Why play is important in our life. Literature & Language Essay

I need a correction by PEA format, you migth add or remove smth, but keep it simple

Essay 3 Prompt: The Importance of Play
Purpose
Writing this text-based essay should help you:
 integrate evidence from a variety of sources to make your own argument
 understand and practice writing as a process, 
 develop a clear thesis and strong topic sentences and supporting details/examples, 
 write essay introductions and conclusions
 quote, paraphrase, and cite outside sources correctly.
Background
Through reading The Pact, we have reflected on the impact of education in transforming assumptions and lives. We have seen how Sam, George and Rameck developed their identities as African American Doctors with the help of their communities. In this essay, you will explore another theme related to personal growth and facing challenges: the importance of play. In “How Children Process Grief and Loss Through Play,” Emily Kaplan writes, “As the world confronts the novel coronavirus pandemic, an economic depression, and global protests about racism and systemic inequalities, children are being exposed to painful and often scary ideas—and their play will reflect their efforts to make sense of what they see and hear” (par. 4). In 2020, all of us, not just children, can benefit from reflecting on how we cope with crises and continue to live healthy and meaningful lives.
Assignment (Prompt):
Write an essay of 750 words or more (minimum 3 pages) text-based essay in which you answer this question: 
Why should play be an important part of our lives?
Requirements
1) The final draft should be typed, double-spaced and at least 750 words long (3 full pages). 
2) Your essay must include an interesting introduction with enough background information to make your ideas clear to a reader who is not familiar with the readings or topics we have discussed in class.
3) Your essay should have a thesis that clearly addresses the essay question.
4) Use 3 or more PEA Paragraphs to make your ideas clear & convincing. You need to give enough specific, logical evidence and analysis to “prove” your main idea to the reader. 
5) Your essay is about why play in general is important. It is not about how play helped specific people, like Marilyn Wedge or the children in Oklahoma City. Your topic sentences most focus on GENERAL reasons that play is important, and your examples should support those reasons.
6) You must include, explain, and cite specific examples from at least 3 of the texts in the works cited page (can be quoted or paraphrased). Strong essays will generally have two examples in each paragraph.
7) When referencing the readings and videos, use citations (author’s name + the page number for The Pact, author’s name + par. + paragraph number for articles, just the author’s/speaker’s name for the videos). We will look at examples in class!
8) Your essay will include an interesting conclusion that summarizes your key points and emphasizes the significance of your ideas to our current lives. What advice can you give people in 2020 based on the ideas on your essay?
9) You must also include a Works Cited page at the end of your final essay (you should copy and paste from this prompt and remove any sources that you didn’t use).
10) Please also include (and label) the following structures:
a. one adjective clause
i. Example: This is due to the social stress that people felt when in the same room as a stranger (AC).
b. one noun clause
i. Free play is crucial in how we forge our identities and relationships to the world (AC).
c. two conditional sentences
i. Example: If she had not had freedom to explore and create her world of bugs, my cousin might have never discovered her passion (COND). 
Process (The same as essays 1 and 2)
 Thesis/Topic Sentence Outline (5 points)
 1st Draft: (10 points)
o You will submit an introduction and 1 body paragraph to a Canvas discussion.
o Everyone in your group will read your draft and give you feedback.
 2nd Draft (10 points)
o This should be a complete essay: An intro, 3 or more body paragraphs and a conclusion
o I will read this and give you feedback using Speed Grader on Canvas and google docs.
o All of you will need to meet with me individually at least once to discuss this essay. We will sign up for these appointments.
 3rd draft (10 points)
o We will discuss some proofreading techniques.
o We will review the target grammar and make sure you have used it correctly.
 Reflective memo (10 points)o Submit a 1 page letter in which you tell me: 1) one thing you did well in the essay, 2) one thing you think you still need to work on and 3) what you learned from writing this essay. Think about skills you will want to use next semester.
 Final draft (100 points)
o I will read this and give you feedback using Speed Grader on Canvas and google docs. 
Essay #3 Works Cited Page
You should copy this works cited page at the end of your paper. Take out any sources that you don’t use. Make sure the format and the order of the sources stay exactly the same!
