Tea Party at Matthew Moss

Matthew Moss Pupils: Nyasha Tapfumanei, Kehinde Akinlolu, Obatobi Akinlolu, Harriet Sutton, Ki'Ell Hogarth, Kai Denatale, Darcy Maher
Staff: Lauren Fraternale, Liz Cootes, Julie Smedley
Youth Worker: Mwesi Magumba
Pensioners from Heywood Luncheon Club

During a school break a few learners from Matthew Moss were involved in a project to give back to the community, the aim of the project was to host a tea party for some elders from Heywood. This meant that the learners would have to prepare the environment, bake the foods and play host to the guests who would be visiting.

The project took place over three days. The first day consisted of mainly planning and the group was split into two teams. One, to sort out the food , ingredients and recipes and the second to organise the decorations and service counter. This was probably the hardest day out of the three because everyone had different ideas and no one was really that great at communication. The main ELLI (skills learnt on that day) were learning relationships and resilience as everyone had to learn to get along.

The second day was about doing, putting the ideas into reality, on this day the food team visited Tesco where they bought all the ingredients and worked as a team to resolve any issues they came across.

The decorations team where busy finding and creating, this consisted of finding anything and everything we could out of maker space and seeing if it could possibly fit somewhere, this was also the day where a lot of critical curiosity was used because a lot of questions had to be asked and we had to find the right people to talk to.

On the third day it was action stations, baking had to be done and finished up and decorations to be completed.

When the OAP's arrived they were really lovely and seemed to love what we had accomplished for them.

Many of us were nervous at first to speak to them but as the tea party progressed we became more and more confident and also gained a lot of social skills.

Nearing the end of the tea party we had organised a game of bingo which everyone got engaged with and all seemed to enjoy.

Overall the three days where great learning experiences and each person who committed to the three days grew as learners, both individually and as a team and because of all this we were rewarded with a trip to pizza hut where we got to sit back and relax and reflect on what we had achieved over the course of the very hectic three days.

We all developed as learners and formed some good learning relationships. And everyone who took part in the project has took something away from this experience.

Harriet Sutton Year 9, Matthew Moss High School