If Britain Was a Cake

The purpose of the activity is for students to discover how the land of the UK is used today and what changes need to be made if we are to become carbon zero.

Students are asked to consider the pros and cons involved in changing how we use our land. This is a good preparation for the Dragon’s Den Challenge.

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      string(5614) "from bladed weapons, so their planks were of wood that does not split easily, making oak unsuitable for this purpose. Shields were probably painted or faced with ox hide. This made them decorative and may also have helped to disguise the lines where the planks met, where the shield was most vulnerable to splitting.A one-handed sword could be used in combination with a shield. Owning a sword was a mark of great prestige in the Viking period. Only the wealthiest could possess them, as the amount of metalworking involved in manufacturing swords made them very expensive. Because of this, swords tended to be passed from father to son, or else given as gifts to kings or great warriors.Few helmets from the Viking age have been found, but there are many representations of warriors in helmets in the artwork of the period. These show men in simple conical helmets, probably made of iron, hardened leather, or a mixture of the two. These helmets could be with or without a nasal, the protective metal strip that covered the noseA simple role-play scenario involving the arming of a Viking warrior chosen from the class allows children to debate the effectiveness of Viking armour. Give your Viking a sword and shield and have him find a safe spot where he can comfortably swing his sword and raise his shield. Ask the other children to observe where he is well protected and where he is more vulnerable. They will notice that his front is well protected, but his flanks are less so, and his back is completely vulnerable. Ask the children if they can think of a way to overcome this vulnerability by working together. The answer is a shield wall. A craft activity involving making and painting Viking shields and swords from cardboard will supply each child with a Viking weapon and help you to engage the children in this role-play scenario. Ask children to stand in a straight line with swords in their right hands and shields in their left. They should be able to observe that by standing in a tightly packed line they can defend each other. Ask what might happen if one of the soldiers uses his left hand for his sword? A gap in the shield wall could cause a soldier to tangle his sword with that of his neighbour. What do children think would be the solution to this? The answer may be that the left-handed soldier would be trained to fight with his right hand.RoleplayRoleplay is used during the workshop to develop skills in listening to others, questioning, and using drama to convey information. The roleplay techniques and scenarios used in our Viking Raiders workshop can be transferred to the classroom and serve as an engaging introduction to the Vikings.Pupils are asked to imagine what life might have been like for ordinary people at the time of the Vikings. What were their jobs, what did they do at home? Children are asked to think of an activity, to mine that activity for thirty seconds and then to stop and listen to a description of life in the ninth century. The majority of people worked on the land, grew crops and kept livestock; they were not wealthy and living conditions were primitive by today’s standards. Children then modify their actions to match this new information.The arrival of a Viking in the court of an Anglo-Saxon King forms the dramatic plot line for a second role-play scenario. One child is selected to play the role of an Anglo-Saxon King. His role as a wealthy, learned, law-maker and soldier is quickly established. The King is assigned a couple of body-guards and, as he is a Christian, some monks and nuns to pray for him. Enter a child selected to be a Viking raider. The group is then asked to speculate: Who is this person and what does he want? Where has he come from and how has he managed to appear so suddenly? The children then debate the King’s options, should he run away, fight back or come to terms with this unwelcome visitor and what are the consequences of these options?Viking Saga’s and literacy activitiesThe Vikings have a limited written legacy. The carving of runes was suited to short inscriptions with the addition of interlaced patterns, depictions of people, animals and gods and goddess’s. Stories or sagas were passed around in an oral tradition. Norse mythology is a rich source of inspiration for literacy-based activities, whilst runic letters and knot work patterns offer a wealth of creative opportunities.During our museum workshop we role-play the saga of the God Thor and his stolen hammer. This humorous tale introduces the gods Thor, Loki and Freya and provides the basis for further investigation of the role of the gods in Viking society and their legacy in Britain today. Our days of the week derive from the likes of Thor, Freya and Wodin. Viking words like window, knife, egg, cake and beserk are fun to discover, as are Norse derived place names in the locality. ‘Thorpe’ for example means a village whilst ‘Thwait’ is a clearing.Skaldic poetry, or poetry composed at the courts of Scandinavian leaders during the Viking and Middle Ages often makes use of kennings, a phrase describing an object, often using a metaphor. Composing poems using Kennings is an excellent way to explore metaphors, nouns and verbs. Beowulf is a classic example of an epic saga poem packed with kennings and children will enjoy creating their own mini riddles. In classic Viking kennings the sea becomes the ‘whale-road’ and a sword a ‘wound-hoe’.Evaluating the evidenceArchaeology, geo-physics, poems and sagas provide us with valuable pieces of the jigsaw puzzle, helping us to build a picture of"
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Creative Teaching & Learning

