Connecticut school district adopts new approach to learning: Heavy on play, less time facing screens

A Connecticut school district is shifting to a new approach to learning for young students that looks similar to what previous generations may remember.

Windsor Public Schools is bringing to its kindergarten through second-grade classrooms a new curriculum that’s heavy on play, light on screens and, according to Windsor Superintendent Noha Abdel-Hady, is rooted in research.

The curriculum, which the district calls Windsor Early Learning Model, is based on decades of “neuroscience, literacy science and child development research and reflective of practices used in high-performing education systems around the world,” a release from the district said.

Building a fictitious grocery store from blocks and cardboard, a small group of kindergarten students might solve problems with collaboration and negotiation, unprompted by teachers. Children might participate in an outdoor learning block before lunch or take turns feeding a class pet.

The model emphasizes play-based learning and limits technology. It also brings cursive back to the classroom and centers social-emotional learning, according to Abdel-Hady.

“I think we are really hoping that this will become kind of like what public education could look like and especially the long-term potential for retention of critical thinking skills and foundational skills,” Abdel-Hady said. “I’m really hoping to bring back the joy of learning in the classrooms. I want kids to come to school excited about learning.”

Windsor Board of Education Chair Ayana Taylor said in an email that she is proud of the work.

“As board chair and as a parent, I believe that when we give children a strong foundation from the very beginning, we are setting them up to be successful well beyond their early years,” she said. “The Windsor Early Learning Model allows us to have high expectations for our students while still recognizing that children need opportunities to move, play, explore, create, ask questions, and build meaningful connections. We want our children to become strong readers and mathematicians, but we also want them to be confident, curious, independent learners who love coming to school.”

Matt Cerrone, communications director for the Connecticut State Department of Education, said in an email the CSDE does not maintain a statewide inventory of “specific instructional models or approaches used by individual districts or schools,” so it could not determine whether Windsor is the first district in the state to implement the model.

In July 2024, a new law was implemented in the state, requiring play-based learning in public preschool and kindergarten classrooms. The law also requires both local and regional boards of education “to permit a teacher to utilize play-based learning during the instructional time of a regular school day for all students in grades one through five,” according to the law.

Abdel-Hady said the new learning model “aligns with the state’s requirements for purposeful play, while also incorporating a state-approved literacy curriculum grounded in the science of reading.

“This model is well positioned to meet all state requirements while taking the work a step further by intentionally aligning every part of the school day with what research, child development, and best practices tell us about how young children learn best,” she said.

Play-based learning

Analyzing Windsor’s K-2 students’ performance data, Abdel-Hady found that younger students performed well on standardized tests, but then something happened as those students got older, especially in middle and high school.

Over the last two years, Abdel-Hady researched education methods and visited Finland, which ranks among the world’s highest achieving education systems and also stresses play-based learning.

“I saw kids are actually learning way more than what we are doing here,” she said. “They are developing critical thinking skills before anything else. Little kids are asking questions outside about the impact of something they are doing in nature.”

Abdel-Hady also looked at education models in Japan, Estonia and Singapore, which also rank among the highest in educational outcomes, and found that they and Finland had something in common: they didn’t start formal teaching and learning early.

“They focused on purposeful play, outdoor play and they really focused on developing social, emotional learning skills throughout the day,” she said.

The Institute of Education Sciences has said that play-based learning has been “linked to the development of 21st century learning skills — including collaboration, communication, content, critical thinking, creative innovation and confidence as well as social and emotional development.”

Margaret Oliveira, associate research scientist at Yale School of Medicine, wrote in a blog that “play is one of the clearest ways development becomes visible.

“As children imagine, negotiate, build, improvise and explore, they show growing skills in language, self-control, problem solving and social understanding,” she wrote. “These experiences help build the developmental foundations that support learning.”

Cursive

Speaking about the importance of bringing back the learning of cursive in the classroom, Abdel-Hady said it is integral for developing writing skills for children including letter formation and penmanship.

“We looked at our high school kids,” she said. “Their handwriting is terrible. They can’t articulate a whole paragraph without having a computer in front of them.”

Psychology Today cited a study at Norwegian University of Science and Technology that “reaffirms the importance of ‘old fashioned’ cursive handwriting in the 21st-century’s Computer Age.”

“Even if students use digital pens and write by hand on an interactive computer screen, cursive handwriting helps the brain learn and remember better,” Christopher Bergland wrote in Psychology Today.

Further, the Scientific American cited a study in “Frontiers in Psychology” that “monitored brain activity in students taking notes and found that those writing by hand had higher levels of electrical activity across a wide range of interconnected brain regions responsible for movement, vision, sensory processing and memory.”

Limiting technology

In Finland Abdel-Hady found that technology is absent from the early grades and is only introduced in the middle and high school years.

She said technology is affecting the attention span of young learners.

In Windsor, technology will be limited, with no 1-to-1 devices in the classroom, according to the superintendent.

“All the learning software is fast paced,” she said. “We have lost the attention span of our kids because they are constantly used to new information and flashing things and colors. They no longer sit for 10 to 20 minutes and play with something.”

The Connecticut State Board of Education updated its guidance to local and regional boards of education last week, recommending that districts adopt a bell-to-bell restriction on cellphones in the classroom, and it also “recommends that such policies examine the district’s relationship with educational technology and limit screen time in the classroom.”