7c Case Study (ii): Reconstructing a community scenario
Nuala arranged for her Year 5 class to visit a restaurant owned by one of the parents. Families were informed and the children briefed beforehand on the purpose of the visit (to recreate a restaurant in their own classroom). They were told to observe the roles taken by the people in the restaurant (customers and staff), the kind of language they used and any written texts they saw. The owner played along, greeting the children as if they were real diners, directing them to tables, taking orders and serving light refreshments. The children were also shown the kitchens. . At the same time, Nuala circulated among the seated children allocating different roles (a birthday party, a hen night, a quarrelling family and so on) to groups of children.
Back at school, the children constructed a collaborative recall of the event, recorded on a flip chart by Nuala, as they might have done in the car returning from a family trip. They then planned the construction of a classroom restaurant, listing the roles of restaurant staff and customers, what kind of things they would do and what resources would be needed. Most of these came from the children’s homes or were made in class, including all the necessary written texts (menus, invoices and so on). A set number of roles was decided on, with children taking a different role each week.
A familiarisation period followed in which the children and Nuala made free use of the site with Nuala always taking an equal or subservient role and being careful not to instruct the children directly in how to behave in role so that they had to call on their memories of the visit, their own experience of restaurants, and knowledge from television programmes, in acting out the roles. She then began systematically to introduce problems or challenges, each of which might later necessitate the construction of a text form required by the Literacy Framework. For example, she secretly briefed a child playing the chef to have a tantrum and leave abruptly. The children solved the problem of dealing with a queue of irritable customers by inventing a neighbouring Chinese takeaway and introducing ‘Chinese Banquets’ into the menu. Later, she took the class as a whole through the process of appointing a new chef, advertisements with a job and person description were placed throughout the school, ‘applicants’ were interviewed by panels of restaurant ‘staff’ and the class together constructed a training manual for the new appointee. The whole process took several weeks, using different Literacy Hour slots and extended writing periods.
The approach not only made meaningful use of children’s out of school experience but also showed them how this experience connected to the ordinary school curriculum, especially through home-type learning strategies, such as communal recollection and representational play. It also provided for meaningful speaking and listening and problem-solving situations, which are often difficult to represent in class.
Contact Nuala: ao3353@Elearning.Sefton.gov.uk. or the author: mgmacook@aol.com
Student teachers might: plan to use role play in this way, considering the time constraints and any management implications and consulting the appropriate National Curriculum and Literacy Framework objectives.
 
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