At the chalk face: Making learning fun

Does learning really have to be fun to be effective? 🤔

In this episode of Craig’n’Dave 'At the chalk face', we tackle one of the biggest debates in education — making learning fun — and whether it actually leads to better outcomes for students.

From unplugged activities and memorable classroom moments to the dangers of prioritising entertainment over real understanding, we explore what truly matters in the classroom: the learning itself.

💡 In this episode, we cover:
Why students always ask, “Are we doing something fun today?”
The hidden risks of “fun for fun’s sake”
How unplugged activities can transform complex topics
The importance of keeping learning at the heart of every lesson
A practical, balanced approach to teaching that actually works

We also share real classroom experiences, including activities that bring tricky Computer Science concepts to life — without relying on a screen.

🎯 Whether you're a new teacher, experienced educator, or just passionate about learning, this episode will challenge your thinking and give you practical ideas to take straight into the classroom.

👉 Explore our full range of teaching resources here: https://craigndave.org

👍 If you found this helpful, don’t forget to like, subscribe, and hit the bell so you never miss an episode!


👍 If you find the video useful, don’t forget to like, subscribe, and ring the bell so you never miss a new episode of At The Chalk Face.

#ComputerScience #TeachingTips #Education #GCSE #ALevel #Teachers #EdTech #CraigAndDave

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Does the best learning happen when it's fun? Hello and welcome back to another Craig and Dave at The Chalkface. If it's the first time you're seeing us, uh we're producers of computer science resources uh across England and Wales and of international fame. Uh if you uh if you do know us, then welcome back to uh if you know Scotland, the Scots won't be happy. The only reason I missed out Scotland is what you primarily do GCC and ALA when they're in the world. Oh, here we go, right? Fine. Yes. Um right. If you are familiar with us, welcome back. And uh and and thank you for being here again and listening to us if you're on our podcast. Today we're going to be talking about making learning fun. Um, and primarily, but but not exclusively, um, about doing that through unplugged activities. So the title is Making Learning Fun. Um, but but does every single computer science lesson have to be taught in front of a computer? Like the the answer to that unequivocally right now is no. Uh, but sometimes there's expectation, especially from the students, isn't there, Dave? And we're on the computers, Dave, and we're on the computers, they come in, they log on instantly. And sometimes some of the best learning can be done when they're away from that distraction of the monitor, the keyboard, the mouse, and whatever website they can get to that you haven't managed to block.

SPEAKER_01 1:25

And the most annoying thing, Craig, when uh students come into your classroom is they say, Are we doing something fun today? Something fun today. The implication is that we what everything else that we normally do is not fun. And they're just hoping and praying that maybe just for once there would be something fun. So we've got to break that down because you know, uh uh, what are these expectations anyway?

SPEAKER_00 1:55

Uh if we break that down, it's not a whole episode in itself, Dave. But we will, I'm sure we're gonna touch on some of that. I used to get that all the time. All teachers did. Are we learning something fun? My stock response was, of course we are. It's one of my lessons to which the eyes would roll. Um, but the reason we're doing this is um Dave and I uh work in our local area, Gloucestershire, uh, with the training provider. So for new up and coming PGC students, you know, training to be the next generation of teachers, um, and we deliver a number of sessions. And one we delivered uh well just this week at the time of recording was a whole session on this making learning fun, and specifically how to get some of those complex and uh often drier uh um theory topics through non-computer-based activities. So we delivered this to a uh room full of trainee adults, and uh yeah, we're gonna we're gonna go into that. I think the first thing I want to say, Dave, and then I'll hand over to you, because I used to love this, and I will be honest, I fell into this trap as a teacher, and I'm sure we're gonna push this a lot today, and we made sure to push it in the session. So I want to start with it. Um, there's nothing wrong with fun activities, and we'll talk about all the benefits. The key I think you have to hold on to at all times is what are they learning? What is the learning? And we'll get into that. I'll let Dave exaggerate, but I'll exaggerate, exemplify, but you can very easy Dave does exaggerate, but you can very easily, can't you, Dave? Um, get very excited about a lesson, think it was brilliant because it was fun, the kids were up, you were doing stuff, no computers were on, look at me, learning unplugged. And an observer can then go, so what did they actually learn? What? But that was a great lesson, wasn't it? So that that's that's probably where I want to start. Because that's the biggest pitfall. And I fell into that once or twice in my teaching.

