CASE STUDY: PROMOTING AN EFFICIENT, STRESS FREE LUNCHTIME SERVICE

At Tattershall Primary School in Lincoln, the team have come up a really simple and inclusive way to help lunchtimes run smoothly – a counter system, that means each child that has a meal ordered gets the correct meal.

Here’s how it works. The office team prints out the class lists and highlights the children’s names yellow for main course 2 and green for the vegetarian option – main course 1 is left unhighlighted. At break time each day, two Year 6s count out the correct number of white counters for main 1, yellow for main 2 and green for vegetarian for each class.

When it’s time for lunch, the younger children are given the correct colour token by their teacher, while those in Year 4 upwards look at the list and take the right token for their meal. When they go into the dining hall they put their tokens into the corresponding tub and get the meal they ordered.

It is a great system, that not only makes it easier to stay on top of who has ordered what, it also encourages the children to take an active role in the lunchtime service and for those in Year 6, to take on a bit more responsibility – a job they all seem to love doing!