Works Cited
Clay, Rebecca A. “The Serious Business of Play.” American Psychological Association, 11 May 2020, http://www.apa.org/topics/covid-19/children-unstructured-play.
Davis, Dr, Sampson, Dr. George Jenkins and Dr. Rameck Hunt with Lisa Frazier Page. The Pact: Three Young Men Make a Promise and Fulfill a Dream. Riverhead, 2002. 
Johnson, Steven. “The Playful Wonderland behind Great Inventions.” TED Studio, TED, Oct. 2016, www.ted.com/talks/steven_johnson_the_playful_wonderland_behind_great_inventions.
Kaplan, Emily. “How Children Process Grief and Loss Through Play.” Edutopia, George Lucas Educational Foundation, 19 June 2020, http://www.edutopia.org/article/how-children-process-grief-and-loss-through-play.
Lee, Cynthia. “The Secret of Empathy.” Neuroscience News, Neuroscience News LLC, 16 Jan. 2015, neurosciencenews.com/empathy-emotion-psychology-1714/.Poole, John. “Brains at Play: What Do We Know?” NPR, 1 Oct. 2015, http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/10/01/444704268/brains-at-play-what-do-we-know.Wedge, Marilyn. “Play and the Child’s Sense of Self.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers LLC, 7 Aug. 2011, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/suffer-the-children/201108/play-and-the-childs-sense-self.
 
Essay #3 Articles
The Serious Business of Play
The COVID-19 pandemic is an opportunity to encourage unstructured play and promote children’s healthy development, psychologists say.
Published by The American Psychological Association
May 11, 2020
Directions
1. Preview the article. What can you learn from the title, author, source name, images, and key words?
2. Pre-read the article. Read the first paragraph, the last paragraph, and the first sentence of each paragraph. Note any important ideas. 
3. Write a few predictions. After pre-reading, what do you think the article’s main insight or main argument is? What details or ideas will the writer probably discuss? Why do you think the article was written in the first place? 
4. Read the whole article and annotate in English. Write short summaries of key ideas, your reactions, your questions or confusions, definitions of new vocabulary words, and connections to other ideas. In addition to sentences and phrases, use symbols (“ex” for example, “?” for questions, “!” for important details, etc; choose symbols you find useful). 
• If you prefer to annotate electronically, here are instructions for using the comment feature in Microsoft Word, the comment feature in Google Docs, or the annotation tool in Adobe Acrobat (for PDF files).
 
¶1 Guides for parenting during the COVID-19 pandemic are full of advice about how to help children navigate the transition to virtual classes, how to keep children busy and avoid boredom, and why schedules and routines are important during this stressful time. What might be overlooked? Unstructured play.
¶2 That’s a mistake, say psychologists. A wealth of research shows that unstructured play — play that isn’t organized or directed by adults or older peers and that generally doesn’t have a defined purpose or outcome — is a fundamental necessity for children to thrive physically, emotionally, mentally and socially.
¶3 Active play like backyard swinging and games of tag helps build healthy bodies, increase energy and reduce tension and anxiety. Risky, challenging play like manhunts or jumping from manageable heights helps children learn to make decisions, calibrate risks and manage emotions. Interactive play with siblings, parents or other household members teaches empathy, reciprocity, sharing, problem-solving, perspective-taking, cooperation and more as well as fostering feelings of connection and acceptance. And creative play helps children make sense of life around them as they create art or music, build forts, tell stories and try on different identities.