SPEAKER_01 3:47

Yeah, okay, okay, let's let's start with um with that then. Um so I want to um, if you'll indulge me, just read you a uh a couple of paragraphs um from a book because I think this sort of unpacks what you're saying, and then we'll flip it on its head and talk about some of the uh the benefits, okay? So this is from The Revision Revolution by Howell and McGill. It's page 84, paragraph three, um, in which they write um Dave Didow has written about one of his most memorable biology lessons. His teacher knocked over the model skeleton and told us that we'd remember the lesson for the rest of our lives. I have, but I cannot remember for the life of me what the lesson was about. This illustrates the danger of creating experiences that serve no purpose beyond being memorable or fun. Remember my staff training where we made dresses and t-shirts, zero professional learning took place. Any school that relies on games rather than powerful knowledge to engage is drastically underestimating its students. It took me a good few years of teaching to realize I don't need to make lessons fun for them to be enjoyable. Neither do I need to be funny to be effective. Students are inspired by knowledge when they're enthused through sky high expectations. And of course, if you followed us, high expectations really means the students doing what you asked them to do. It doesn't mean challenge. Challenge is a different concept. Anyway, um, I I thought I would pull that out, uh Craig, because that exemplifies what you're saying, doesn't it? That sometimes learning a lesson or aspects of a lesson can be very memorable. You can remember them, but you don't necessarily remember the learning or what it is you were supposed to actually get out of that lesson. That's what you're saying.

SPEAKER_00 5:57

Yeah, absolutely. That really exemplifies. I mean, let's not be let's not lie here. You know, high quality teaching and learning can happen in tandem with fun, memorable, unplugged lessons. But that's exactly the warning I was giving. It's very easy to go down one route and convince yourself, what a great lesson. The kids are talking about it, I'm buzzing about it. We had bits of paper and rope and balls flying around and all sorts of cool stuff. And, you know, you you could have an offset inspector in there saying, So what did they learn? Because I asked five kids and they don't really remember. They're all talking about your lesson when I met them in the corridor, but they don't know what they learn. Oh, that that that's gonna sting. Um, so that that's a pitfall, and I'm not being arrogant there, and because I fell into that trap more than once. So we really started this session off, didn't we, with the um with the trainee teachers saying that. That saying I certainly you should avoid it because we loved it, and we exemplified, and I'll sure we'll talk about it. We exemplified maybe half a different activities that covered a range of theory from across the specification, so mainly GTSE uh and A level, but you could adapt them for all sorts, and um, you know, the but they all had learning at their core. And the other reason, sorry, to to double down on unplugged activities and have at least, you know, half a dozen of these in your tool belt is on those inevitable days where the power goes, you're not left stumped going, oh, I'll pull out that backup paper quiz that I print off and keep in the cupboard. You go, right, well, you know what? It's not technically what we're doing, but it it's kind of adjacent. And you've got a really good activity that's fun and still focuses on the learning. Because before I had that, Dave, I just had a bunch of quizzes printed off uh in the cupboard. And if the power went up, like, I'm a good teacher, I can pull out a quiz there, and I mean it was okay. So um, yeah, that reliance as well on technology.

