Playroom printables
Learning outcomes:
- Students name and request playroom objects, toys and activities.
- Students state their preference about an activity in a sentence.
Purpose of learning experience
- Students engage in imaginative play by imitating scenarios from the Playroom online activity.
- Students use language to express preferences, make choices about activities and practise turn-taking in listening and speaking.
- Students build confidence in responding and communicating by selecting a character, communicating on their behalf and moving them to different activity stations.
- Role-play experiences encourage students to participate actively in shared activities, helping them to develop social communication skills.
- Students can take on different perspectives, including role-playing as the teacher ‘Mr Vin’, to further explore language use in varied contexts.
Printable: Delivery Bike Items
Making connections
Activities are a fundamental part of daily classroom routines and play a key role in supporting student engagement and participation. Being able to share preferences about activities is important for developing students’ sense of agency and wellbeing. Students need to build the language skills required to express their choices, listen to others and respond appropriately in social contexts.
Opportunities to communicate preferences help students develop confidence and strengthen interpersonal skills, and support their participation in collaborative learning.
Early Years Learning framework
Outcome 1: Children have a strong sense of identity.
Children develop their emerging autonomy, inter-dependence, resilience and agency
Outcome 4: Children are confident and involved learners.
Children develop a growth mindset and learning dispositions such as curiosity, cooperation, confidence, creativity, commitment, enthusiasm, persistence, imagination and reflexivity
Outcome 5: Children are effective communicators.
Children interact verbally and non‐verbally with others for a range of purposes
Lesson activity
‘Exploring the playroom’
Plan/implement
Introduce the playroom items.
Allow children to explore the items. Model simple language, e.g. ‘guitar’, ‘dress-up’.
Arrange the items on the playroom mat. Move the characters about the playroom, exploring the different activity stations and items.
Model saying what activities you like and don’t like, e.g. ‘I don’t want to play with cars.’
Ask students what activities they like and don’t like. Allow students to move the characters about the playroom mat, according to which activities they like or don’t like.
Observations / assessment opportunities
What word does the child use when they select an item or activity
Does the child name the item or activity verbally or use gestures?
Does the child use Standard Australian English sentence structure: ‘I want …,’ ‘I don’t want …’, ‘I like …’, ‘He/she likes …’?
Resources needed
Printable Playroom mat (print A3)
Printable Playroom characters and items (print A3, cut out and laminate or glue onto small blocks)
Language focus
Prepositions: on, under, behind, in front of
Phrases of location, e.g. at the tree, on the bridge
Pronouns: he, she, they
Greetings and thanks
Community Languages
Encourage children to talk about the map and the locations using their preferred language.
Encourage children to talk about where they like to go in their community.
Foundation Curriculum alignment
English: AC9EFLA02
explore different ways of using language to express preferences, likes and dislikes
Lesson activity
‘Playroom role-play’
Plan/implement
Arrange the items on the playroom mat.
Model play.
Select the Mr Vin character and a child character and put the child character in the middle of the mat. Role-play being Mr Vin with the child character responding.
Students select a child character card and role-play telling Mr
Vin what activity they like or want to do. They move their character around the playroom mat.
Continue to assist with role-play scenarios and guided group interaction.
Observations / assessment opportunities
Does the student respond with appropriate words for the items?
Does the student use the word in a Standard Australian English sentence?
Resources needed
Printable Playroom mat (print A3)
Printable Playroom characters and items (print A3, cut out and laminate or glue onto small blocks)
Language focus
Hello
I want to play with/do <item or activity>.
I don’t want to play with/do <item or activity>.
I like <item or activity>.
He likes <item or activity>.
She likes <item or activity>.
Community Languages
Hold up each item and ask students what it is called in their home language/s.
Ask students how they would request that item or activity.
Year 1 Curriculum alignment
English: AC9E1LA02
explore language to provide reasons for likes, dislikes and preferences
Lesson activity
‘Describing play activities’
Plan/implement
Arrange the characters and items on the playroom mat to set up a playroom scenario, showing each of the child characters engaging in an activity.
Ask guiding questions, e.g. ‘What can you see in the playroom?’, ‘Who is playing with <item>?’, ‘What other activities could they play?’
Role-play transitions from one activity to another, moving characters around the playroom mat.
