Projects

Outcomes for the Kent mantle of the expert project

This page documents some of the outcomes from the Kent mantle of the expert project, which ran from October 2009 and July 2010. The project involved 22 primary schools from the Dartford area. Each school included two project teachers who made a commitment to study the approach and trial it in their own classrooms. The training was led by Luke Abbott and Tim Taylor and composed of three training days and three in-school demo-days.

- Luke’s Powerpoint presentation from the final day – pdf. (19 pages, 4.6MB) - Planning for work at Christchurch CP Bootle – pdf. (5 pages, 123KB)


Titanic & Ice Age – Joydens Wood Junior School

Gallery – Titanic & Ice Age

Joyden’s Wood Junior School – Project Teachers: Anna Green & Rebecca Adlam. These images show a culmination of work inspired by the Kent Mantle of the Expert project. After the initial training day, we planned a unit on Titanic to become more familiar with the teaching and learning styles of Mantle of the Expert. The children as expert initially became the ‘Undersea Savers’ comprising of diving experts and historians. The team had worked on previous commissions including excavations on the Mary Rose as well as several other sunken pirate ships. The client was Mr Arthur Hendrickson who wanted to discover the truth about the circumstances of the disappearance of his ancestors. All that is known about the Hendrickson family is that they were presumed to have drowned on board Titanic as no records exist of their survivals and their whereabouts.

The children carried out a number of tasks including diving down to the Titanic to look for artefacts and holding a trial after Mr Hendrickson decided to sue the White Star Line. Many areas of the curriculum were covered including Art through still life restoration work, history, literacy and ICT as we calculated ticket costs and death tolls. To find out more about the Hendricksons, the children applied to become members of the Titanic crew. Officers reported daily the whereabouts of the Hendricksons and it was through this approach the truth was revealed!

Following this, we embarked on a whole school trial based on the Ice Age. After a long lost skeleton of a previously undiscovered ice age mammal was found, the children worked as a team of archaeologists looking for evidence of other mammals. They presented their findings and supporting work in an exhibition for the Natural History Museum. Our school hall was transformed into the Natural History Museum. Everyone, including the press, local councillors and parents were invited to see the variety of work on display ranging from 3D site maps to giant replicas of the beasts and their skeletons from feely boxes to fossils. No area of the curriculum was left unturned!

The Mountain Rescue Team

Gallery – The Mountain Rescue Team.

Shears Green Junior School – Project Teachers: Melanie Evans & Jean Hoar. Following our initial training day we trialled the ‘Mountain Rescue’ using the plans and script from the website with our Year 6 classes.The children were full of enthusiasm, keen to learn and talked about the mantle lessons at home and school.

We developed the published plans further by children considering how to walk/travel in snowy conditions which led to them experiencing winter/ski wear and designing and making shoes/sledges. Another development was to consider high energy food to be taken on a mountain trek. This led to designing and cooking a high energy snack bar and the graphic design for the wrapper. The snack bars were consumed on a trek whilst on an orienteering  visit to a local park.

During our work on the mountain rescue Ofsted arrived and watched literacy lessons linked to the mantle topic. Children were reporting on the situation on the mountain. Ofsted were impressed and complimentary about the children’s high level of engagement and recommended that the moe work be shared throughout the school as one of the school’s targets.
Planning – For the planning on this frame please visit the MRT planning page.

Underwater Discovery Team

Gallery – Underwater Discoveries Team

Our Lady of Hartley CP School – Project Teachers: Jim Baker & Patrina Begley. For our first mantle we became a team of salvage experts commissioned by the Titanic Preservation Society to retrieve an important artifact from the wreck.

A noticeable aspect of these sessions was the urgency in which the teams worked together to develop their ‘identity’ and face challenges. The teams remained united with no drifting or fragmentation. As the mantle evolved planning became a pleasure rather than a chore, because it started from within the story. The children responded particularly well to ‘partly withheld’ information from the client – this promoted some valuable debate within the teams.
Planning for the Underwater Discovery Team

History Design Inc. & Space Travel Agency

Gallery – Histroy Design Inc. & Space Travel Agency

St Anselm’s Primary School – Project Teachers: Lyndsey Angley and Sarah Tarry. History Design Inc.
Working as a television production company, the children had to research and plan a documentary ‘Who were the ancient Greeks?’ . The client was the Discovery Channel and the children had to plan all elements of the documentary including the small budget!  The children were immediately enthused when, as a way in to the mantle,  I showed them a clip of another historical documentary and congratulated them on a job well done! Although this was the first mantle the children had experienced, I was surprised at how fast they accepted that they were the experts. The samples of work show ;
1.    Our office, the children planned these in bird’s eye view and measured accurately to make sure everyone had the same size office, to ensure that there were no arguments
2.    Letters that the experts sent to the Discovery Channel outlining the elements of the documentary.
The children also produced spreadsheets outlining the budget, reproduced greek artefacts, wrote scripts, wrote letters to celebrities to persuade them to be involved (Richard Hammond agreed at the fee we were prepared to pay!) and composed music  to accompany the documentary. A very enjoyable term, with lots of learning across many areas of the curriculum.

Space Travel Agency
For this mantle the children were representing  travel agents who were just venturing into holidays that were literally ‘out of this world’! Before being able to market and sell these holidays to space, the children had to explore space and the planets themselves. The samples of work,  show the journals that the children kept as they explored, they took ‘photographs’ of different parts of the planets and of course alien life was discovered on almost every planet we visited. We also interviewed Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong about their experiences in space so that we could eventually use quotes from them in our holiday brochures. The children went on to make model space buggies that visitors would be able to use when they visited the planets. The children got so much more out of this D.T. project than any before because there was a purpose to the project.

Some thoughts on what’s needed in terms of continued work and development

Some thoughts on the benefits and challenges of using mantle of the expert

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