Open accessibilty tools

Proud of Where we Live

Exhibition title: Proud of Where we Live

School: Lakes Primary School, Years 3 and 4

Curriculum areas covered: History – a local history study. A study of an aspect of history or a site dating from a period beyond 1066 that is significant in the locality

Curriculum areas covered: History, Geography, Art, Computing

What we did to find out about our topic and create our exhibition: The children visited the Cleveland Ironstone Mining Museum to find out about life in the past for children. They also visited a local church and interviewed members of the community about their lives growing up in Redcar. We visited Redcar seafront and the local lifeboat museum.

In the classroom, the children created models of Redcar Beacon and the old Redcar pier. They also created postcards using ideas from the toolkit to advertise Redcar as a seaside destination. In English, the children created haiku poems about our local area.

Our exhibition included:

  • A musical performance of a well-known current song with the words changed to be about Redcar and our local area
  • A fashion show of clothes through the ages (inspired by clothing from Cleveland Ironstone Mining Museum)

Children’s work presented for parents to view including:

  • Information cards
  • Models and artwork
  • Poems and literacy work
  • Home projects completed with parents

Image courtesy of Lakes Primary School

How our students benefited from taking this approach: Children were much more involved in the direction that our topic took and we were better able to follow their interests. In developing the exhibition, they had choice over which work they included and how it was presented.

How I used the toolkit: I used lots of the online images. I also used ideas such as interviewing members of the public. We would have liked to have filmed the interviews but realised too late that we could have borrowed video equipment from the museums.

The templates were very useful, especially the templates for object labels and exhibition invitations. We borrowed resource boxes from Kirkleatham Museum which gave us objects to use for hands-on learning.

Top tips for other teachers:

“Look at all of the resources before planning your topic”
We had already planned much of our topic before finding out about the toolkit and we therefore had to adapt our plans to the exhibition.

“Get the students actively involved in planning, learning, creating and presenting”
One thing I wish we had done was actually get the children to lead activities in the exhibition to show off their knowledge and enthusiasm.

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'Anglo Saxon Life' exhibition by Abingdon Primary School, Year 4