SPEAKER_01 7:47

And there has been a shift in education. I think if we just sort of take um a historical perspective on this for a moment, correct me if I'm wrong, because I was not teaching uh before the 1990s. Okay, so uh maybe what I'm saying is is not true, but I've got that stereotypical view of what education was like, um, you know, in the olden days, let's put it that way, where you would have uh students on individual desks, all facing forward. Um, there was no fun in the sense that the students were just there to learn. And, you know, they were learning handwriting and mathematics and whatever it was, but education was extremely strict. The notion of fun um was just not there at all. I mean, that's the sort of stereotypical view. And I think as education progressed through the late 20th century into the 21st century, the whole profession took a shift. I'm not quite sure what the driver for that shift was, but there was a shift from um this model where it's extremely strict to students should have more fun and it should be engaging and these memorable experiences. And we kind of, I certainly remember through the early 2000s, Craig, we were really being driven by senior leaders to make it fun. And if you had your lesson observed and there was too much teacher talk, or there wasn't enough activity by the students, or you know, God forbid they were reading something in a textbook or answering questions in a textbook, that would be a big no-no. And you had to come up with loads of very inventive, innovative um ideas. And education sort of shifted that way, I feel quite strongly in the early 2000s. And it feels like uh we've kind of gone back to a more research evidence-based approach now, and we're reflecting on that and saying, do you know what? There probably wasn't anything inherently wrong with some of those older practices. Well, what the fuck is that? And we've got to really think about what the purpose of the lesson and the learning activity is. And I know that governments have gone looking across the world at other education models, and they often come back from China, for example, and say, you know, maybe we should teach our students like they do in China, completely forgetting the cultural differences. But I don't know what you think about that.

SPEAKER_00 10:22

Yeah, you're right. I was just gonna say, so I've butt in, but you know, we've kind of always gone back the other way, and all of a sudden it's like, oh no, no, uh, Odyssey is really important, and we need to do some structured reading and start the lesson. We need to get the ruler out, and everyone needs to read in silence for five minutes. And of course, what's happening here is there's a bit of a ping-ponging, isn't there? Which is why I think if we start it doesn't actually matter what you do as long as you have the learning at the heart. Because all these approaches have their benefits. Can you learn through fun? Yes. Uh yeah, can you learn through very structured, theoretical, delivered lessons? Yes. So as long as you have the learning at its heart, there's nothing wrong. We've kind of been swayed. And it's interesting what you said, because of course it was famously uh uh Michael Gove and his sort of stint a decade as uh who went over, as you said, to China, came back, went, right, we need to do everything like that. This this rote learning is brilliant. I mean, look at that. But you're you're right, it it's a completely different uh cultural setting, it's a completely different family ethos. It's it's very, very much uh one family driven here. We're a very multicultural nation. The one model doesn't fit all here. It fits better in other countries. You can't do that. Um, I feel like we're kind of lending in a balance now because you're saying a lot of the latest stuff that courses that SLT are going on and books are out about well, uh evidence-based, research-based. And I've I'd be honest, Dave, I think as I said, as long as you can return to the thing I keep starting with, what is the learning? What what what how are they gaining knowledge for this activity? What will they know and how will they know it by the time you've finished from when they started? As long as you do that, you can't go too far wrong. I mean, why has it taken decades for us to get to that point?

SPEAKER_01 12:05

Yeah, let's have a think a moment, because as you're talking, I'm kind of trying to remember some of my own educational experiences as a child. And um, I think there are probably quite a few, but um, a couple sort of stand out. Um, I remember learning my times tables. And uh, you know, I know uh, for example, six fives are 30 because I just wrote learnt it. And I remember uh we used to literally, like at the olden days, um, call out the times tables. You know, one times two is two, two times two is four, three times two is six. And we just we didn't really learn the mathematics behind it, so I didn't really grasp the relationship between the numbers three and two and the fact that you could swap them around and get the same answer. Because I'd literally just learnt it by rote, and I didn't appreciate the relationship between multiplication and division, for example, and those kinds of things. And now as an adult, I quite often um get these aha moments with mathematics where I'm like, ah, that kind of that makes real sense now. Um, and if only I'd have known that when I was much younger. So it's really interesting because the rote learning approach, um, it's probably about as much fun as you had in a Victorian classroom, I guess, is reciting times tables uh like that in harmony. But I did learn them, and so I am able to recall very quickly, you know, 12 times 12 is 144. I don't need to calculate anything, I just know it. And just knowing things like that is incredibly powerful, but it doesn't mean that I learned the underlying principles.

