What Did You Learn In School Today?

raw material of a child's experience [Music] but it's not just an enjoyable outing these visits are preceded by careful preparation and it's though arranged that Impressions made can be reflected in clay or paint or words when the children return to the classroom [Music] put the cardboard together [Music] painted it I would not like to launch a ship but I would like to smash the bottle of champagne [Music] no they're not tuning up they're exploring sound and discovering for themselves Rhythm Harmony and Melody these 10 and 11 year olds are practicing in groups compositions which they've written themselves [Music] spring is coming spring is coming birdies build your nests weave together strong feather doing each your best [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] foreign [Music] [Music] laughing I would do that hey Steve we're talking about the bathhouse now draw the plus and use that one you don't show how the Romans came here so what's the change and they walked into the various ways you'll see and how they finished off by having all going into their skin they went to the cold before okay foreign [Music] [Music] well a good teacher makes it possible for children to learn the teacher used to stand in front of the class and impart information now he works alongside the pupil and guides his learning this reflects a different attitude to children I believe that learning to be effective must be active and often vocal okay [Music] the teacher asked us questions in which to talk about it in which describe it its movements and how it reacted towards us shape found into a dog the travel like a massive bear it's locked around nervously and all its matter tears swung around it then came and flopped down in the middle of the room Big Ben was its name it was named after the clock in London he was just like a heap of wall walking his eyes were hidden under a massive wooly hair his feet were like courthouse's Hooves covered in hairs he's like an old man walking around I bet the barber would need the lawn mower to cut his long and floppy fluffy fur moving cautiously and nervously around the room padding and investigating the strange things around him child or gigantic size very peaceful and Placid a fluffy playing on the floor tremendous but soft and lovable a joyful animal to play with Mrs Cox said the bank would not make a very good guard dog because when he is asleep you could not wake him up Banning pots and pans next to him he looked like an enormous polar bear in the middle of Ben's fluffy coats the colors changed from creamy white to a slow brownie gray color then as a dirty black ugly beard where where it has gone in his dinner and water I made a model of Big Ben out of clay it was it was easy at first but when you came to the edge it was a bit hard because sometimes you can't get the proper shape of it and the legs uh was thinner than I had to make them a bit fatter it because it couldn't stand up a lot of other people using paint and clay and things like that I prefer and wool and things like that because they feel no like then it probably looked more like that as well can you imagine a huge dub like then going out in the rain and coming in again he would leave big Power marks all over at last Big Ben got two hearts and the gigantic snowball went home one of the main reasons for using calculating machines in the school is because it sets children thinking thinking analysis about mathematical processes if I was going to multiply by 79 by 98 I could turn the handle 98 times but the most efficient way is moving their numbers into the tens color and 10 Landing nine times and then move the numbers down into the unit's column and turn it eight times when you add Nine and Nine the unit number goes down one and the times number go second one the two numbers those add up to nine and if it's three numbers they are 59 as well well here I'm making a pattern of tessellation right and by using nine triangles different colors I can make them look to one triangle and if I put out more turns I can make it into big squares and rectangles and many other shades well the geometry we're doing in primary schools is not the geometry that we did when we were doing theorems that it is more in line with what the Ancients did and when they had themselves to discover the properties of shapes by handling and using these shapes some of us went to aim the plague the legend Derbyshire and whilst it was this we went to treat Cliff Cavern and went after I had seen the caves we we found the stream at the bottom some of us wanted to know how fast it was flowing so Mr Price dropped a twig into the water and when it passed Mrs price we looked how long it took it took six seconds then Mrs price measured the distance on the path it faltered it took 52 steps when we got back to the study center we measured the length of Mrs Price's build it was 11 and a half inches long but we call it 12 inches it moved eight feet in one second it was gone it's approximately five miles per hour in the cabin Lowdown shines like gold the feeling is dreadfully cold the colors are remarkable it is so quiet in quaranty or anything but drops and drops of water the color of the stalactites and stalamites is fantastic this is there is long veins and blue Jello around the cavern shadow of the witch is staggering the Seven Dwarfs stand back coal statues called mysterious long working Rock flip flipping on the floor wait wait there it goes again as I walk along the tunnel the world is dripping cold mysterious wet it's dark and cold water drips on my head weird Eerie spooky weary wet chip chip someone's smiling for something sparkling dazzling glittery shining in the darkness cold are the worlds to touch finger fear comes before you as you enter the dark no words can describe the fear of dark you get to explore the dark and move on not knowing what will come before you after three steps rather than posing building containing exhibitions and display cases now ours it isn't like this at all it is more like the left luggage office at the Houston Station but nearly 12 000 items are cataloged and available for loan and these cover Museum objects contemporary British paintings and sculpture 60 millimeter films gramophone records film strips and slides the Natural History objects stuffed birds and animals geological specimens many models models which we construct in our own workshops but in the west Friday and we have a very large child population uh in all the approximately 1250 schools and the costs spread out over these schools and uh in fact does work out it's about eight Pence per child per annum now of course that's pretty good value another important factor is the presentation of these things when a box arrives at the school and the teacher with the children opened the box we hope um they will be really a gasp of delight and a feeling we must get at this material we must use it you think so let's have a look inside if um um do you think it's a musical though that's really good as well shall we try it and see um if you're all right then you'll think it's a new little box there is a knob at that side there you can pull it out everyone [Music] beautiful [Music] house [Music] stop it [Music] and you say this disc looks like uh [Music] yeah they smell of things [Music] the wheels push it down those they're those bits there the cash stores for that the children are not told the right word together with a teacher they work towards it it's a problem of language that they share and solve even in an affluent society there are children who are deprived they may be unwanted or resented some suffer the stress of coming from poor homes and living in an overcrowded places where