Exciting new project gives kids a bird's eye view of WW1 and 2

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Students at Sir Robert Hitcham’s Primary School
in Suffolk write their secret wartime message.

Do something special for this year's centenary of World War 1 with an innovative interactive session demonstrating the extraordinary role pigeons played in Britain's victory by carrying secret messages home from the battlefields.

Carrier pigeons played a vital role in both World War 1 and 2 as they proved a reliable method of sending and receiving messages from the battlefields - in fact, their delivery success rate was a whopping 95%! 

Just in time for this year's centenary of WW1, a new educational project has been launched to offer schoolchildren across the UK the opportunity to learn about the pigeons' important and dangerous work.

The project, dubbed 'Secret Messages', will teach children how to write a simple coded message and demonstrate how pigeons carried them during the wars.

Pigeons in the war

A student from Sir Robert Hitcham's holds
the homing pigeon before it is released.

During World War II, over a quarter of a million pigeons were donated by British fanciers to help in the war effort. Once the war was over, pigeon racing was resumed, however their contribution to the war effort did not go unnoticed, with 32 of the 62 Dickin medals awarded to date going to carrier pigeons.

The very first pigeon to win the Dickin medal was Royal Blue who won the medal 'for being the first pigeon in this war to deliver a message from a forced landed aircraft on the continent while serving with the RAF in October 1940'. Royal Blue was donated by the King, illustrating the Royal families’ strong connection with pigeon racing since the late 1890s. To this day, there is a loft at Sandringham and Her Majesty the Queen is now a patron of the Royal Pigeon Racing Association.

British history has seen many patrons who strove to make our country a better and safer place. However, many forget that the humble homing pigeon played an enormous role in emergencies during both the World Wars and still give great benefits to fanciers today.

Donna Beard, who delivers the lessons to the schoolchildren, said: “We have had a really positive response to taking pigeons into schools in the past, which is why we feel that the Secret Messages project will be of great value to children and their teachers alike. Children enjoying handling the birds and learning to write their own secret messages will help to bring the importance of these birds’ contribution. What a great tribute to all involved in WW1 and WW2.”

How the Secret Messages project works

1. Pupils write their secret message on a piece of paper. This could be a simple message using simple Caesar cipher. This could be further developed by generating a message using a virtual Enigma Machine Emulator. 
2. Pupils place their message into a canister attached to the pigeon’s leg.
3. Pupils are taught how to hold the pigeon and then release their bird from an experienced pigeon fancier. Soldiers would have had to learn this skill.
4. The homing pigeon is released and sets off for home carrying the message back to the code breakers at Kingsmead School.
5. When the bird arrives home the message is taken from the canister and the message is decoded as fast as possible by a team of code breakers. 
6. The decoded message along with the original coded message is photographed by a smartphone or iPad/tablet and emailed to the person or school. 
7. Following the experience, pupils can research a range of different investigations and win some fantastic prizes.

Sounds exciting? Get your school involved!
Schools are able to apply to for an experienced handler to visit with a small team of homing pigeons. The Secret Messages project is available to all children of all ages in the UK and is a free service.

For more information or to book a Secret Messages session for your school, visit secretmessages.org.uk.

PLUS! Visit flyingbacktonature.com to view and download a range of teaching resources and lesson plans on pigeons, secret messages and World War 1.

Donna helps students release their bird and send
their secret message on its way!

Secret Messages was launched on July 8th 2014. The project is a collaboration between the Midlands National Flying Club and the Royal Pigeon Racing Association.

Launch your PBL unit with a bang!

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The first session of your project is one of the most important, as this is what hooks your learners and gets them excited about exploring that juicy driving question. But how can you make it a day to remember?

Image: williambrookes.com

The Year 7 students wait outside the school hall. They’re all clutching flight boarding passes and the corridor is alive with the buzz of excited conversation as they wonder what’s going to happen.

Suddenly, the door opens! The murmuring stops as a Year 10 student steps into the corridor, and the younger pupils wait expectantly for their instructions.

