1. The Restaurant Project Mrs. Hildebrand’s kindergarten class

2. How the project starts……  Students in the home living section noticed the real life menus Mrs. Hildebrand brought into the classroom. They started playing during free choice time.. Mrs. Hildebrand wrote down their conversations. Abby: Ok, what do you want? Kaden: I’ll have chicken. Abby: Coming right up. Cash: Where’s my soup? Abby: What would you like to drink? Kaden: Chocolate milk. Ben: I’ll have alphabet soup and coffee. Andy: We don’t have coffee. Charlee: Here, this is all for the coffee. Cash: I’d like a refill on coffee please. Phase 1: Investigating

3. Day 1 Conversations (Abby goes over the phone and picks it up) Abby: Hello, ok…. (she pretends to talk to a customer about hours) (Andy leaves the home living area and goes over to the writing center) Andy: Brason, what would you like? Brason: I”ll have that right there. (he points to something on the menu) Andy: What is that? Brason: chicken (Andy delivers the food to him) Andy: Someone else can work here. Jayla: Sit down Kaden, what would you like to eat? Would you like this? Isaiah: Hello, Mrs. Hildebrand. What would you like? Jayla: Isaiah, she needs a menu. Isaiah: Oh, here, this is all we have…it costs money. Mrs. Hildebrand: I’ll have icecream, chicken, and coffee please. (Isaiah writes this down) Cash: We have two different kinds of iceream flavors. Isaiah: Sorry, we don’t have chicken nuggets, but we do have a chicken leg. Oh…. You did want a chicken leg…sometimes my ears down work right…I didn’t listen to your order very well. Coffee, chicken legs, ice cream

4. Day 2: The “playing” becomes more refined  After the students’ conversations the 1 st day, we worked together to extend our project web and talked about more aspects of a restaurant. The students specified certain menus that they wanted in home living, and those menus appeared. Pizza Hut menus make their way into home living. Their conversations are recorded again. Abby: What would you like to eat today? Cash: Can I get my drink first? Coffee please. Fresh and ready pepperoni pizza…and cinnamon bites too! Colin: Coffee and pepperoni pizza coming right up! Andy: Ah! We don’t have pizza. (looking through play food) Colin: Here, this is your bill. (hands him a paper) It’s that many dollars. Cash: Is it $12? Colin: Would you like anything else? That is what they would usually say at a restaurant. Cash: Ok, here is my bill. Colin: No, you put this on the table. (the bill) Andy: Where’s the menu at? Welcome to the café. Here is your menu. Take your time. Lux: I’m ready to order. (I want) Chicken fingers, or chicken leg. Do you have lemonade? Cooper: Going to make some coffee. Cash: Do you want coffee Marah? (Cooper’s mom) Marah: Yes, cream and sugar please!

5. Day 3: The “playing” makes more connections to literacy and math  After revisiting our web again, the students start to make more purposeful decisions during the project time. More students are involved and more ideas are emerging. Their conversations are recorded again. Mrs. Hildebrand is now switching between taking anecdotal notes between the writing center and home living. Briggs: Look, I made money! Jamison: I made a hat for the waiter. We can make money for the restaurant! Cash: I made a coin! Haley: Does this say sandwich? Brason: I’m making dollars for the restaurant. Colin: I’m the waiter, so I need the book to hold and write down stuff in. Jamison: No…this isn’t the waiter hat, it’s the chef hat! The students realize that at a real restaurant there is more than one table used to serve. The restaurant spreads across the room. The students decide we don’t have the “right” play food in our kitchen and begin to create their own menus by writing and cutting out pictures in magazines. They design their own!

6. Phase 2: Researching Our class decided we needed to know a little more about a restaurant to make the restaurant more real. We made a class web about everything we knew about restaurants. This helped to refine the playing, but there were still a few problems when playing. The students came up with a “problems” list: 1.We don’t have enough tables in the room 2.We don’t have a drink machine 3.Too many people are trying to do the same job…we need more jobs 4.We don’t have the right kind of food on the menus 5.We don’t have enough utensils or dishes for our food We read different books about restaurants and chefs to learn more….. The students also watched Ratatouille to get ideas of how a kitchen staff and serving staff works together.

7. Memory Drawings Through their play, the students demonstrated they had a lot of experiences with visiting restaurants. They made memory drawings and we shared what prior experiences students had to add to our restaurant web. This helped us add more categories to the web and students learned new vocabulary and concepts. Classifying and sorting words was a big part of this process.