SPEAKER_00 13:48

Yeah, and I would say this is the because you can make an argument that you're right, simply recalling facts. I'll be fantastic at a pub quiz and blah, blah, blah. I think the argument here comes between the the the number of facts you know and the depth of your knowledge. I think that's the difference. So I think, you know, I mean, sure rote learning works. There's plenty of memory experts out there who give you techniques and fun ways of remembering all these things, and we've all done them and used them, and yes, they are powerful. But my argument then be well, where's the depth? So where's then the transferbal skills? Where's the holistic knowledge to take that thing you've learnt, tie it to something else, maybe, oh, make that link. And from that, oh, now I can infer, oh wow. Um, I think that would be very missing, and I think that's the danger that falls down. Nothing wrong with it, and with all these things, there's a place for it. Sometimes you just have to remember a number of facts and do it in the best way you can. But that's surface level, isn't it? I think that's the danger for me.

SPEAKER_01 14:44

It is, and and the other thing that I remember from my childhood education, um, I remember we had a lesson. I would have been in the equivalent of year six, um, although we called it fourth year of juniors back in the day. Um, but no, sorry, I did I just say year six, I meant year five. No, I didn't. I do mean year six. Come on, Dave, get a grip. Year seven is first year of secondary. Oh, yeah, year six. And uh, old many, new many. Come on, Dave, it's it's it's not new many anymore. Um, I remember an activity where we were given a whole load of uh straws, paper, seller tape, cardboard, just sort of random stuff like that in a tray. And we had to work in teams of about four. And the idea was to build the strongest bridge between two desks. So the teacher um had a gap between two desks, and you had to build a bridge, uh the strongest bridge to support a weight. And what the teacher would do at the end of the uh the activity, and it probably took us about half a day. I kind of vaguely remember having a day off timetable for this. And the teacher would uh gradually and increasingly put more weights onto the middle of whatever structure you'd made, and uh, whichever team had made the strongest structure won. And we had a great time. I mean, you know, I can remember it now, I can remember doing it now. And this is decades ago. I really don't know what the what the in what the intention was.

SPEAKER_00 16:21

Yeah, and I'm willing to bet that you, Dave, and almost every adult listening to this will probably remember have done at some point. I certainly did. Here you go, you've got five packs of spaghetti and one roll of tape. You know, you've got to build the biggest bridge and then they put weights on it. Very similar but different. I feel like I've seen that ever. I remember that. Um, and I think it's fine, but I'm remembering that activity in the chaos, not what I learned. I think okay, I'm going, oh, you know, I learned about distribution of weights and tension and that the arcs are stronger than this. And, you know, I don't remember that as being a focus, but I think that's what we're saying, isn't it? We advocate a pragmatic approach to fun. Um, and I think as long as you have the learning at its core and you emphasize that, you keep on top of that, you know, you track that, then you can't go too far wrong. And for all those other reasons, it's great. You know, if you have a variety of styles in your teaching, it keeps the students on their toes as well. And we're not getting into learning styles because you know, researchers just proved those. Now I'm a kinesthetic learner, I'm that. But to have a range of teaching styles is good anyway. It makes your lessons fresh and invigorating. Uh, and it means that, you know, in unexpected situations and power cuts, you're not left flumped as well. So something else in your toolkit. And and also, let's be honest, Dave, it's more interesting for you. Teaching is about the students' learning, but when you're enthused as well and excited by it, then you you're better as a teacher. Um, so I used to enjoy looking forward to some of those letters. Go, oh, I've got this topic coming out. I love that activity. I pull that out every year. But as long as the learning is at its core, then I think you can't go too wrong. So I think it's fair to say we advocate a pragmatic approach through learning through fun. Is that a fair summary?