Routes for exploring Viking-age Britain

20 Jun 2017

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      string(362) "... rites-of-passage experiences young adults expect – moving away from home, buying a property, getting married, having children.At the heart of the problems with Britain’s HE expansion has been many universities recasting themselves from being centres of academic excellence dedicated to educating the academically able into becoming corporate ..."
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      string(5031) "money loaned to students by taxpayers will be repaid. Within 20 or so years, taxpayers will find themselves footing a bill of close to £100 billion of unpaid student loans. But by then most of today’s politicians will long since have retired with their lucrative MPs’ pensions, seats in the Lords and a few company directorships. So, why should they worry? As for the hundreds of thousands of students who will graduate with little to no chance of ever finding a graduate job, much of their working lives will be blighted by their massive debts which will hinder their chances of achieving the rites-of-passage experiences young adults expect – moving away from home, buying a property, getting married, having children.At the heart of the problems with Britain’s HE expansion has been many universities recasting themselves from being centres of academic excellence dedicated to educating the academically able into becoming corporate, profit-making businesses. Many of them have taken on the attributes of businesses – overpaid chief executives, marketing departments, armies of management consultants to develop mission statements and new management structures and a continual focus on the bottom line – profit. For these businesses, the name of the game has been to introduce and expand the courses which are cheapest to run and which are likely to attract the largest numbers of fee-paying students, irrespective of whether those students have any chance of finding a job after graduation.As for the universities, they seem to be drowning in money since the fees increase. In just a few years, university reserves have shot up from around £14 billion to over £44 billion. This has led to a building spree as universities splash the cash on new facilities and campuses in the expectation of ever-rising student numbers.It’s possible that our HE expansion will continue. A survey conducted by the Institute for Education prior to the 2012 fees increase from £3,000 a year to over £9,000 a year found that 97 per cent of parents wanted their children to go to university. But there’s also a real chance that our universities have created a massive bubble and history has shown us that, in time, all bubbles burst. Already some school-leavers and parents are starting to question the value of a degree and are choosing apprenticeships and starting jobs rather than university. Partly due to this and partly due to a fall in the number of 18- to 19-year-olds, the number of people applying to university has declined in the last three years. The reaction from universities, eager to fill their courses with lucrative students, was immediate – a staggering rise in the number of unconditional offers to school-leavers from 2,985 in 2014 to 67,915 this year – a move many critics compared to ‘bribery’. However, as ever more graduates flood onto the jobs market with huge debts and little chance of a job enabling them to repay those debts, disillusionment in a university education may spread and universities might be accused of profiteering at students’ expense and be engulfed in similar scandals to those of MPs over their expenses and of bankers after the 2008 crash. Already we’re seeing students suing their universities for misleading them into taking courses that had no chance of ever living up to the golden promises in the universities’ marketing prospectuses and several universities have been forced by the Advertising Standards Authority to withdraw inaccurate claims in their marketing materials.As more people become aware of the gap between the universities’ marketing and reality, our universities may face a crisis of falling applications and thus falling revenue. The challenge will be how they deal with this crisis. What they should consider are things like offering students more flexibility with one-year diplomas and two-year degrees, reducing the numbers of useless courses and the numbers of students on the most useless courses and curbing the over-supply of students on vocational courses like Psychology and Law. At the same time, the Student Loans Company should reconsider whether someone with 3 Ds or worse at A level really should be automatically entitled to borrow up to £50,000 of taxpayers’ money when the likelihood of them repaying this is vanishingly small.Sadly, it looks unlikely that our increasingly bloated university sector will come together to pro-actively manage the possible fall in student numbers and income. Instead, we can expect a free-for-all in which the universities fight aggressively to recruit course fee fodder in the hope that someone else will go bust before they do, thus leaving fewer institutions squabbling over an ever-diminishing cake. We can look forward to interesting times in the UK’s HE system.This article is based on the book “THE GREAT UNIVERSITY CON: How we broke our universities and betrayed a generation” by David Craig and Hugh Openshaw, published by The Original Book Company. "
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Leadership