¶4 And play — for all members of the family — is especially important during the pandemic. “We’re all under stress at this time, and play is an important catalyst to relieve stress,” says educational psychologist Lauren McNamara, PhD, founder and director of Recess Project Canada, a research project housed at Toronto’s Ryerson University that promotes active and inclusive recess environments for children in Canada and beyond. “Engaging in unstructured play with the kids can be an important time for families to stay connected and feel emotionally secure together.”To help soothe anxiety and foster healthy child development in all domains, psychologists encourage parents to:Enjoy unstructured play with their children
¶5 Parents may be more busy than usual as they navigate the transition to telework, worry about job loss and strive to keep their families safe. But it’s more important than ever for parents to make time to play with their kids, says Timothy Davis, PhD, a private practitioner in Newton, Massachusetts, and a lecturer at Harvard Medical School. “Parent/child play is important in maintaining a strong relationship and strong attachment between parent and child, which fosters resilience,” says Davis.Let the kids take the lead
¶6 Parents shouldn’t try to take over or control the activity a child is engaged in, says Natasha Cabrera, PhD, a professor of human development and quantitative methodology at the University of Maryland in College Park. If a child is using a play stove as a drum, that’s OK. “Don’t say, ‘This is a stove, you have to cook,’” says Cabrera. “Being intrusive means taking away the child’s autonomy to create something new.” Instead, she says, encourage the child to try out new ideas in a safe space and say instead, “I didn’t realize that was a drum. That’s really interesting!” Younger children may need a little help developing their imaginative skills, says Sandra Russ, PhD, a professor of psychological sciences at Case Western Reserve University. “Parents can help scaffold the play a bit,” she says. They might model how a building block could be a piece of fruit or a telephone, for example, or ask their child to make up a different ending for the story.
Encourage "pretend play"
¶7 Unlike board or card games, which have set rules to follow, pretend play allows children to come up with their own rules, games and stories. Pretend play that helps children develop their imaginations, hone their creativity and learn how to amuse themselves is key, says Russ. While pretend play may involve dolls, action figures, art supplies or blocks, it can also be as simple as couch cushions and blankets that become a fort, pots and pans that become musical instruments and natural materials like branches and pinecones that become parts of imaginary worlds. “That helps the child develop the ability to see lots of different uses for things,” says Russ. “You don’t need expensive toys.”
Facilitate safe interaction with peers
¶8 Parents may be tempted to use screen time to distract their children while they’re trying to get their own work done. That’s OK in small doses, but parents should try to make screen time interactive, suggests Davis. “There are lots of different ways you can play together over Zoom or FaceTime,” he says. Parents can set up virtual play dates where a child and a friend build with Legos and show off their creations to each other. Find online versions of board games children can play with friends marooned in their own houses. Encourage children to tell stories to their grandparents over video calls or share their artwork with friends.
Send kids outside
¶9 Send kids outside if there’s a safe place to do so. Outdoor time should be a priority, says McNamara. “Park structures are off-limits during the pandemic, but family tag, running games, Frisbee, catch, skipping, biking, skateboarding and skating are all possible,” she says. “Chalk, washable paints, ropes and cones can be used to create obstacle courses and sidewalk art.” If parks are closed or too far away, she adds, parents can take advantage of outdoor spaces such as backyards, driveways or city sidewalks. Some cities are even closing off streets to allow room for outdoor play.
Incorporate playfulness into everyday activities
¶10 By incorporating playfulness into everyday tasks like cooking dinner or planting a garden, parents will not only be getting help, they will be teaching children important skills like math and collaboration and giving them a sense of contributing to the household, says Robyn Holmes, PhD, a psychology professor at Monmouth University. Parents can invite their children to get creative and add food coloring to food or make pancakes into squares, triangles or dinosaurs, she says. Or let children use the family garden as their own pretend “farm.”
¶11 Most important, says Cabrera, is for parents to understand that play is important. “Play isn’t something you do because you have nothing else to do,” says Cabrera. And play is more important now than ever before, even in households where parents are worried about losing their jobs or being able to buy groceries. “Now is a good time for children to feel joyful and positive,” she says. Plus, she adds, “happy kids are easier to manage.” 
For more information, check out APA’s Tips for quarantined parents in the times of COVID-19. Also check out the International Play Association’s Play in Crisis: Support for Parents and Carers (PDF 1.5MB). Find more ideas for activities at the Strong National Museum of Play’s website.How Children Process Grief and Loss Through PlayYoung children will likely process the tumultuous events of 2020 in the only way they know how—through play. Here’s how adults can be supportive.