SPEAKER_01 18:05

Yeah, yeah, we do. And I feel like we've spent the whole episode really bashing fun, and it's probably worth a little bit of balance. I mean, there are definitely reasons to have fun. And like you say, Craig, um, I looked forward to those lessons as well because I knew the students would really enjoy it. And perhaps that's why they came into subsequent lessons and said, are we doing something fun today? Because doing those um lessons were not the norm, because for all the reasons you've already said, you don't want to overshadow the critical learning component by the activity itself. And so you do them sporadically so they have maximum impact. That's the thing. But in terms of, you know, why should we make learning fun? Now let's not forget some of the critical reasons. It it does boost motivation for the students and for you as a teacher. It's very easy to become formulaic in your teaching and settle into a routine. And sometimes breaking that routine with a little bit of something that's out of the box, a little bit different, a little bit fun. It's motivating for you as a teacher. They're fun to prepare. Well, I think they're fun to plan anyway. And the students find them motivating. Um, we can't deny they're not memorable. I mean, they are memorable. It's just is the right thing memorable. That's the point, isn't it? And it encourages participation, you know. You've got students that will, you know, naturally kind of drift into the background, not get themselves involved. And if you can find something that's fun and they can work with their peers, or maybe you lead an activity from the front that encourages everybody to participate, then you get the maximum participation, and there's no room to hide for individuals. So there's there's that. And also, fun activities can make the learning really meaningful and relevant to their daily lives. So you end up in this situation where students actually get it. And I'm just reflecting on some of our activities, you know, things like the need for protocols. You could teach that in a very dry way. You know, here are the protocols. But, you know, we do it with a little bit of table tennis, and it just, you know, exemplifies um the need for protocols because you have to talk about the speed of transmission and and and agreeing whose serve it is and things like that, right? And so building positive relationships through having fun, and we've said this before. If you take a group of students out of the classroom onto uh a field trip somewhere, and uh, you know, that's a whole other episode, actually, I suppose, taking students out of the classroom uh onto field trips, but they see you in a different light, you see them in a different light. And the the positive relationships that are built through a day out of school with the students visiting some castle or whatever it is can be really, really powerful in building positive relationships. So it may be that you took them to the castle because you wanted them to learn an aspect of history. That's not what they learned at all. What they learned was that um you're not that scary teacher. You have that human side, you care about them, and then when they bring those emotions into the classroom, they're more receptive to other things that you're going to teach them. So this film stimulates the relationships, the creativity, the problem solving. It's really powerful, Craig.

SPEAKER_00 21:34

Yeah, I I mean I've talked about this a lot before, but you know, um, if if if you're aware of Hattie, incredible research, synthesis of uh what drives achievement and attainment in students. One of the biggest effects he found, uh, and this is all well documented out there, was the most positive effect on students' attainment comes from teacher student relationships and trust in the teacher. It's one of the highest factors out of hundred. Well, what a surprise, but nice to have. Some research to back it. And I mean, I was going to say, I actually did a very brief bit of Googling. I didn't tell you in our preamble before we hit record, but I did a bit of Googling, but you've just reminded me. Um, the the and I don't pretend to know high-level degree biology, but you know, the the newer links that form in your brain when you create memories, you know, and and um the the ones that stick are the ones related to fun and happy memories or fear and sad memories. It's the two extremes. So if we look back at, you know, at our past, the things we remember are the really fearful or sad times and the really happy in the fun times. And when you do something at those two extremes, you create up to ten times the amount of, and this is where I will not show my knowledge, links or whatever, neural links, up to ten times the amount. So of course, fun is a great way, therefore, to deliver a learning. And as long as you make sure the learning is at its core, bingo, double win. We just don't want that situation, as you say, where you look back in years and go, I remember that lesson where uh Mr. Sgt. smashed up his computer with a hammer. Oh, yeah, we all talk about that in our 40s still at a reunion. What did we learn? No idea, but best lesson I've ever been in.

