Planning for enquiry work using interpretations
Planning for enquiry work using interpretations should take into account the following:
Interpretations ... or not?
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Lastly, Dr. Michael Riley presented an enquiry written for Year 7 pupils that deliberately mirrored the pattern of the previous one for Year 6:
Step One
The starting point was Simon Schama's popular TV series History of Britain. Dr. Riley said that Schama sees his approach to television history as entertainment as well as education. He showed a clip, lasting about a minute, from one of the programmes introducing the events of 1066 (with the pupils, two other similar clips were chosen). Each clip lasted about one minute. The children would be invited to analyse the clips in a similar way to the analysis of Jude in the Year 6 enquiry. One question posed was: ‘How do you stop people from switching over channels?'
Step Two
The outcome of the enquiry was then introduced. This was to create a one-minute introduction to a programme on medieval peasants for Simon Schama's History of Britain. Like the Year 6 enquiry on Jude, pupils would need sufficient background information on medieval peasants to complete the task. For this he used two sources, detailed below.
Step Three
Dr. Riley gave out a deliberately jumbled series of images from the Luttrell Psalter, 1320-1340, which showed peasants going through the process of making bread. In pairs, pupils had to put the images in chronological order. A class discussion followed as to what was the most likely order. This gave pupils some idea of a basic routine for medieval peasant life.
Step Four
With the group divided into pairs, Dr. Riley gave out the following extracts from the Somerset Coroner's Rolls for 1314-1321 which recorded incidents of unusual deaths. Each pair picked a different incident. One person slumped over the desk pretending to be dead, whilst the other person explained from the record how that person had died. This lead to a discussion about what these incidents tell us about peasant life and provided memorable raw material for pupils to incorporate in the final task.
Download Riley_resource_3 (attached below)
Step Five
Pupils used the following frame to plan their own one-minute introduction to the proposed programme for Simon Schama's episode on medieval peasants:
Download Riley_resource_4 (attached below)
‘Not Just instruction, but pleasure ...'
Create a one-minute introduction to the programme on Medieval peasants for Simon Schama's History of Britain.
You can use:
Images from the Luttrell Psalter, 1320-40
The Somerset Coroner's Rolls, 1314-21
Background reading on Medieval peasants
Text
Main points? Individual people? Interest-grabbing? Delivery? Direction
Location filming? Filming the documents? Actor's voices? Silent?
1-20 seconds | |
21-40 seconds | |
41-60 seconds |
Dr. Riley closed the session by stressing the importance of the outcome of an enquiry on interpretations. It should really motivate and engage pupils. Dr. Riley suggested the following approaches to planning interpretations-focused enquiries:
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Dr. Riley also said, teachers need to take into account the five following points when planning such work for pupils:
Attached files:
- Riley_resource_3.pdf
71.6 KB PDF document - Riley_resource_4.pdf
20.1 KB PDF document