Jenny Mosley Consultancies

Home/Questions & Answers/Lunchtimes and playtimes

Q: How do we improve playtimes with a tiny, bleak playground?

Q:  We have a great school. The staff and children are superb! However, our playground is tiny and pretty bleak! We have worked really hard to ensure that playtimes are stimulating for the children. We have worked with year 6 children to paint school murals, provided play equipment as suggested by the SC such as juggling balls - seeing 300 balls being juggled at a play time is interesting! skipping ropes, quoits, hoops, large balls, soft balls, beanies! The SC meet regularly each half term. We worked with a consultant from Jenny Mosely's team and picked up good ideas and we have circle time as a regular feature of the time-table. Obviously when issues arise we use circle time to discuss these. But time after time, despite training the mid-day supervisors in positive behaviour, mutual respect, not shouting or accusing pupils (they have had training at least three times with LEA consultant from the Healthy Schools team, the Deputy and outside consultants) and having regular half termly meetings with the Deputy or myself, we still find that their way of working with the children does not improve and so the issues of play ground behaviour are still happening at lunch time! What else can we do? How can we get our dear ladies to listen and take note of how we want them to behave because at the moment they are helping to create the negative culture that exists at lunch-time? Help!

Jenny: My heart goes out to you and your staff team!!! You describe a wonderful approach and attitude to firming up a really exciting lunchtime policy. You deserve to have peaceful, productive and respectful lunchtimes; but its still not happening for you all. It’s a very strange phenomena and puzzles us all - why is it that sometimes, despite our best efforts with the admin support or teaching staff, there appears to be no personal growth or sharing of the school vision. One of my theories hinges on self-esteem. If an adult has low self-esteem, personal change is extraordinary difficult. People with low self esteem often ride rough shod over other people's feelings. As I have said elsewhere - if you felt good about yourself you would not need to talk disrespectfully to other people. However, because you are giving so much input to them, your irritation and disappointment on their lack of response, may be more apparent than you realise. It goes against the grain, but somehow you have to, despite feeling let down, keep looking for the tiny markers of success they may have achieved. Feeding these back to them in verbal praise or written notes, ending your lunchtime meetings with "one positive thing I have noticed about lunchtimes" might go a little way towards softening their attitudes. Sometimes, when I work on my own with midday supervisors they have a list of moans to do with the fact they don’t feel communicated with properly. Some, who are not parents, don’t get the letters about what's going on in the school. Sometimes the teachers let them down by not picking the kids up from the playground on time. Sometimes the dining hall system goes wrong because teachers don’t let them out quick enough (I was the worst culprit at this!!). There are quite often a series of small events, which have added to their perception of not being valued.

It becomes a vicious circle; they become more truculent and strident - we withhold our warmth and valuing response; We become emotionally colder - they feel less a part of the whole ethos. Have you asked midday supervisors to class circle -times? Quite often when they are not locked in the interaction, and can observe or take part in a circle-time on 'how we can make lunchtimes better', they are amazed at the gentleness and wisdom of children. They never usually have a chance to see them in that role. When we do these circle time sessions we often ask the children, in front of the midday supervisors, 'what does a midday supervisor do that makes you feel good and safe'. By keeping the dialogue very safe midday supervisors feel praised and valued. We also give them 'gold dust notes' where they can write positive comments about the individual progress of difficult children and the good behaviour of the majority of children and pop them into the classes 'golden good news' post box. Another strategy they like is to be given raffle tickets. At every opportunity, whenever they see any good behaviour (and you need to identify a list of good behaviours, e.g. lining up calmly, good manners etc.) they hand the child a raffle ticket with the words "good choice". (See All Year Round Mosley J and Thorpe G, LDA 2002). The pupils then put their raffle tickets into a big drum, which, on a Friday assembly is bought onto the stage as the weekly midday supervisor's celebration of 'great lunchtime behaviour'. A child then does a loud drum roll, a hand plunges into the raffle tickets, draws one out and hush goes over the crowd, a prize is awarded, a huge cheer erupts…. And the midday supervisors self-esteem is lifted a little. There are lots of other ideas in the above book…but you may have tried them all. The learning I still find the hardest to swallow is that, despite the fact I have been as warm and positive as I can (or at least I think I have!) I still cannot win all people over. Sometimes you may have to go down a more radical route. Some schools will tell you they have raised money through PTA and bought in paid play leaders. Some schools have bought in trained sixth formers…its an ongoing long-term task and, as I said at the beginning, you all deserve to succeed - but we don’t all get what we deserve!!!

Related Tags »

• Playgimes
• Playground