element to the game: instead of just putting the
winning cards down, the winning player must put them FACE DOWN on the table for
one complete round, then repeat (or spell) them from memory before turning them
over, winning the game if he gets them right, otherwise changing his cards.
Anxiety shuts down thinking. To a dyslexic child who experiences failure and
frustration on a daily basis the anxiety response
is practically automatic when the word “remember” is mentioned. To
set the memory task in the risk-free context of a card game can help to by-pass
that anxiety trigger and get the brain remembering.
You can
find games all around you. Move a few objects in the living room while your
children are out of the room and see if they can “spot the difference”.
(Visual memory). Play “I went on holiday and I took...” on car journeys.
(Auditory memory).
See how
many words you can make beginning with P in 30 seconds. (Processing speed.) Play
20 questions. (Verbal reasoning). Bingo and pairs have a thousand faces, and all
of them wear a smile.
I have a
weak back and need to do regular exercises so that my backbone has sufficient
muscular support. The exercises bear little resemblance to walking. Lately I
have been ignoring my exercises (“Too busy!”). Two days ago my back gave
way; today I am walking with two sticks. These games are like my exercises: they
bear little resemblance to the activities they support, but we ignore them at
our cost.
Bob
Hext is the founder of Crossbow Education and lectures widely on the use of
games and puzzles for teaching.
For training enquiries ring 44 (0)1785 660902, or click this link:
TRAINING