Higher Education and the Betrayal of the Next Generation

12 Sep 2018

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      string(300) "With such a broad period of history to cover, and new digs and discoveries refining our understanding all the time, it can be difficult to know where to begin teaching the Stone Age. Where can you find the information you need? What activities work best? Archaeologist Matthew Charlton gives some ..."
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      string(314) "... us with a wealth ofnew information that can be shared in schools.Last year alone, it was announced thatarchaeologists had unearthed the earliest stonetools in Britain in a caravan park in Norfolk,dating to around 900,000 years ago. This wasfollowed by the discovery of the oldest stonetools in the ..."
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      string(5631) "Focuson: History20Volume6.3nCreativeTeaching&LearningHow to teachthe Stone AgeWith such a broad period of history to cover, and new digs and discoveriesrefining our understanding all the time, it can be difficult to know whereto begin teaching the Stone Age. Where can you find the information youneed? What activities work best? Archaeologist Matthew Charlton givessome practical advice.The Stone Age. What time span are we looking at? How do I teach it?Where do I begin?! As an archaeologist, these are just some of thequestions I have been asked from teaching friends delivering thisnew part of the primary history curriculum. Unfortunately, this periodoffers up just as many questions as it answers. One of the many reasons forthis is that the associated facts are not actually set in prehistoric stone, as newarchaeological discoveries reveal more each year about this incredible periodof our past.Over the years, our understanding of prehistory has seen a substantial shiftaway from the image of cavemen carrying clubs and never venturing further than21Volume6.3nCreativeTeaching&LearningFocuson: Historytheir caves—a view that is almost as antiquatedas those that first wrote that the earth wasflat and that we were alone in the universe.Now I may not be able to prove that aliensoccupy the planet two doors down, but I cansay that science has taught us that the earth isround and that advances in archaeology, whichinclude new scientific techniques, are not onlygiving us a greater understanding of this timeperiod but also providing us with a wealth ofnew information that can be shared in schools.Last year alone, it was announced thatarchaeologists had unearthed the earliest stonetools in Britain in a caravan park in Norfolk,dating to around 900,000 years ago. This wasfollowed by the discovery of the oldest stonetools in the world so far—found in Kenya anddating from around 3.3 million years ago. Thesewere two very important and time changingdates for archaeologists and, in particular, ourunderstanding of life in prehistoricBritain and the world.Even as I write this art icle,archaeologists in Cambridgeshirehave uncovered what they believeto be the ‘best-preserved BronzeAge dwellings ever found in Britain’.The circular wooden houses, built onstilts, form part of a settlement anddate to about 1000 to 800 BC. Theyeven found footprints, pots with theremains of meals inside, and itemsof clothing made from the fibres oflime tree bark which were preservedin the waterlogged deposits.All these discoveries offer us afresh perspective of life in prehistoricBritain, which is great for the newcurriculum but not good if much ofthe written topic material availableis out of date. Teachers don’t havetime to trawl through the internetfor the most recent information, letalone repackage it in a way childrencan understand. Furthermore, theStone Age is a sizeable time period;you may find the right informationbut, to quote Eric Morcambe, it’s‘not necessarily in the right order’.This is especially important, as thecurriculum guidelines state that thechronology of this time period shouldbe the key focus.So where do I start?The new curriculum suggestscovering the Late Neolithic, BronzeAge and Iron Age with pupils. However, Iwould recommend teachers gain a basicunderstanding of the Old Stone Age(Palaeolithic) and the Middle Stone Age(Mesolithic). This might empower you whenfaced with student questions such as ‘Wheredoes fire come from?’, ‘Who built the firstshelters?’, ‘What was food like before we werefarmers and settled down?’, ‘Where did thefirst stone tools come from?’.Reputable sites such as The Brit ishMuseum or the BBC offer bite-sized chunksof information to get started. The children’sshow, Horrible Histories, is a very visual andfunny way to start a class discussion or tokick start your own drama sketches about theStone Age. For the duration of your projector just before, I would also suggest that youdownload the free BBC news app and click onthe archaeology news feed. This will provideFocuson: History22Volume6.3nCreativeTeaching&Learningevidence from a prehistoric period.To illustrate the concept of discoveringartefacts in layers or ‘contexts’, and that theoldest finds come from the lower layers, mychildren helped me to build (and eat) a layeredcake. Each layer was a different colour andscattered with a selection of sweets, so whensliced, the different layers and ‘finds’ could beseen. I’m not advocating a Great British BakeOff in the classroom, but even designing acake on paper with the coloured layers will helpchildren visualise the process.Tracking the development ofancient toolsThe new curriculum puts particular emphasison the changes that took place in Britain duringthe Stone, Bronze and Iron age. Artefacts areuseful for teaching this; children can researchthese, either by themselves or in a group.Comparing how different materials were usedover time – as weapons, utensils or vessels,for example – is an ideal way to meet thisrequirement of the curriculum. But how canthis be done in the classroom?Artefacts are often placed in what we call a‘typological sequence’, which is useful whenlooking at their technological and stylisticdevelopment. For example, if we look at a carfrom the 1920s, then put it next to a car fromthe 50s, 60s, 90s and finally, 2016, we canactually see and compare the changes in shape,colour and design that have taken place overthe years. These changes form a typologicalsequence, relating to a specific date or period,and, as with comparing a"
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Creative Teaching & Learning