“Your flight to Fiji is now ready to board,” the Year 10 student says with a professional smile. “Please follow me.”

The Year 7 kids follow eagerly, filing into the hall. They see that the chairs in the hall have all been set up in rows of six, with an aisle cutting down the middle – it’s a plane!

Thoroughly thrilled now, the young students take their assigned seats, as directed by the Year 10 flight attendants. They sit for a few minutes, shuffling through the magazines and safety leaflets they found on their seats, before one of the air hostesses plays a real flight safety video and the pilot (a member of staff, dressed the part of course!) announces they’re ready to take off.

The students cheer as he informs them they are now air-borne and on their way to exotic Fiji!

That is, until disaster strikes. The plane suddenly loses one of its engines, and then another. The pilot keeps the passengers informed as yet another engine fails, and the children listen with anxious (but still rather excited) expressions.

“I’m taking us down on the ocean,” the pilot announces grimly.

With great skill (oddly, this pilot has crashed a plane into the ocean a few times before…) the pilot brings the plane down on the sea. 

It’s a perfect landing, and the flight crew begin evacuating their young passengers.

“There’s an island nearby!” the pilot calls as Year 7s leap into the ‘ocean’. “You’ll have to swim. Watch out for the sharks."

And thus begins Matthew Moss High School’s project-based learning unit ‘The Island’. Now stranded on a desert island, the Year 7s will have to work out how they’re going to survive and then begin to explore how their islander community might evolve.

The kids are completely engaged in the story, the very convincing plane crash setting the precedent for a dynamic and absorbing project.

And that’s the trick to successfully launching a project-based learning unit – an exciting, memorable entry event.

What is an entry event?

Your entry event is exactly what it sounds like – the first session of your unit and your students’ introduction to the project.

According to the Buck Institute for Education, an entry event has two basic purposes: 

• to spark student interest and curiosity
• to begin the inquiry process by leading students to ask questions.

The whole point of the entry event is to introduce the driving question and establish a ‘need to know’. The students should be hooked – they should want to get on with exploring the driving question right away!

An entry event also has to stimulating and unforgettable. Suzie Boss suggests novelty, so your students aren’t quite sure what to expect.

So what kind of events make for a good PBL introduction? 

Drama and simulations

Kids as scientists on a spaceship
(Image:mantleoftheexpert.com)

Understandably, many teachers opt for the dramatic when it comes to introducing their project – and why not? It’s a chance to have some fun and get involved in a bit of make-believe. It also makes for a memorable launch to the project – which of the Year 7s at Matthew Moss High School are going to forget the day their teacher crashed a plane into the ocean?

Simulations like this work well because they involve the kids in the action. They also give students a role to play in the project. In the case of the plane crash for example, the kids were survivors, stranded on a desert island, and they stuck with and developed that role throughout the rest of the unit. 

Other projects use the entry event to set students up in the role of an ‘expert’. Depending on the curriculum content you’re covering, your kids may be archaeologists working on a dig, rescuers at the scene of a disaster, scientists in a laboratory, astronauts in a space station, or rebel fighters in a civil war. 

This type of project is made for a dramatic introduction. Start yours by gathering your students together for an in-role team meeting or briefing. Remember to let them know who they are. Use presentations, photographs, video clips and sound to get them into role and then to introduce them to their challenge. The more dramatic, the better!

Alternatively, see if you can get a visitor to come into school and play what Suzie Boss terms ‘a stranger from another century’. In her Edutopia blog post, Boss tells of a school who launched their project based on the Epic of Gilgamesh with ‘footage of swords clashing and bare feet running on a grassy battlefield. There were whoops and cries from cheering warriors, but no narrative to explain what was happening.’

As the video ended, the stranger from the past (a local classics professor in full costume) entered the classroom and challenged the students to find out ‘why his army had been vanquished by superior forces.’

If you can’t get someone local to come in and play a historic or fictional character, try a search online. There are plenty of companies, charities and actors who will be happy to Skype you and your class for a small fee. Imagine! Your students could have a chat with a real live Viking! (You know what we mean...)