By Emily KaplanPublished in EdutopiaJune 19, 2020Directions1. Preview the article. What can you learn from the title, author, source name, images, and key words?2. Pre-read the article. Read the first paragraph, the last paragraph, and the first sentence of each paragraph. Note any important ideas. 3. Write a few predictions. After pre-reading, what do you think the article’s main insight or main argument is? What details or ideas will the writer probably discuss? Why do you think the article was written in the first place? 4. Read the whole article and annotate in English. Write short summaries of key ideas, your reactions, your questions or confusions, definitions of new vocabulary words, and connections to other ideas. In addition to sentences and phrases, use symbols (“ex” for example, “?” for questions, “!” for important details, etc; choose symbols you find useful). • If you prefer to annotate electronically, here are instructions for using the comment feature in Microsoft Word, the comment feature in Google Docs, or the annotation tool in Adobe Acrobat (for PDF files).
¶1 Soon after the Oklahoma City bombing, in 1995, children in a nearby kindergarten started playing dead. Over and over, they toppled towers of blocks and lay motionless on the floor. When their teacher asked them to tell her about what was happening in their play, the students informed her that they had all been killed by terrorists.¶2 The play continued in this vein for some time—smashed towers, splayed-out children—until their teacher asked if they might be interested in building a hospital. “She went in with stethoscopes, masks, and bandages, and helped kids move towards a phase that was focused on care and healing,” says Nancy Carlsson-Paige, a professor emerita at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and an expert on the ways young children process trauma through play.¶3 That expertly handled transition—recognizing that the children were stuck and might need a nudge—demonstrates a few important principles about play, according to Carlsson-Paige. First, the teacher did not judge the children’s play or let her own anxieties about the situation seep through. For young children, she understood, play is the only way to work through everything they wrestle with, from everyday challenges to anxiety, fear, and even loss and death. Second, while the teacher left plenty of room for discovery, she stepped in when the play turned obsessive, redirecting her students in a way that was both well-timed and developmentally appropriate.¶4 As the world confronts the novel coronavirus pandemic, an economic depression, and global protests about racism and systemic inequalities, children are being exposed to painful and often scary ideas—and their play will reflect their efforts to make sense of what they see and hear.WHY CHILDREN PLAY THROUGH GRIEF AND LOSS¶5 The late Vivian Gussin Paley, a kindergarten teacher, recipient of the MacArthur “genius” grant, and author of dozens of books on children’s play lives, put it this way: “The young child wants to play. He wants to play because intuitively he understands that through play he will understand more about who he is than in any other format.”Seth Aronson, a psychologist and the Director of Curriculum, Training and Supervising Analyst at the William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and Psychology in New York City, extends that line of thinking into play that involves the processing of fear, anxiety, or loss.¶6 “One of the functions that play serves for kids is it allows them to approach something that might be frightening in a way that makes it less frightening and more understandable,” he says. Through play, children “control the tempo and the pace and the content” of a situation and gain the ability to anticipate what happens next—all of which can take the sting out of scary situations. “Whenever there’s any kind of scary or traumatic situation, play really allows the child the displacement and the space to play out some of those things,” he says. “If it’s happening to a doll, it’s not really happening to me.”¶7 In other words, imaginative play not only enables children to better understand reality—by helping them to inhabit the perspectives of, say, both a doll patient and a stuffed animal doctor—but also to quickly change the narrative when the reality becomes too much to bear. (In the past two months, I’ve seen this with a three-year-old I’ve spent a lot of time with, who repeatedly declares dolls dead before bringing them back to life.) Psychologists call these processes denial and undoing, and they’re essential to maintaining a child’s sense of safety and control.¶8 “Play has the power to make something un-happen, to correct something that’s overwhelming,” Aronson explains. For instance, a child whose grandmother recently died might say that she saw Grandma in her room, or that she played with her. “It’s totally normal,” Dr. Aronson says. “It’s undoing the event in a way that’s comforting and soothing and helps the child deal with the loss.”HOW GROWN-UPS CAN SET THE STAGE¶9 Erika Christakis, a former faculty member at the Yale Child Study Center and the author of The Importance of Being Little: What Young Children Really Need from Grownups, says that the play impulse is evolutionarily hardwired in humans and “can’t be short-circuited.” Nevertheless, she says, adults play a key role in setting the groundwork for what psychologists call “productive play”—which actively helps children process their experiences and acquire emotional and cognitive skills—while watching for signs of unproductive play, which represent and amplify feelings of distress.