Exploring the Ancient Egyptians to under the sea
Keli Jenner, PGCE student, completed a placement with the Schools Learning Team in April. Keli tells us her experience of the Horniman and how it will help her lead in the classroom.
As a soon-to-be-qualified secondary school science teacher, I have sometimes found it challenging to get pupils quite as excited about science as us teachers. So, when I was offered the chance to undertake a museum education placement as part of my PGCE course, I leapt at the chance to see the specialists at “getting children excited about science” in action. Due to my love for Natural History and background in Biological Anthropology, I was impressed at the Horniman’s anthropological and natural history collections and the fantastic reputation of the Learning Team. I was delighted when Christine, Schools Learning Officer offered to let me come and observe the team for my placement. The aim of my week at the museum was to shadow the Schools Learning Team with a view of exploring how museum education can impact learning and engagement in Science and what a great week it was!
The week started off with a session on evolution (my favourite!) with a Year 7 class, it then went on to helping nursery children reunite Wally the Walrus with his seahorse friend. The sessions finished on pre-historic Britain (my other favourite!) with a Year 3 class. During the week I went on a global exploration with sessions on the Ancient Egyptians, Ancient Benin and Around Africa. We explored under the sea, across deserts and met the Wai Wai people in the rainforest. We played musical instruments from all over the world and with the upcoming Summer, learnt how the four seasons came to be according to Greek mythology (look up the story of Hades and Persephone).
After the school sessions ended, I explored the Museum and what struck me was the level of engagement and interaction on offer. The Horniman is unique due to its large hands-on collection — the learning team alone have over 3000 objects which children are allowed to pick up, touch and look at in a way that other museums cannot offer. The more I looked around the Horniman, the more interesting and engaging exhibits I found from the Cloutie tree to a working beehive in the museum. I was also impressed by the interactive quadrat family activity — in school, this is considered to be a GCSE level topic, but the Horniman manages to get young children engaged and understanding it.
There was a real global feel to the Museum, with exhibitions on food, music and clothing across cultures. At the same time though, the local relevance was made clear throughout, with exhibitions showcasing things like art by local volunteers. In addition to these fantastic exhibitions, the Museum has an aquarium, a butterfly house and an animal walk set in 16 acres of beautiful gardens (oh, and did I mention the specialist research library?!). It is clear that the museum works hard to provide a multitude of activities, events, exhibitions and resources to support schools and the general public, really making it the heart of the local community.
I very much enjoyed my time with the Horniman’s Schools Learning Team. The whole team made me feel extremely welcome and I loved learning about how the team supports learning and engagement in a range of cross-curricular topics. What has been particularly nice is seeing the ‘wow’ factor in every session. As a science teacher, I strive for any of my lessons to have that hook that not only interests and excites students about the topic but helps progress their understanding very quickly. The level of engagement and progression of understanding throughout the sessions I saw was fantastic and a testament to the experienced and skilled learning staff and the fantastic resources and facilities that the museum offers. I feel I have learnt a lot and will hopefully take a bit of the museum’s ‘wow’ factor with me into the classroom.
