Making History - using drama to teach History.
Creative Partnerships Southampton, Portsmouth & Hampshire collaborated with the IOW History Steering Group to work with 6 local schools on a joint project exploring innovative methods of using Drama to teach History. A specific focus of the work was to promote young people’s literacy skills, as well as enrich the delivery of the History curriculum and engage the interest of students from Primary level to High school.
Working with three Drama practitioners, students and teachers experimented with a range of Drama based activities in the delivery of a variety of topics, ranging from The Vikings, to The Romans, to Slavery. The most successful and transferable of these activities were then selected by teachers and partners. With the involvement of Carisbrooke Castle Museum and Revel Media, certain sessions were filmed, and a DVD resource produced. The partners and teachers then worked with designers from Borbonesa to create an interactive, creative teaching resource, which has been distributed to all IOW schools.
Although the project focused on the History curriculum, the teachers involved have found that the techniques they learnt can be transferred and adapted for use more widely and in other subject areas. All the teachers involved have commented that the techniques are easy to pick up and use, and the project has given them the confidence to try out new ideas and use the drama based techniques again. The aim of the resource pack is that other teachers and schools will also be able to use the ideas and the ideas of the project will be sustained and developed in the future. With this in mind, The History Steering Group hopes to use their future funding to create a website for History teachers, where the resource can be shared more widely, and, in the long term, added to with new ideas and suggestions.
Making History