¶10 The P.A.C.E. approach: Christakis says that the acronym P.A.C.E.—which stands for playfulness, acceptance, curiosity, and empathy—is a useful guide for helping adults interact with young children. Adults should recognize that children are navigating a tension within themselves: they want to feel powerful and independent, while also yearning to feel protected and cared for. Given this, adults should empower children with age-appropriate choices: asking them what song to sing, what to have for a snack—or what they want to play.¶11 Generally speaking, adults shouldn’t be overly worried that children will lead themselves down roads they aren’t prepared to navigate: the very instinct to explore a subject in play likely means that the child is ready—and perhaps needs—to do so. “Children are really good at getting what they need through the tools that they have,” she says. She adds, “Kids can tolerate a lot as long as they know that their feelings are not creepy or wrong.”¶12 Don't shame: Sometimes children’s play can inspire uncomfortable feelings in adults, which is perfectly fine, as long as adults don’t convey to children that their play is shameful or wrong. Play is highly personal: Nancy Carlsson-Paige, the professor, says it contains “the whole child: emotions and thoughts and physical being and social self.” As such, children tend to interpret criticism or dismissal of their play as criticism or dismissal of themselves.¶13 “The healthiest, most nurturing thing we can do for children is to join them in their feelings,” Christakis says. She encourages adults to communicate that “there’s nothing you could say to me that would be too weird, too annoying.”¶14 Create the conditions for imaginative exploration: To encourage children to play out what’s on their minds, experts recommend providing children with “multi-use” toys—generic objects like blocks and wooden dolls, onto which children can project what they need to project. When children have a Superman action figure, they tend to play out Superman storylines; but when they have a faceless figure, they engage with their own thoughts and emotions, what they find exciting, troubling, or confusing. It’s these scenarios that are most conducive to productive play, which reflects some aspects of a child’s experience or imagination.¶15 Watch for unproductive play: In rare situations, play—or a lack thereof—can be a cause for concern. Generally speaking, adults should not intervene in children’s play. However, “if the child’s play makes the child anxious, when it’s too literal for the child, or when it’s obsessive and repetitive—that’s a sign that the play isn’t serving its purpose,” says Aronson, the New York psychologist. In these situations, adults can gently introduce new elements or coax the narrative in a new direction, as the teacher in Oklahoma did when her kindergarteners repeatedly revisited the terrorist attack.¶16 “I always look for some kind of change in play,” says Carlsson-Paige. If that change doesn’t occur—if the same troubling event is rehashed over and over, with the same outcome each time—intervention, or psychological attention, may be merited.¶17 However, what may be most concerning is the absence of play. When Carlsson-Paige spent time in El Salvador in the early 1990s, during the country’s civil war, the children she encountered there were so traumatized they didn’t play at all. When she returned the next year, after the war’s conclusion, play had returned.¶18 “Children need to have a certain sense of safety to go into an imaginary play zone,” she asserts. Adults can provide that safe space at this tumultuous and historic moment—being careful to strike the right balance between the freedom children need to explore difficult subject matter on their own, and the periodic need to step in when kids get stuck.
The Secret of EmpathyStress from the presence of strangers prevents empathy, in both mice and humans.By Cynthia LeePublished in Neuroscience NewsJanuary 16, 2015Directions1. Preview the article. What can you learn from the title, author, source name, images, and key words?2. Pre-read the article. Read the first paragraph, the last paragraph, and the first sentence of each paragraph. Note any important ideas. 3. Write a few predictions. After pre-reading, what do you think the article’s main insight or main argument is? What details or ideas will the writer probably discuss? Why do you think the article was written in the first place? 4. Read the whole article and annotate in English. Write short summaries of key ideas, your reactions, your questions or confusions, definitions of new vocabulary words, and connections to other ideas. In addition to sentences and phrases, use symbols (“ex” for example, “?” for questions, “!” for important details, etc; choose symbols you find useful). • If you prefer to annotate electronically, here are instructions for using the comment feature in Microsoft Word, the comment feature in Google Docs, or the annotation tool in Adobe Acrobat (for PDF files).