How to teach the Stone Age

28 Jul 2016

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      string(328) "... them (“give me 100 press ups”) for not retaining precise instructions. Teaching in sport was by numbers, coaches were full of certainties, but in the case of Great Britain, it all started to fail because the sports themselves became more complex and less certain. Rather than “the right way” to ..."
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      string(3046) "Blog by Stephen HeppellFor me, an element of that change has been work with elite sports to support their high level coaches in making sports’ learning one more marginal gain in their search for medals, championships or PBs. Working with Olympic sports, or most recently with the England Rugby team, some interesting contrasts emerge between learning in sport, and learning in our education institutions. Perhaps the most stark contrast is that in sport everyone asks “how might we do this better?” where too often (and perhaps most often at the policy level) education is saying “why should we change?”.Last century, back at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic games, sport was coached and led in a very predictable, formulaic way. Coaches would expect athletes to know fixed things, often penalising them (“give me 100 press ups”) for not retaining precise instructions. Teaching in sport was by numbers, coaches were full of certainties, but in the case of Great Britain, it all started to fail because the sports themselves became more complex and less certain. Rather than “the right way” to train, athletes needed to evaluate, and learn from, others’ approaches. Major events were full of surprises, and athletes needed to be prepared for the certainty of uncertainty. In Atlanta, Team GB rowers Pinsent and Redgrave won our solitary Gold medal. 1996 was a nadir; gradually a philosophy of seeking and aggregating marginal gains – seeking every tiny thing that might make a difference – became mainstream, led by cycling’s Dave Brailsford who turned Atlanta’s 2 bronze cycling medals into an astonishing medal for every single Team GB cycling team member in Rio 2016. A significant part of those gains come on the back of better learning.Suddenly, our elite coaching spaces are transforming to look like some our very best current schools. Light levels are up – always above 500 lux, windows are blind and paper free, bright white walls and tables are writeable, temperature is stimulating rather than soporific, CO2 levels are very low, zones offer cues and clues to the learning activities on offer, plenary sessions see everyone shoulder to shoulder on intimate tiered seating, engaged, collaborative, listening. The gains are immediate of course: athletes who want to learn, brains ready and eager to resolve unexpected situations rapidly and effectively, set pieces that are second nature, deeper learning, and better results! The agility of the rooms mirror the rapidly changing sports themselves. The coaches didn’t need hours of expensive CPD to use their new learning environments. They saw right away how they could work and loved the outcomes that resulted.You don’t need me to join up the dots on this analogy with sport. Education isn’t the Olympics – it is way more important than that, and more complex too, but “How might we do this better?” is not a bad starting point when exploring how our learning spaces might help every child to reach their own learning Personal Bests."
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3 Oct 2018