8. Research/Problem Solutions: The students decided that we needed a fair way to choose jobs. This was not an easy task. Mrs. Hildebrand had to help with this process to make sure students were exposed to all of the restaurant jobs. A chart was made and students were able to try out different jobs. Builders created a pop machine A table seating chart was made to make sure there were enough tables for customers. The room could also be set up properly each day using the map. A string and clothes pins were attached in the “kitchen” so the ordering tickets could be grabbed easily by the kitchen staff.

9. Research/Problem Solutions: The students decided we needed a new menu, name, and “type” of restaurant. A vote was conducted and we decided on the name Jets. It would be a sit down restaurant and a new menu was made to reflect that. We voted on a restaurant logo. Cash’s design won! Students voted by putting a sticky note on their favorite design. We voted on the menu and each student made his/her own menu. Many skills went into making these menus: proper handwriting and formation, letter sounds and word part chunking, common word endings, sorting skills, and money/number sense. Watching Ratatouille gave us design ideas. Ben designed table numbers and we used white paper as table cloths.

10. Role Playing the Jobs: Chef and cook Servers Customer

11. Role Playing the Jobs: Mrs. King loaned us real chef costumes! Chef and cook Host: they seated customers and took the money at the end Customers

12. Phase 2: Researching an On-site Study Trip! The students found out they would get to visit a REAL restaurant! The Brickhouse restaurant was excited to host us. The students would get to role play in the restaurant. Since the restaurant was under construction, we would not be able to see the kitchen and how it is ran. The school cafeteria let us come and see the large equipment. The students realized it takes big equipment to feed a large number of people every day! Students were able to WALK into the freezer! It was cold! The ovens were HUGE!

13. They got to see the dishwasher. We even got a surprise treat at the end! Yum!

14. Phase 3: Culmination Finally the day came to go to the Brickhouse! The students were servers for each other! They used their manners when taking and telling orders.

15. They served their customer a drink.

16. They served their customer pizza.

17. Each server totaled up how much the customer owed. A drawing was made of how much money was due using a dime and pennies. Servers took the money to the cash register. Each server got to use the cash register! Servers were given a tip!

18. Writing for Meaning: The students wrote about their favorite job during the restaurant project. Here are a few…….

20. Indiana Academic Literacy Standards Taught Through the Restaurant Project: K.RF.2.2: Recognize That Written Words Are made Up Of Sequences of letters. Form letters correctly. K.RF.2.1: Demonstrate Understanding That Print Moves From Left To right, Across The Page And From top to bottom. K.RF.4.1: Use letter-- ‐ sound Knowledge To Decode The Sound Of Each Consonant (e.g., Dog = /d/ /g/; K.RF.4.2: Blend consonant-- ‐ vowel-- ‐ Consonant (CVC) Sounds To Make words. K.RF.4.5: Identify Similarities And Differences In Words (e.g., Word endings, Onset And rime) When spoken or written. K.RL.1: Actively Engage In Group Reading Activities With Purpose And understanding. K.RN.3.2: Recognize That A Nonfiction Text Can Be Structured To Describe A topic. K.RV.2.2: Identify And Sort Pictures Of Objects Into Categories (e.g., colors, shapes, words, etc. K.RV.2.4: Recognize Frequently Occurring Inflections (e.g., look, looks). K.W.1: Write For Specific Purposes and audiences. K.W.3.2: Use Words/Pictures To Develop A Main Idea And Provide information about a topic. K.SL.2.3: Listen To others, Take Turns speaking, And Add one’s Own Ideas To small group discussions or tasks. K.ML.2.1: Recognize Common Signs And Logos And Identify Commercials or advertisements.

21. Indiana Academic Math Standards Taught Through the Restaurant Project: K.NS.2: Write whole numbers from 0 to 20 and recognize number words from 0 to 10. Represent a number of objects with a written numeral 0-20 (with 0 representing a count of no objects). K.NS.11: Develop initial understandings of place value and the base 10 number system by showing equivalent forms of whole numbers from 10 to 20 as groups of tens and ones using objects and drawings. K.CA.1: Use objects, drawings, mental images, sounds, etc., to represent addition and subtraction within 10. K.CA.2: Solve real-world problems that involve addition and subtraction within 10 (e.g., by using objects or drawings to represent the problem) *The students also covered standards higher than kindergarten when using money and converting pennies to dimes.; and when drawing pictures to solve money problems.