When it comes to dramatic entry events, the only limit is your imagination. Rope in a few teachers and older students to play any extra characters you need (GCSE drama students are always a good bet) and see what you can come up with. 

Interesting objects

Image: interfaithhousing.org

Another way to introduce a PBL unit is through the use of interesting objects. Appeal to your students’ curiosity and imagination by arranging for a surprise invitation or parcel to be delivered to the class, asking for help with a particular problem, or orchestrate an exciting discovery on school grounds such as a time capsule, an ancient map or a box of secret letters.

Children at a primary school in West Lothian arrived one morning to find a paper trail of animal tracks leading into the classroom. At the end of them, a toy fox and its cub were sitting in the centre of the floor with a letter next to them. The letter explained how the foxes’ home – the enchanted woodland – had been destroyed and so they no longer had anywhere to live. It asked the children if they could help the foxes create a new home.

Other potential project hooks to appeal to the senses and engage students in their driving question include:

• a display of historical artefacts
• a provocative reading or poem
• ‘mysterious’ or unusual photographs
• film clips
• sound bites
• a song
• a piece of art
• shocking statistics.

Field trips and guest speakers

School outings and guest speakers - whether speaking in school, via Skype, or out on a field trip - are another exciting way to introduce a project. We’ve touched on this briefly, but guest speakers don’t always have to be in-role as a character from history or a work of fiction. Visitors from charities, museums, zoos, aquariums, local businesses, even local celebrities, can all provide thought-provoking talks to launch a project.

For example, The Innovation Unit’s guide to PBL tells of a teacher who began a project on peaceful protest by inviting in a local musician who performed for the students and then answered their questions about why, and how, he wrote protest songs.

Combining field trips with guest speakers, one school in Stockport took their students on a visit to a local archaeological site, where the students were introduced to a legendary story about a Celtic tribal leader. Developing this story as an epic battle movie became the students’ project.

In another project at Matthew Moss High School, the children were carted off to the local history centre to meet real historians and genealogists. Their task during this unit would be to research their family history and create a beautiful family tree, and experts from the history centre would be on hand throughout the project to assist.

Examining a model response

The Innovation Unit also suggests showing your students a model of the type of product they will be creating as the project’s entry event. There’s no reason you can’t do this as well as a flashy hook, but a careful, full-class examination of a model will show students exactly what you expect from them and what they should aim for.

The model can be something you created yourself, exemplary work from the previous year group’s project (though this is only possible if you’ve done the project before), or work by a professional.

Image: Matthew Moss High School

The biggest advantage of using a model as an entry event is that it provides the perfect introduction to ‘critiquing’ – an important part of PBL (see our first blog post in this series, The 8 essential elements of project-based learning). 

Work with your class to critique the model. Help your class to understand what critiquing means by breaking it down into questions:

• What is its purpose?
• How well does it meet that purpose? 

Get them to consider the work they will be undertaking. Look at the model and consider: 

• What looks most difficult to do? 
• What looks easiest to do? 
• What aspects are most important?
• What are least important?

The model you show will give students something to base their standards on, and spark discussion as to what the students’ own models will need to have, do or be. The ensuing discussion and your kids’ decision on what a ‘good’ final product will look like will be something for you to base your assessment criteria on.

Image: Matthew Moss High School

No matter what you choose to do, your PBL unit should begin with a bang. The kids should be engaged, excited and raring to go. After all, all that planning will be for nothing if your students are not invested in the project.

Of course, a good entry event doesn’t guarantee a successful project. It’s an important factor in getting the kids on board, but it’s where you go from here that will determine how much they get out of it.

A major element of PBL is the multiple drafting and critiquing process. Our next blog post will consider what this means in practice and how you can help your students develop the skills they need to be successful in this area. Watch this space!

Using myths and legends to inspire confidence and improve literacy skills

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Myths and legends can inspire in drama, art, and more!
(Image: belmont.school.nz)

Teaching mythology is a great way to develop a love of reading and writing in students of all ages, to inspire in drama and art and to cultivate a desire to research ancient history and other cultures. 

