EPISODE 4 – DESIGNING A NEW RECEPTION AREA

We received a letter from ‘the boss’ (Mr Green), saying how sorry he was to hear about our burglary. However, he believed this was the ideal opportunity to plan a great new reception area to welcome visitors to our building and to publicise the work of the company. The letter gave us free reign and a load of money to design the best possible area. After a brief brainstorm the children worked in pairs to come up with a plan for a new reception area. These were great and included an office area, toilets (M F and disabled), a comfortable waiting area with a huge rug with a sea motif woven in, drinks and snack machines, a children’s play area and a display area to tell visitors about our work. There were also to be display cases with examples of salvaged objects and a huge fish tank with a wreck, models of divers and real fish.

The children then brainstormed all the things that could be in the wall display. This is what they came up with and this is what we spent three weeks of our English lessons and some of our afternoon work doing:

∑ Job profiles with photographs of company members
∑ Training certificates
∑ Newspaper reports about past salvages
∑ An article about us published in ‘Salvage Monthly Magazine’
∑ Labelled diagrams of divers with equipment
∑ Labelled pictures of specialist equipment used by our restorers

We also used clay to make salvaged objects and did observational drawings of objects to make a display in our reception area. (The fish tank will be made at some point when we can borrow a large enough tank!!)

The children enjoyed all these tasks, even though some of the writing was quite demanding. Because it was to go into a display it had to be good quality work and they took this very seriously. A sense of urgency was present due to the impending visit of Mr Green to inspect the new reception area and motivation was helped by the children seeing the work being made into the display as it progressed.