 ¶1 The ability to express empathy — the capacity to share and feel another’s emotions — is limited by the stress of being around strangers, according to a new study published today in the journal Current Biology.¶2 “President Barack Obama has described an ‘empathy deficit’ that fuels misunderstanding, divisions, and conflict. This research identifies a reason for the empathy gap and answers the vital question of how do we create empathy between strangers,” said McGill University psychology professor Jeffrey Mogil, senior author of the study. “In this case, creating empathy was as simple as spending 15 minutes together playing the video game Rock Band.”¶3 Empathy is increasingly being studied by scientists because of its known role in psychological disorders, such as Autism Spectrum Disorder and psychopathy. In studies of empathy, pain is often used as a stimulus because it is universally understood and easy to measure. Previous research by Mogil and other scientists has used this approach to show that capacity for empathy is evident even in lower mammals, such as mice.¶4 In the new study, Mogil and his team compared the reactions of undergraduate students to painful stimuli in various scenarios: alone; with a friend; with a stranger; between two strangers given a stress-blocking drug; and between two strangers who had spent 15 minutes playing the video game prior to testing.¶5 The student participants were asked to submerge their arm in ice-cold water and rate their pain. These pain scores remained the same whether they experienced the pain alone or sitting across from a stranger. However, the pain actually increased when these students put their arms in ice water across from a friend.¶6 “It would seem like more pain in the presence of a friend would be bad news, but it’s in fact a sign that there is strong empathy between individuals – they are indeed feeling each other’s pain,” said Mogil.¶7 Past research from Mogil’s lab has demonstrated that two mice do not feel empathy when they are unknown to one another. It has also shown that if two mice are familiar with one another (cage mates), they will feel more pain from a stimulus than they do when given the same painful experience alone. The research released today is the first to demonstrate the same barrier to empathy in the presence of strangers among humans. The researchers then investigated what prevented empathy between strangers and found the same cause in both humans and mice: the stress of being near a stranger. When researchers gave mice and humans the drug metyrapone — which prevents the “flight-or-fight” stress reaction — before the experiment, both students and mice demonstrated empathy for the stranger.¶8 To further test this “social stress” barrier to empathy between strangers, student participants paired with strangers were given the opportunity to play Rock Band prior to the experiment. After only 15 minutes of playing together, these strangers showed empathy toward one another when they experienced the pain from exposure to ice water. (Playing the game alone did nothing to increase empathy between strangers.)¶9 “It turns out that even a shared experience that is as superficial as playing a video game together can move people from the ‘stranger zone’ to the ‘friend zone’ and generate meaningful levels of empathy,” said Mogil. “This research demonstrates that basic strategies to reduce social stress could start to move us from an empathy deficit to a surplus.”
¶10 “These findings raise many fascinating questions because we know failures in empathy are central to various psychological disorders and even social conflicts at both the personal and societal level,” said Mogil. “It’s also pretty surprising that empathy appears to work exactly the same way in mice and people.”
Play and the Child’s Sense of SelfThe loss of free play means a loss of creativity.
By Marilyn Wedge, Ph.D.Published in Psychology TodayAugust 7, 2011Directions1. Preview the article. What can you learn from the title, author, source name, images, and key words?2. Pre-read the article. Read the first paragraph, the last paragraph, and the first sentence of each paragraph. Note any important ideas. 3. Write a few predictions. After pre-reading, what do you think the article’s main insight or main argument is? What details or ideas will the writer probably discuss? Why do you think the article was written in the first place? 4. Read the whole article and annotate in English. Write short summaries of key ideas, your reactions, your questions or confusions, definitions of new vocabulary words, and connections to other ideas. In addition to sentences and phrases, use symbols (“ex” for example, “?” for questions, “!” for important details, etc; choose symbols you find useful). • If you prefer to annotate electronically, here are instructions for using the comment feature in Microsoft Word, the comment feature in Google Docs, or the annotation tool in Adobe Acrobat (for PDF files).