It's also a great theme to explore with students who are less confident in their abilities and less engaged with learning. The world of myths, legends, fairytales and folklore has no boundaries - it is limitless. Our more vulnerable youngsters can create, dream and imagine, without fear of being judged or without fear of getting it wrong.

Teaching myths and legends to students with Special Educational Needs, or to those whose first language is not English or struggle with reading for example, can be made even easier with the amazing resources available online. Video clips, audio stories, animations, and interactive maps and games are just a few.

Below are reviews of two websites which could prove very useful when differentiating for your less 'able' students. 

Interested? Read on. 

Storynory.com
Key Stages 1 and 2

Packed full of humorous audio stories, Storynory is brilliant for introducing young children to a number of different myths and legends.

You'll find a massive range of free audio stories to download here, including legends such as Robin Hood and King Arthur and a number of Greek myths.

The majority of these audio stories are around 10 to 15 minutes long, and the longer myths are generally split up into parts. Most are available as a transcript also, and on the occasion of a more complicated myth (The Trojan war, for example, which confusingly appears both in history and mythology), the Storynory team have put together some background information to help kids understand both the fact and the fiction.

The auditory form of these stories means this site is brilliant for children who might struggle with reading myths and legends in written form. The site’s homepage suggests using the audio stories with blind or autistic children, or with those whose first language is not English.

The site is also very simply laid out and easy to navigate. This, along with the bright colours and pictures, the cute mascot (a frog named Prince Bertie – once a human prince of course!), and the simple wording of the stories, means young children will have no trouble exploring Storynory on their own if they want to.

Myths and Legends
Key Stages 1, 2 and 3

A great resource for developing a love of stories and storytelling, there are over 75 vibrantly animated myths and legends from the British Isles and beyond to watch and explore on this site.

With each myth set out like a storybook, readers can sit back and watch the animations unfold, or manually click through at their own pace. The accompanying words are also read aloud, along with realistic sound effects, which is great if working with children with SEN in literacy or whose first language is not English.

Teachers can register with the site for free, which then allows their students to upload their own myths and legends (either as a written text, or recorded file) for the teacher to review online. The site provides a whole range of free images and sounds students can download and use when doing this.

Reading and listening to myths can inspire children to 

create their own.

(Image: nicurriculum.org.uk)

For students who want to take their story one step further, there’s the StoryCreator tool, which allows you to create your own storybook style animations, similar to those on the rest of the website. Anyone can access the tool and create a story, but unfortunately, to save and upload your story to the site, your school must subscribe. Whole school access costs £59 a year. It is a fantastic tool though, and I believe worth at least considering. It’s a lot of fun to play around with, but really encourages creativity. It would also be perfect for introducing students to story structure and planning, as well as certain aspects of ICT.

Even if you don’t decide to subscribe, this site is definitely well worth a visit with your class. Students of all ages will really enjoy the animated myths and legends, and the site’s emphasis on the importance of stories and imagination should hopefully inspire them to create their own, whether they’re using the StoryCreator tool or not.

Improving students' memory skills

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Your pupils' poor listening skills might actually be down to a lapse in working memory. What can you do to help them?

Children with poor working memory will often display symptoms of various learning disorders - for example, they might be easily distracted or forgetful. They are therefore often labelled as having special educational needs (SEN), which isn't helpful, as distraction and forgetfulness are just symptoms and the underlying difficulties to do with their working memory are not fully addressed.

There are many ways you can help students' improve their working memory... and these are techniques that can be used with all children to help them remember instructions and important information. Your whole class is going to need good memories with the start of the new content-heavy curriculum this September!

Take a look at this menu of ideas in the form of TeachingTimes' latest infographic. Have you got any more strategies you use to improve your students' memories? Leave a comment and let us know!

Click image to enlarge: (or click here to view in browser)

7 ways to use video in the classroom

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Interestingly, a high proportion of the 18 million plus 'how to' videos on YouTube have been uploaded by young people. Countless school and college-aged kids are using online video as a way to informally learn and teach – completely under their own steam, and without any adult direction!

