Lunch cleanup

#lunch#clearing up#tray#school

Carrying a tray through a crowded canteen takes more than it looks. The noise is loud, the queue moves in jerks and there is exactly one place where everything has to go. The pictures below make the route known in advance, so the last part of lunch is not the hardest.

A boy scrapes a lunch tray into a green bin.

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Lunch cleanup

A boy scrapes a lunch tray into a green bin.

About this visual support

The school canteen is one of the most demanding environments of the day, and it shows most clearly at the end of the meal. The child has to stand up, balance a tray, scrape the plate, sort cutlery and glasses and at the same time move through a queue that does not stop. The noise makes thinking harder, and hesitating for a second quickly puts you in someone else's way.

Visual support lets the step be learned outside the situation. A row of pictures showing what happens with the tray means the order is secure before you stand in the queue, and the attention can then go to the surroundings instead. For new pupils or children changing schools that is often the missing piece.

A concrete tip is to go through the row in a calm setting, in the classroom before lunch for instance. A couple of run-throughs is often enough for the step to feel obvious. In Routined the parts of the school day can sit as a routine with pictures, and the app can be tried for fourteen days at no cost.