unemployment is high sometimes such areas are designated as educational priority areas where special help equipment and staff is given to the school and this man is one of a team of 75 full-time West writing teachers who go from school to school helping over 10 000 children to learn to play a musical instrument [Music] thank you [Applause] [Music] it may look confusing to you but it's not to them pieces of card and plastic help children to grasp difficult mathematical Concepts mathematics clear way of understanding how things are related to one another what we can discover for ourselves has got a deeper meaning for us this boy is not playing with blocks he is in fact inventing long division for himself foreign 989 divided by eight and says one thousand two two hundred and twenty two remainder that is a social training in this type of work they're learning to share equipment and to work as a team it's concrete to a child he sees it Tony had to pick talk and I had to say which had the most square inches squares of well those numbers on these yellow shapes and there's a picture in this little book what you get with the game and numbers across the top of the shape in the book and we've got to get those numbers well we've got all these bottles on his desk and they've got different numbers on in the different shapes and you've got to guess how much they'll measure and then you've got to correct it in the shadow of the Emily Moore transmitter mast in the little village of Shelley the Headmaster had an interesting idea which fitted well into Village Life but I wanted the the parents to be more involved in the education of their children I thought that if I could give them something to do in the school which they thought was making a very worthwhile contribution then they would be all the happier to come in and so I organized initially a rotor of 12 parents they were going to help the teachers by backing books by mounting pictures and by making very simple apparatus this will be held to the teacher and it was also it would be helped to them because they would be coming into school and finding out more about their child's education the teachers themselves were a little bit wary of this it's a big thing I think when teachers have parents coming into school to see what they're doing they're opening their doors and a lot of the teachers if they weren't on top of the job wouldn't do this well I like to go to school um for one thing it gets you out of the house amongst the children and and as I you know I'm very fond of children I enjoy this Tuesday Morning work also you get a better Insight of what's going on in school you realize that it isn't all um easy for the teachers that they're hard pressed really the teachers really welcome the parents coming in to do these jobs for them parents do not do any reading with the children and neither do they do any teaching of any description at all but they are not made to feel as though they are the general dog's body [Music] in schools books are everywhere classroom libraries are used by children who are looking for answers to the questions which come from the work that they're doing books are a source of pleasure and Delight to those who read them quietly on their own and the enjoyment of being read to makes children want to read for themselves Mrs Brown bent down you're a very small bear she said the bear puffed out his chest I'm a very rare sort of a bear he replied importantly there are many of us left from where I come from and where is that that's Mrs Brown darkest Peru I'm not really supposed to be here at all I'm a stowaway I still Mr Brown lowered his voice and looked anxiously over his shoulder high standards of presentation and display are part of the school's normal background they're not just there for the benefit of visitors they stimulate the children and can counter the often hostile and daunting environment outside landscape can provide a starting point instead of doing a picture [Music] and at the same time person [Music] doing the strength of the triangle so we thought we'd make it out of triangles like a triangle to show the strength the triangle is a strong shape which is not like a rectangle from the square because the rectangles work and roll very like they were here we made a rectangle and it moved out pretty late so we put these crossbars in and we found that it's still more freely and so we got this one and did this in and put this um diagonal bar in and we found it couldn't move and it made it much stronger and so it was rigid well if we'd have made our pile on out of these straight strips wouldn't have supported as much weight as these were the sort of triangle and so we decided to make it out of the ones with a triangle shape and it's recorded my weight when you first got the door from the joiners which has his son triangle in the top corner to make keep it 90 degrees in the corners um about across the bottom to make it the same with at the top and bottom and this is what the builders put in to make it vertical a child experience is the real world by moving in it as he explores his own ability and surroundings he gains confidence and a better understanding of himself Paul is developed each child practices his own sequence of inventive movement this is the best playground and we do see counts on there this is our animal Sheldon there we have rabbits gerbils hamsters a bird saver and to use testing guinea pigs when we first started this was a derelict piece of land and we had the children working on it to clear it of rubbish rubble from old tiles and off the school roof that had been dumped down there a teacher's own personal enthusiasm can often spark up a project like this one we don't want to make it into a garden we want to make it into a nature reserve we're planting the type of stuff and leaving common weeds there which will encourage insects small mammals and some birds to come and feed it's very handy having it so close to school in that there isn't a big wastage of time walking to the nearest wood if the weather is fine we can come straight out of the classroom onto there get the groups working and then go back into school and check up all our results whilst we're on with clearing the Nature Reserve we were also doing a certain amount of mathematics we drew the Nature Reserve to scale we then built this model to the same scale of the quarter of an inch to the foot and the area of the whole Nature Reserve was worked out in that way to come into contact with someone who's really Keen about something can lead to a lifelong interest it's not always possible to keep a bird or an animal in a flat or at home but to be responsible for one at school to hold and feed it can give her respect and sympathy for all living things this poem was written by one of the 11 year olds the dirt opens and outstries the peacock East drives purpose fillet into the passage and onto the alarm as these straws onto the lawn his feathers scintillating the sun heartily he puts up his tail feathers at one's bronzes and greens are same checkup patches Sean is back as the peacock elongating his blue and green neck works with his tail in the air [Music] [Applause] [Music] welcome to the game [Music] closer [Applause] this is first of all we made the words to fat and when we made the words for the first verse we found what the original Rhythm was so we could um make the music that rhythm [Music] [Applause] [Music] s thank you [Music] half a century ago George Sampson wrote school should be a place where there is work but weather is also laughter a place where there is law but weather is also Grace a place where there is justice but where there is also love [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] thank you