¶1 The memories of my childhood that I cherish most are of the Huck Finnish days of summer when school was finally out. One time, I made a rough fishing rod out of a bamboo pole and some twine. There was something deeply satisfying about the process of creating the makeshift rod, attaching the hook and sinker, raiding our refrigerator for something to use as bait, and putting the line into the water. Then I fished for hours in the creek near our house, watching the sun play on the water and the tadpoles dart around in shallow green poolsThat day I caught a couple of fish, but the fish themselves didn't matter much. It was the process of creating that meant everything to me.¶2 In play, the child creates a world into which she puts her thoughts, her imaginings and her feelings. The world she creates in free form is literally made out of herself, spun out of her own subjectivity. This created world, in turn, gives the child a sense of her self as an active, creative being. The child is the ruler of her tiny kingdom, and in it she feels deliciously free and alive.¶3 When a child is deprived of the opportunity for free creative play, the psychological consequences can be grave. The eminent psychologist Alice Miller says that when a parent tells a child to do something sensible and goal-oriented instead of aimlessly playing, the child's world is overthrown. The child obeys because she wants to please her parent. But the child feels hurt, and withdraws her feelings into herself where they remain buried.¶4 If this parental banishment occurs repeatedly, as it does with narcissistic parents who use the child to satisfy their own conscious or unconscious wishes, the child becomes depressed. Instead of having a sense of herself as a free and creative subjectivity, the child feels like an object--the object of her parents wishes. No longer the author of her own story, the child feels like she is playing a role in her parents' drama. As Miller puts it in her classic book The Drama of the Gifted Child, the child puts away her real feelings and takes on a "false self."¶5 Today, childhood depression is on the rise in America. More than a million children have been diagnosed with depression and are treated with dangerous psychiatric medications. Alongside this rise in children's depression is the alarming decrease of free unstructured play. More and more, children are tiger parented into academic achievement. This begins even in the pre-school years when the race is on to enroll one's child in the best college preparatory nursery school.¶6 Older children are over-scheduled with after school enrichment classes, music lessons and sports-all of which will look good on a college application later on. "How long has junior been playing the violin," asks the application, for colleges are looking for "stick-to-it-iveness." Children's limited play time is so often taken up with video and computer games--games that have been invented by adults. There is some social interaction on these games, as children connect with their friends on the screen, but video games do not provide a child with a truly creative experience. For one thing, there is always the competition, the quest for victory.¶7 The lack of opportunity for unstructured creative play is a tragic loss for our country's children and may even be contributing to the astonishingly rapid rise of childhood depression. The achievement-oriented, over-scheduled, video game-intoxicated child misses out on the opportunity to create his own imaginary world. The absence of creative play and the growing emphasis on achievement narrowly defined is stressful to our children, because it frustrates and denies their need to build a sense of self through play.¶8 There are also grave consequences for our society as well, for the loss of free play means a loss of creativity. Psychoanalyst and pediatrician Donald Winnicott says in his classic work Playing and Reality that the ability to play, to engage in the creative process is, more than anything else, what makes life worth living. Without it, a person becomes depressed. And, according to Winnicott, what allows an adult to engage in this meaningful process of creativity is the childhood experience of creative play, free from the rules and restraints of the adult world. 
Note-Taking / Brainstorming
Directions: As we learn about the benefits of play through various resources in class, write down all of the benefits you find, and include examples for each benefit. You can write down the benefit and or the example below (and these examples can be used in your next essay).
Reason for play Example of this reason/benefit  + Source
Example:• Play promotes a sense of self in children
• “In play, the child creates a world into which she puts her thoughts, her imaginings and her feelings…. This created world… gives the child a sense of her self as an active, creative being.” (Wedge, par. 2)Essay #3 Graphic Organizer
Directions: Please fill out the following chart with benefits of play you plan to focus on in your essay, examples that support those benefits and the sources from which the examples come. Reason/Benefit Why is this important? Source(s)Example:Play promotes a sense of self in children Answer: Free play helps children to create their own world. They need to do this to become confident individuals. Play and the Child’s Sense of Self (Wedge, par. 2)
Reason #1 Answer: 

Reason #2: Answer: 

Reason #3: Answer: 

Synthesis: Example Body Paragraph
1. A topic sentence identifying one reason for play (P) One reason that play should be an important part of everyone’s life is that play helps us discover a sense of self. 2. Explain how play promotes this. (pre-A) When we play without strict rules and restrictions, we are given the opportunity to construct our own world with our imagination and find creative ways to solve problems and find ourselves in the process.3. Introduce  + describe a specific example that illustrates this reason for play. (E) For example, in the article “Play and the Child’s Sense of Self,” author Marilyn Wedge writes about her experience as a child building a fishing rod out of a bamboo pole and twine. She describes how she found all of the necessary pieces to create her own fishing rod, and how she sat at the creek for hours, feeling deeply satisfied about creating her own makeshift rod. She explains that, although she caught a couple of fish, it was not the fish that mattered, but the “process of creating that meant everything to [her]” (Wedge, par. 1). She explains that, in play, “the child is the ruler of her tiny kingdom, and in it she feels deliciously free and alive” (Wedge, par. 2).4. Analyze how play helped the person in this particular situation (specific A) In Wedge’s example, we see that the process of building her own fishing rod, free of rules and guidance, encouraged her to think creatively, constructing her own world and sense of self. She was not playing by her parents’ given rules, but rather following her own imagination, discovering the world around her and taking control of her learning in the process.
