Enjoy the show!

Over the last few weeks, our socio-dramatic play area in our classroom has undergone a transformation from a very successful bakery to a movie theatre! The reason I wanted to highlight this on the blog was because it has truly allowed for our students to build on their imagination through play, incorporate rich and meaningful learning opportunities for both literacy and mathematics, and lastly, "spark" our students' ownership over their learning space! It is truly inspiring to witness our youngest learners so eager and excited to take charge in their learning and, as an educator, it couldn't feel more rewarding to support them throughout the process!

Here are some highlights from our transformation; all of which have been led by students' interests and ideas and supported by us as a teaching team:

After brainstorming ideas for our dramatic play area, students then voted on the one they wanted! 

Movie Theatre was a clear win! Students enjoyed analyzing our collected data and even made a list of students who had yet to vote due to their absence! It was wonderful to watch them take such pride on ensuring the decision-making process was inclusive of all students!

Students began brainstorming as a team what our movie theatre needs and what sorts of materials we will need to create! A list of movies that they wanted to have playing in our theatre was also co-created!

After posing this question to students: 

"What special jobs does our movie theatre need?" 

students came up with the following:

1. Ticket Agent

2. Ticket Taker

3. Popcorn and Drink Maker

4. Customer

5. Poster Maker

Afterwards, we brainstormed what materials we could use that were already in our classroom that could help our movie theatre feel more "real"! Our students' imagination continues to amaze us as they thought of 

some of the following materials:

- small cups and large cups

- variety of cubes (linking cubes and wooden cubes)

- baking trays

- tissue for the napkins

- clipboards

A special thank you to Jennifer Tompkins, an FDK Teacher at Bond Lake Public School, for inspiring us to use linking cubes for our popcorn! Our students have easily named the "yellow" ones as buttery popcorn and the "white" ones as plain popcorn!

Students have truly taken on the various roles throughout our movie theatre! Their dialogue, exchanging of ideas, teamwork and oral language skills have really helped make our theatre come to life!

So much so, that it has officially been named "Room 109 Movies!" and has a list of "rules" that we follow based on our prior knowledge!

 As part of showcasing each movie at our theatre, we really make it official by watching a short clip of the "featured" movie using our classroom's tech cart! This has really made our theatre feel real since once the clip is over, students practice leaving the theatre and tidy up as a team before 

the start of the next movie! 

Since our movie theatre was becoming so busy and popular in our classroom, we problem-solved as a team and came up with the solution that the movie space has room for only 6 chairs! In doing so, one SK decided that by keeping track of who has bought tickets (using tally marks), we can tell people when the show is "SOLD OUT!" - how awesome is that! Whoever is the "Ticket Agent" now has this responsibility added to their job! Moreover, our "Popcorn and Drink Maker" is in charge of reading each ticket order and choosing the correct size container (small or large) which has given us the opportunity to begin to explore mass and capacity!

We hope that this transformation leaves you feeling inspired to think about the ways you integrate literacy and mathematics into your dramatic play areas of your classroom! 

We hope you enjoyed the show!