About the Case Study
We wanted to study our local area of Cheltenham with year 6 as part of our work using 'Mantle of the Expert'.
We decided to set up the scenario that the Chief Executive for Historical Education in the UK is offering a prize fund to the tourism board that has produced the best set of ‘Our town through the ages’ tour guides for visitors to the town and we are the tourist board for Cheltenham.
We invited experts from English Heritage and Gloucestershire Archives to come into school to help the pupils research into the history of the area using old photographs, documents and maps.
We were able to search the Heritage Explorer website to find photographs and information about local buildings and historic photographs of people, clothing and transport.
Mrs Charlotte Blanch, Assistant Head Teacher & Year 6 Class Teacher, The Catholic School of St Gregory The Great
Links:
Lesson plan: Around St Gregorys
Whiteboard Activity (Smart): Around St Gregorys
Children's Work: Around St Gregorys
How to start a local study
Where the study fits in
A study investigating how an aspect in the local area has changed over a long period of time, or how the locality was affected by a significant national or local event or development.
Learning Objectives
Pupils should be able to:
1a: place events, people and changes into correct periods of time.
2c: to identify and describe reasons for, and results of, historical events, situations, and changes in the periods studied.
4a: find out about the events, people and changes studied from an appropriate range of sources of information, including ICT-based sources [for example, documents, printed sources, CD-ROMS, databases, pictures and photographs, music, artefacts, historic buildings and visits to museums, galleries and sites]
4b: to ask and answer questions, and to select and record information relevant to the focus of the enquiry.
5a: recall, select and organise historical information
5b: use dates and historical vocabulary to describe the periods studied
5c: communicate their knowledge and understanding of history in a variety of ways.
Learning Activities
Link;
Lesson Plan: Around St Gregorys
Lesson 1 Introduce the idea that we are employees of the Cheltenham Town Tourist Board. As a class: discuss what our role may be
Split class into working parties of 3 or 4 children - decide which eras would be good to focus on - children to list: 1) what they know already about their locality in their chosen era. 2) what they are wondering about and want to find out about 3) how they think they could find these things out
Lesson 2 Children research the area around the school and how it has changed - work in groups using; information from experts from English Heritage, aerial photographs, photographs, maps, buildings, street names and old drawings. Groups present their findings to rest of class.
Lesson 3 Children continue research about Cheltenham looking at people who lived in the area, using; expert from Gloucestershire Archives, documents, Kellys directories, census, old newspapers.
Lesson 4 Take children on a tour of the local area to take pictures with digital camera of landmarks and buildings that they wish to include in their guidebook. Groups can begin to think about the route that their walking tour should take.
Lesson 5 In groups, children plan and produce guidebooks.
Lesson 6 If there’s a chance, allow each of the groups to actually take the rest of the class on their guided tour OR present their tour to the class using the guidebook they’ve produced.
Links:
Lesson plan: Around St Gregorys
Whiteboard Activity (Smart): Around St Gregorys
Children's Work: Around St Gregorys
How to start a local study