Case Study

A Learning Context
My Y5 children were studying Antarctica as part of their Geography topic. The immersive classroom was used to provide a context for the children to gather vocabulary to help them create poems. The intention was that having created those poems, they would perform them in the immersive classroom with the video clip as a backdrop to their performances.

The learning sequence took place across the course of a day, with the children revisiting the immersive classroom as their learning developed.

Setting the Scene
I watched the clip as part of the planning process. I divided the clip into 15 sections with the purpose of allocating one pair of pupils to each section of the clip.

Before we entered the immersive classroom, I told the pupils we were going on an Antarctic adventure …
We discussed:
What might we see?
What might it be like?
Do we think it will be safe?
What will we need to bring?

Immersed in Learning
Together, we watched the clip – the pupils were responsible for writing a poem about a different aspect of our adventure.

Pupils discussed their sections and gathered ideas and vocabulary for the content of their poem.

Back in the classroom we explored a number of poems that might help us write our own. I taught the class poetic features such as onomatopoeia, personification and similes.

We revisited the immersive classroom to look again at the video, to remind the children of their section of the clip and to connect their new learning about poetic form to the part they were going to create in the final performance.
Back in the classroom each pair worked upon their section and produced a first draft of their poem. These were then performed in the immersive classroom. After each pair performed their section the rest of the class provided critique. Picking out what they liked and giving helpful ideas to move both their writing and their performance forward.

Drawing upon the feedback they had been given and the opportunity to watch one another’s performance the children went back to their classroom to write their final version and rehearse in preparation for their performance.

Learning Outcome
The children rehearsed the performance of their poems in the immersive classroom before the Y2 children joined them in the room for their final performance.

The video created a context for the children to become engrossed in the creation of a piece of poetry. A piece they edited and developed over the course of the day in preparation for their final performance. The activity generated huge amounts of purposeful talk. The activity challenged them to produce both poems and a performance of high quality.

Authorship
Amy Dewar, Y5 Teacher Linden Road Academy

Education resources created by teachers for teachers

Case Study

Learning Context
A perennial challenge in schools, and one which has been challenging for this particular Y5 class, is developing and sustaining constructive relationships. The purpose of this lesson was to introduce the class to the Philosophy for Children (P4C) Community of Inquiry process with a view to utilising it to generate conversations about those relationship problems some of the children were encountering.

As Christmas was approaching the key resource chosen was the video made by Sainsbury’s for Christmas 2014 about the football match played between the trenches at Christmas 1914.
 
Source
Trench 360

Sainsbury’s advert

Setting the Scene
By first watching and responding to the Trench 360 video in the immersive classroom helped the class to contextualise the Sainsbury’s video. It was an opportunity to understand the children’s prior learning about the 1st World War and to explore the idea of war in general.
Why do people fight wars?
How do people become soldiers?
How do wars end?

Immersed in Learning
We watched the video in the immersive classroom and there was lively debate about what they had experienced.

The Sainsbury’s video was then shared. After inviting paired talk and sharing some initial responses the video was re-shown and the invitation was to look more closely. To look at facial expressions, to think about feelings and to look out for any details they had missed the first time around.

This time the conversation was a 3-way conversation, shaped by sheets of flip chart paper on which each of the teams of 3 were invited to write their thought and ideas.

Working the room, eliciting a deeper response the children began to focus upon the two key protagonists in the video, and their feeling towards one another. The thought was also sown in that they would soon be going back to shooting at one another.

As the class were drawn back together opportunity was given for each of the groups to share their thoughts and feeling about the video and what discussions it had provoked. Then the conversation was moved to the idea of conflict in general and the conflicts they experienced in their lives. This led into the P4C Community of Inquiry.

Learning Outcome
Having utilised the video clips as the stimulus for the Community of Inquiry the idea of generating questions they might want to explore was modelled to the children.

In their groups they worked on creating questions. This was their first attempt at generating questions and it took a huge amount of prompting and modelling, but gradually they began to emerge and be shaped. The best ones were gathered on to a sheet of flip chart paper and shared with the children who then voted on which one they would like to explore.

Their choice was: Can we forgive someone who has hurt us?

They were then invited to form a circle in the middle of the immersive classroom. And the philosophical inquiry began. Prompted with some simple phrases:

I think …
I agree …
I disagree because …
I’m wondering …

It was a first go at the process, they found it really hard, but there were some fabulous responses.

Authorship
Chris Story, Hardwick Green Academy