5. Summarize the connection between play and its effect on people in general (A) Without free play, children often become depressed because they are trying only to please their parents by following their parents’ rules instead of discovering their own creativity and sense of self. Free play is crucial in how we forge our identity and relationship to the world.6. Introduce  + describe a second specific situation that illustrates this reason for play (E). Another example of this creativity and self-discovery is my cousin. When she was a child, she was fascinated with snails, spiders, millipedes, and pretty much anything that crawled or wriggled on the ground. She would collect them, line them up and make a village of crawling creatures. She would spend hours outside with the bugs. While many parents might have the urge to keep their kids out of the dirt and in a more structured activity, my aunt and uncle let her explore her world of bugs. It was this exploration as a child that led to her interest in the natural world and the study of biology in college. 7. Analyze how play helped the person in this particular situation (specific A) If she had not had freedom to explore and create her world of bugs, my cousin might have never discovered her passion. It was the freedom to play without strict guidelines that allowed her to create her own imaginative world and discover herself.8. Summarize the connection between play and its effect on people in general (A) + conclude the ¶. (A) As we can see, true play, which is neither rigid nor restrictive, allows us to open our imaginations and creativity, exploring not only the world around us but ourselves as well.Practice A: Paragraph Development
Directions: Consider the ¶ development guide on the previous page. Read the ¶ below and determine which parts (which Steps/#s) are present and which are missing. Label the parts that are present below and then create the missing parts on the lines that follow. You can reference their location in the ¶ with a # (Please note: This example ¶ only has one example, so we’re looking at Steps #1-5 only. Hint: Its missing two “steps”) Not only does play help us to be creative and discover ourselves, but play is crucial in building human connection and empathy. For example, in the article “The Secret of Empathy,” researchers rated levels of empathy by having study participants self-evaluate their level of pain they felt when sticking their hand in ice water. Participants reported more pain when in the presence of a friend due to a shared feeling of pain (empathy). When alone or with a stranger, however, their pain levels were much lower. This is due to the social stress that people felt when in the same room as a stranger. However, researchers discovered that after playing the video game Rock Band for just 15 minutes with strangers, students’ levels of pain from the ice water increased; that is, their levels of empathy increased. As we can see, play has the power to bring strangers out of the “stranger zone” and into the “friend zone” (Lee & Mogil 1).________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Practice B: Your Turn!
1. A topic sentence identifying one reason for play (P)
2. Explain how play promotes this. (pre-A)
3. Introduce  + describe a specific example that illustrates this reason for play. (E)

4. Analyze how play helped the person in this particular situation (specific A)

5. Summarize the connection between play and its effect on people in general (A)
.6. Introduce  + describe a second specific situation that illustrates this reason for play (E).

7. Analyze how play helped the person in this particular situation (specific A)
8. Summarize the connection between play and its effect on people in general (A) + conclude the ¶. (A) Essay #3 Outline
Working Title:
IntroductionWorking Thesis:
Body Paragraph 1 Topic Sentence: Evidence 1 & Source:
Evidence 2 & Source:
Body Paragraph 2 Topic Sentence: Evidence 1 & Source:
Evidence 2 & Source:
Body Paragraph 3 Topic Sentence: Evidence 1 & Source:
Evidence 2 & Source: