Detecting the Past
Secondary foci: DTaAfL, Curriculum Cymreig,
How was it used?
The ‘Roman Artefact Cupboard’ area of the resource was used to introduce various Historical Challenges that the pupils completed over a number of days.
Our school is near an area where a lot of Roman evidence has been found over the past 50 years so I wanted to put the children into the role of archaeologists in order to find out more about way of life for the Romans who lived in this area.
Pupils had a chance to link this work to data handling, internet research and their work on the lifestyles of people living in South Wales at the time of the Roman Invasion.
They presented work across a number of different areas and topics using the tools provided in the resource but some also used other classroom programs and resources to share their findings.Impact and Outcomes
The resource was instantly accessible for my pupils to access. It had a simplified design which made it easy for the pupils to understand the information presented and generated a lot of discussion. Because the group were comfortable with the way the resource was laid out (clear images, simple tools to use on the side) it had an instant impact on skills: pupils were not worried about the content of their presentation and were, therefore, able to spend more time refining their skills and the quality of their work.Learner Feedback
The resource was instantly accessible for my pupils to access. It had a simplified design which made it easy for the pupils to understand the information presented and generated a lot of discussion. Because the group were comfortable with the way the resource was laid out (clear images, simple tools to use on the side) it had an instant impact on skills: pupils were not worried about the content of their presentation and were, therefore, able to spend more time refining their skills and the quality of their work.
Other Resources
Detecting the Past KS2 History Pack
-Roman artefacts
-Archaeology PPTS
Lesson Learnt
I felt that having the opportunity to run a project over the half term meant that pupils had more opportunity to develop ideas and reflect on them. The time scale also gave them more time to work on improving and refining their targeted ICT skills. From now on I intend to plan far more open ended or longer term tasks’ so that pupils have time to allow their ideas to develop in whichever way they choose.
Children took ownership of their own learning because they were stimulated by the initial use of the resource. It was great to see pupils who would usually choose to just copy and paste information from the internet begin to write their own questions and opinions before working in pairs and small groups to try to find the answers!