Ask students to describe what is happening in the activities, e.g. ‘A girl is painting.’ Ask students what they like or don’t like about the activities. Model language, e.g. ‘I like playing with blocks because I can build things.’
Observations / assessment opportunities
Can the student name objects and use simple sentences, e.g. ‘I can see a boy playing.’?
Can the student say who is doing what, e.g. ‘She is reading.’?
Can the student, with prompting, imagine other activities the characters might do, e.g. ‘They could play a game.’?
Observe how students talk and interact while moving characters.
Can the student explain what they like and why, e.g. ‘I like drawing because it’s fun.’?
Resources needed
Printable Playroom mat (print A3)
Printable Playroom characters and items (print A3, cut out and laminate or glue onto small blocks)
Language focus
Hello/goodbye
I want to play with/do <item or activity>.
I don’t want to play with/do <item or activity>.
I like to play with/do <item or activity>.
He likes to play with/do <item or activity>.
She likes to play with/do <item or activity>.
Community languages
Allow students to use their home language to name, describe and talk about the characters and activities in the playroom.
Make a word wall including community language and
English words for Playroom items and activities.
Year 2 Curriculum alignment
English: AC9E2LY07
create, rehearse and deliver short oral and/or multimodal presentations for familiar audiences and purposes, using text structure appropriate to purpose and topic-specific vocabulary, and varying tone, volume and pace
Lesson activity
‘Creating playroom stories’
Plan/implement
Set up a playroom scene using the playroom mat, items and characters.
Explain who is in your playroom. Model a simple story with a beginning, middle and end about what activities the characters in your playroom do. Use sequencing words such as ‘First …’, ‘Then …’ and ‘Finally …’.
Next, students imagine their own playroom scene. Ask: ‘Who is in your playroom? What are they doing at the beginning? What happens next? What happens at the end?
Students orally tell their story to the group.
Observations / assessment opportunities
Does the student create a simple story with a beginning, middle and end?
Does the student include characters and setting?
Can the student speak in simple Standard Australian English sentences?
Does the student share their ideas clearly?
Resources needed
Printable Playroom mat (print A3)
Printable Playroom characters and items (print A3, cut out and laminate or glue onto small blocks)
Language focus
Using complete sentences
Sequencing ideas – beginning, middle, end
Using Standard Australian English and students’ home language/s to tell a story
Community Languages
Have students plan, create and share their playroom stories using both English and their home language to name characters and describe actions and events.
Year 3 Curriculum alignment
English: AC9E3LA07
understand how verbs represent different processes for doing, feeling, thinking, saying and relating
AC9E3LA08
understand that verbs are anchored in time through tense
Lesson activity
‘Design a playroom activity for Foundation students’
Plan/implement
Students will work individually or in pairs to design a simple playroom activity for Foundation students. Some examples of activities students might design are a beanbag toss, obstacle course, building challenge or a matching game.
Work together as a class to write instructions for an example activity, consisting of a list of present-tense sentences.
Below is a model example of instructions for a beanbag toss activity.
- Place a bucket on the floor.
- Stand two meters away from the bucket, with some small beanbags next to you.
- Pick up the first beanbag.
- Aim at the bucket.
- Throw the beanbag carefully.
- For every beanbag that lands in the bucket, score one point.
- Count your points.
Ask students to write instructions for another activity for Foundation students.
Students first draw or describe their activity. Then they write a set of five to seven clear instructions explaining how to play.
Ask students to include a variety of verbs (they can be doing, saying, thinking or feeling verbs). Remind students to use verbs in the present tense, e.g. ‘pick up’, ‘throw’, ‘build’, ‘match’.
Observations / assessment opportunities
Does the student use action verbs to clearly explain what players should do?
Is the student able to write instructions in the present tense?
Can the student sequence their instructions in the order players need to do them?
Is their activity easy enough for Foundation students to follow?
Resources needed
Printable Playroom mat (print A3)
Printable Playroom characters and items (print A3, cut out and laminate or glue onto small blocks)
Language focus
Using action verbs
Writing instructions in the present tense
Sequencing instructions in order
Community Languages
Ask students to swap their instructions with a partner and test whether their partner can follow the steps successfully.
Students can explain the instructions in community language or in Standard Australian English when sharing with a partner.