The Learning Story - What's In The Box?
As a former teacher, I know how difficult it can be to find relevant resources when starting a new history unit. You section off part of lunchtime to make the trek to the “Topic Cupboard”. After finding half a jigsaw, a princess costume that was hidden away to stop arguments and a seemingly never-ending stream of pencils, you forget why you went there in the first place! Someone runs up to tell you a student has cut their knee and you head away, armed with the First Aid Kit. Before you know it, you’re back in class to take the register, without a single laminated timeline to show for it.
That’s why creating ready-to-use boxes of local history resources is a top priority for our Learning Programme at Cheshire Archives. We’ve created loan boxes based around exciting topics that link to our collections, local history and National Curriculum objectives, such as Chester Zoo and the Second World War.
Each box contains a comprehensive lesson plan and presentation to introduce the topic. Teachers can then use the activities, objects, costumes and additional archive documents provided to deepen pupils’ understanding. The boxes are designed to be flexible and adaptable to suit different classroom needs.
We ran a pilot with history leads in June, and following positive feedback we’re making the loan boxes available to order from September through the Cheshire Education Library Service (ELS). ELS offers a variety of fantastic resources for primary schools, including pupil librarian training and book bus visits. Our local history loan boxes will be a useful new addition for ELS subscribers, and will be delivered to schools through the ELS dedicated book delivery service.
We can’t wait to see how schools across Cheshire use the loan boxes to bring history to life in their classrooms!
By Chloe Kennedy, Learning Officer
