Page - 6 - in Tina and Amir & Ella - English

5 10 15 20 25 30 6 were playing there for quite a while when suddenly a girl came along. She went to our slide and wanted to play, as if she lived here. No one knew her. So we told her that it is our playground. It belongs to our neighbourhood and no other children are al- lowed to play here. We all told her, but she didn’t care and she just went on playing. Our boys ran after her, took some small sticks and slapped her legs. We, the girls, also went up to her and pulled her long black hair. It was not right that she just came and disturbed us playing in our playground.”.” Vanessa’s face went red; she had never spoken so much in class before. We had all been listening to Vanessa. Then the teacher asked us what we thought about it. We sat in a circle so everyone could say something. Most of the children in class agreed with Vanessa that it was not right for the girl to have come into our playground. Then the teacher asked us: “What would you do in a situa- tion like that?” Leon got up and said: “I would ask for the girl’s name.” No-one said anything. Then our teacher suggested role-playing the whole situ- ation. I was given the role of the girl who came to the play- ground. When I left the classroom so that I could re-enter, as if I was coming to a real playground, it was a really strange feeling. I imagined that the boys would come to hit me and the girls would pull my hair and suddenly I was frightened. When I came into the classroom the children were standing around – I played the role of the girl coming to the playground, when Vanessa came up to me and suddenly asked: “What is your name?” It was a weird situation. No one had come up to hit me and no one was pulling my hair.