SPEAKER_01 23:09

Yeah. I think if you overdo it, let's talk about our pragmatic approach, because I think if you overdo it, it really loses its impact. And so we reserve the most fun activities for those things that could otherwise be a little bit dry, and we just kind of want to lift those topics up so they match the others. So our kind of pragmatic approach is we try and get the students prepared for the lesson, ahead of the lesson as much as we can. So they bring a baseline of knowledge to the lesson. Then you don't have to spend quite so much time explaining new concepts to them. So you've saved time. That's that's the critical thing for us. Because with that extra time, you can have more interaction with individual students and groups. Having done that, we then have a very knowledge-focused core start to our lesson where students are just engaged, usually on individual activities, not in complete silence, but there's definitely a focus on um what it is that they're doing, right? So we've got that real knowledge core that that's focused and central in our lessons. And then in the second half of our lessons, that's when we sort of loosen up a little bit. And we tend to either do programming activities because it's a great opportunity for sort of differentiation, and we find programming fun, and we want to try and get the students to find programming fun. I know it, I know it's tricky, but we, you know, a little and often with programming is really beneficial. So that's what we use our second half of our lesson for. But that becomes really formulaic after a after a while, right? Watch a video, make notes for homework, bring them into lessons, do an activity for 20 minutes, then do some programming for another 20 minutes, a little bit of QA, a little bit of banter with the students, and it's lesson's over. And it's very, very easy to slip into that being what your lesson looks like every single day. And part of that's good because it gives the students security. They know what to expect. They know what's coming. They don't expect to be entertained all the time. They expect to learn. And I think that expectation is really, really important. But sometimes we throw the programming half out, and that's when we will do our sort of unplugged and fun and slightly different activities. So they don't completely dominate the lesson. We still have that knowledge core focus at the beginning, and then we uh will illustrate some of the concepts uh through unplugged activities in the second half. And as I've said already, not in every single lesson, um, in the topics that uh it will really count the most.

SPEAKER_00 25:52

Yeah, and I just wanted to touch on that just uh a little bit because I've been we've we've skirted around this but haven't been as explicit. Um, the topics that make the difference the most, one of the biggest benefits of teaching something complex through fun or through an interactive activity, and this is because of the you know the cognitive links or the increased links that you get when you do something memorable, is it's really great at taking a concept that has a lot of what can seem disparate theoretical concepts and tying them together holistically. So for those sort of things, it's really good. And I don't we won't have time to go through all the sort of unplugged activities we do, but the one I just want to exemplify um a little bit now is what we call the the the living computer. So we do it at A level at GCSE, at A level we do it more complex. Um, because uh we there's so many concepts there. So what I'm talking about here is a knowledge of a whole different number of registers, and I won't go through them all, but they all have names, they all have acronyms, they all have different things they have to remember. And then, of course, we've got the idea of the stored program concept and memory, and then we've got the idea of them being connected by buses and they have to know about multiple buses. Then we have the concept of the fetch the code execute cycle, and then we have to tie that all together and say, well, how does knowledge trans uh how does data and information and addresses transfer between all these things, the the memory, the the the program counter across the buses, and you know what we've got a lot of stuff there, and boy, can that be a dry area. You we can put that, and we do put that together in one activity where we get the students round a table or physically up, we lay stuff down, we lay string or cables as buses, and they walk around and interact as a computer carrying out a series of fetch-cut execute cycles, passing data and addresses to different people, and it ties together so many different, disparate individual theoretical concepts. And of course, if the only ever know, well, I can tell you what that register does, I can tell you the purpose of that bus, and I can describe the fetch-kid execute cycle. But if that's the depth of the knowledge, we know how that translates to an exam, they'll be able to access the lower grade questions. State, describe. They will get stuck at explain, heavens forbid, analyse, compare. Um, so you know, it's that holistic thing for me when you get to the trickier concepts, um, but again, learning at its core, and that's an activity I'm particularly fond of, and it's one we did with the the the trainees last uh last week, you know, and and hopefully, you know, that will set them in good stead. So, so yes, um, I don't know how much more you want to talk about, Dave. I mean, we could go into all the sorts of activities, but I feel that's another episode all on its own. I mean, um, I don't know if you wanted to touch on any of them briefly or list them or or whether we kind of want to leave it there.

SPEAKER_01 28:43

I think um I think I would just conclude this episode by saying that if you are our teacher of uh computer science, GCSE or A level, particularly A level, if you are looking for a range of unplugged activities in topics, then head over to craigandave.org, have a look at our resource center, and that's where you'll be able to download all the activities that we do with our students that we know make a real difference to them.

SPEAKER_00 29:10

Oh, look at that. He's done all the promo for me. Fantastic. So there you go. Making learning fun, be pragmatic, keep learning at its core, you can't go too far wrong. Thank you for joining us. See you again next week. Bye bye for now.