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      string(5530) "attitudes necessary for success in their next stage of education, training or employment and for their adult life.Pupils are self-disciplined.Pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development equips them to be thoughtful, caring and active citizens in school and in wider society.Professional learning task: Establishing community buy-ina. Try to identify and list the key features of your wider community context which could be used as assets in your school’s curriculumb. What local community resources can be gathered which could be used valuably in enquiry and project based work?c. How can the local community be utilized to help create learning experiences that are engaging for children from all backgroundsChallenges of the C21stAs implied by C21st skills there are particular challenges facing young people, both in terms of opportunities and threats. When a school reflects on its mission or purpose and tries to articulate its broader values then consideration of such issues is pressing. Examination results are important but so are some of the following:InequalityThe digital revolution – the spread of digital technology is changing society rapidly, changing the patterns of working and social life;EmploymentHousing, Climate Change, EnvironmentThere is abundant evidence about the growing inequalities in many countries recorded by such books as The Spirit Level (Wilkinson & Pickett, 2010). In the last 20 years we have seen a widening gulf between those who might be called the global elite, who move between countries for employment and were educated at elite universities, and the rest. The digital revolution means that many managerial and administrative roles that university graduates would have gone into have been automated (Brown, Ashton & Lauder, 2011). The middle classes have been hollowed out. In addition, many manual jobs have disappeared and the removal of immigration controls means that wages for such jobs have been suppressed. The report, Is Britain Fairer? (Equality and Human Rights Commission, 2015), showed that during the recession and up to 2013, people aged under 34 were hit by the steepest drops in pay and employment, had less access to decent housing and better paid jobs, and were experiencing deepening levels of poverty. The unemployment rate for 16- to 24-year-olds stood at 14.8% for the three months to August 2105, according to official figures, with some 683,000 classed as unemployed. That rate was higher than the 13.8% recorded for the three months to February 2008 – before the financial downturn struck. Evidence shows that although young people have high aspirations they often overly influenced by jobs profiled in the media and remain mainly ignorant of better paid jobs in which there are skill shortages. Careers advice has been a woeful casualty of recent government cuts and policy changes.The digital revolution is reshaping our lives so rapidly that it is hard to get a sense of the significance. People are more connected; they have a world of knowledge at their fingertips, there is more participation in public events through social media; ‘big data’ is revolutionising how advertising is planned and targeted; and retailing and consumerism are being transformed. But there are downsides in terms of how much one reveals about oneself and to whom, who has access to the data about our lives and the degree of social bullying and ‘trolling’ that can surface.The environment and housing crises are the stuff of nightmares. Global warming, mass species extinctions, water shortages, soil erosion, coral depletion and over- fishing are all major issues in themselves but they become more acute through the consequent mass migrations that can be triggered. The UK had net annual migration of around 300,000 in the last year; this is a rising trend and puts enormous strain on housing and public services. House prices have risen steeply as house building has stagnated, making owning even a flat beyond the reach of most young people.All these issues contribute to a growing phenomenon amongst the young which is termed: precarity (Standing, 2011). This is the condition of existence without predictability or security, affecting material and/or psychological welfare. Specifically, it is applied to the state of intermittent or underemployment and the resultant precarious existence. It can lead to a sense of hopelessness and depression amongst the losers in the employment market, who may be well qualified. We cannot and would not claim that EPBL is an antidote to this litany of challenges but we would say that it is likely to be a better preparation than the more limited focus on ‘standards’. After all curriculum is an expression of how we see the future of our society.Professional Learning Task: Persuasive tacticsa. Do you think it is the job of schools to tackle such issues?b. What argument would you stress most with fellow staff (feel free to go beyond those suggested)?c. What argument would you use with students?d. How would you make the pitch for EPBL with parents and would you stress different aspects with different ‘demographics’?David Leat is Professor of Curriculum Innovation and Director for the Research Centre for Learning and Teaching at the University of Newcastle.Rachel Lofthouse is the Head of Education in the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences at Newcastle University.Ulrike Thomas is a research associate at the Research Centre for Learning and Teaching."
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Creative Teaching & Learning

Making the case for Project Based Learning

20 Jun 2017

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