Learning and Development: Supporting role

Creating experiences in which children can express ideas through improvisation, role-play and storytelling doesn't always come naturally to staff in early years settings. Perhaps it's down to the natural British reserve that limits so many. The thought of breaking out into spontaneous dance or impromptu imaginative role play leaves some adults frozen to the spot with terror!

The Creative Development area of learning requires practitioners to create opportunities for children to express themselves in a number of ways, 'through a variety of art, music, movement, dance, imaginative and role activities, mathematics, and design and technology' (Early Years Foundation Stage practice guidance). As part of continuous provision, most settings now have well-resourced 'creative or making areas', well stocked with a diverse array of materials and media such as paper, card, crayons, paints, scissors, glue, sellotape, masking tape and junk. These easily accessible resources provide staff with plenty of opportunities to capture a child's creativity as they explore the media and materials.

However, the chance for children to be imaginative or to retell and act out a storyline is often left to the annual nativity play or observations in the role-play corner. In an effort to improve the opportunities for our children to express themselves through role-play, storytelling and improvisation, we decided to introduce the children to a new story, the Diwali tale of Rama and Sita.

The Hindu festival of Diwali, which takes place during October or November, provides children with an opportunity to experience a festival from another place in the world. The story of Rama and Sita is an engaging tale that, when simplified for younger children, contains all the elements of a good story, including:

• four key characters - Rama, Sita, Ravana and Hanuman

• good triumphant over evil

• strong and memorable storyline

• happy ending.

We began by telling the class the story of Diwali, introducing the characters using a Smartboard presentation (see Resources). After a couple of readings we invited children to re-enact a small scene - the capture of Sita by Ravana, the ten-headed monster.

To demonstrate to the children that no special resources are required for impromptu role play, we purposefully chose very simple, everyday resources that were to hand. Then we merely cleared a space in our construction area for the actors. A hoop from the PE cupboard became the magic circle. Large square silky cloths of different colours represented the four key characters: Rama in a blue cloth, Sita in a pink cloth, Ravana in a purple cloth and Hanuman, the Monkey King, in a brown cloth.

We invited children to volunteer for the four key characters. There were plenty of raised hands and soon we had our cast in place and were ready to go.

To guide the actors through the scene I initially took on the role of narrator and prompt. It became apparent quite early on that some children needed more guidance and support than others, and we noted with interest which children could confidently act out the narrative and initiate ideas of their own.

Rama (Luke) 'Don't come out the magic circle, the baddie Ravana will get you!'

Sita (Jessica) 'OK.'

Rama departs to hunt the golden deer in the woods.

Ravana in disguise (Lily) 'Have you got some food? Come out of the circle!

Sita (Jessica) 'No!'

At this point the rest of the class, who made up the audience, became really excited and all started shouting at Sita, 'Don't come out, it's Ravana!', 'Stay inside - it's a trick!'

When Sita finally stepped out of the circle the class went wild, shouting and screaming at her to get back inside. But too late - Ravana grabbed her and whisked her away to his island.

We had intended to end the scene there and continue with the next scene on another occasion. The class, however, were keen to continue the story to the end - perhaps, I think, because they really wanted to re-enact the ending fighting scene!

Enter Rama. Seeing his beloved Sita has been captured, he calls for Hanuman, the Monkey King, and his soldiers to help him defeat Ravana and rescue Sita.

Unsurprisngly, most of the class rushed at the opportunity to be one of Hanuman's flying monkey soldiers who go into battle with Ravana. At this point the storyline did become lost in the chaotic and energetic play fighting scene.

Ravana is shot dead by Rama's arrow.

Finally, Rama and Sita are united and return to the palace to become King and Queen.

As soon as we finished the story, others quickly picked up the props and insisted that we do it again. We repeated the story twice more, with different children taking the roles as I narrated and prompted. Then I purposefully excused myself and left a smaller group of children to continue the role play unaided.

Child-directed play

For the rest of the morning the children took over the running of the role-play activity and made it their own. It was clear from our observations that this storyline was really accessible to the children. They confidently took on the different roles and some children spontaneously took on the narrator role, directing their peers and ensuring that the story was faithfully retold. They used the original props, but added to them, building an island out of building blocks for Ravana and using a table to hide under.

Since the role play, the children have gone on to learn about other aspects of Indian life, from the types of foods eaten at Diwali celebrations, and the clothes, make-up and jewellery worn, to the musical instruments and music played. For young children whose first-hand experiences are only of a small rural Pennine community, the story of Rama and Sita provides a magical and engaging route into a contrasting culture that will, hopefully, inspire them to want to find out more about other people and cultures in the world around them.

REFLECTIONS

Learning Outcomes

This article is particularly focused on improving our learning outcomes in Creative Development, especially the strand 'Developing Imagination and Imaginative Play', which, from discussion with other EYFS practitioners, seems to be one of the areas where it is harder to collect observations and make judgements on progress made. Whereas lots of areas of the EYFS are covered by this observation, I have chosen to concentrate on outcomes in Creative Development.

Creative Development

• Listening to the story of Rama and Sita, imitating what was observed and then doing it spontaneously when the adult was not there

• Using the available resources to create the props to retell the story

• Putting the sequence of movements together to retell the story

• Introducing narrative into play, through the role of the narrator

• Playing co-operatively as part of a group to act out the story of Rama and Sita

• Using imagination to tell the story through role-play.

RESOURCES

• The National Grid for Learning Cymru (NGfL Cymru) has a great interactive whiteboard story of Rama and Sita presented in a clear and simple manner that is very accessible to children in the Foundation Stage, at http://www.ngfl-cymru.org.uk/diwali_-_ey

• Accessible Indian music can be downloaded from the iTunes store

• Selection of colourful cloths for saris, sleigh bells on wristbands, face paint for bindi marks and hand painting, plentiful supply of bangles (we scour local charity shops and ask parents for contributions)

• Images of Indian adults and children, images of Diwali celebrations

Tessa Fenoughty is foundation stage teacher at Middleton-in-Teesdale Primary School, Co Durham. She is dedicating this article to her father, Mark Fenoughty, who sadly passed away in the summer