It makes you wonder… could this be something teachers use to engage their tech-savvy students?

In short, yes! Below you’ll find 7 ways to use classroom-created video content as part of the everyday teaching and learning experience – from recording lessons for revision to encouraging online peer-assessment to sharing the learning journey with parents.

So what are you waiting for? Grab a camera and get filming!

(Image: intofilm.org)

1. Capturing learning
No matter how engaging and inspiring the lesson, the sound of a school bell tends to act as a ‘reset’ button in the minds of students – especially if it signals lunch time! By capturing key parts of a lesson with video and placing it online, teachers can create a permanent record of the learning, allowing students to access it, on-demand, at any time.

And like the ‘catch up’ services that TV channels now offer, it provides a valuable resource to students who may have missed the lesson, or who simply need a reminder of what was covered.

2. Creating learning objectives
The ability to provide engaging learning objectives, and for students to be aware of how their learning progress fits with these, is a crucial part of the learning process.

At the start of a class, play back a video clip from the students’ previous lesson and through class discussion and teacher questioning, use the clip as a basis for drawing up students’ learning objectives for the current lesson. Ask the students:

• What stage did they get to last lesson?
• What needs to be improved upon?
• What’s the main thing that they need to focus on?

Objectives can either be whole-class, or individually drawn up by students or groups within the class for project work.

At the end of the lesson, play back some key clips from the current lesson. Ask the students to think back to the objectives they set at the start of the lesson – and again, through class discussion and teacher questioning, have them assess their progress against these objectives. It’s a great way of making their progress real and tangible to students, and maintaining the learning momentum from lesson to lesson.

3. Peer assessment
Video has the power to take peer assessment to a new level – particularly in practical and performance subjects such as music, drama and dance, where it can play a crucial role in supporting students’ learning.

A student performance placed online can spark a deep discussion. Ask your students to critique each other’s work as part of their homework, perhaps giving them something particular to focus on – for example, the use of space in a dance piece or characterisation in a dramatic performance.

For examination subjects, this can be a great way of students getting familiar with the assessment criteria and mark scheme – give them a copy of it, and have them ‘mark’ each others’ performance videos, leaving a comment and justifying their marks!

4. Student-created content
It’s always been said that the best way to learn something is to teach it – and by creating their own video content, students can do just that.

After covering a concept in class, ask students to create a short video in which they explain the concept or topic in their own words – and encourage them to be creative in how they demonstrate their learning! This encourages students to really think about what’s been covered in class, and explaining a concept in their own words really helps to cement the learning in their minds.

This works particularly well as a group activity – students have a lot of fun creating videos. It’s the perfect way to make those dry, theoretical topics practical and engaging.

When it comes to revision time too, students will have access to engaging videos of themselves and their friends explaining concepts, which will be infinitely more interesting than the usual PowerPoint files and word documents!

5. Teacher-created content
It’s been proven that good quality teaching has a profound impact on students’ success and life chances – and with online video, it’s now possible for teachers within a department to create an engaging bank of videos explaining key concepts and topics for students to access at any time.

Creating a video is simply a case of explaining a concept to the camera in the normal way, with a camera pointing toward the teacher or board, then uploading this online for students to access. Alternatively, if you don’t fancy appearing on screen, screencasting software (QuickTime has this built in) and iPad apps such as 'Explain Everything' allow you to create video ‘how to’ guides. Simply record what is happening on screen and narrate over the top.

Get started by talking to your departmental colleagues about the concepts that students struggle with most, then divide them up and get filming. Share your finished videos with colleagues and pupils to see what works and what doesn’t.

6. Flipping learning
The ‘flipped classroom’ is a concept which was developed by teachers in America, and which has started to spread around the world.

(Image: sonomanews.com)

Normally, teachers stand at the front of the class and deliver content to all of the students at the same time – and after this, the students then apply the knowledge, often as a homework task. The ‘flipped’ concept turns this model on its head – instead of standing in front of the class and delivering the content, the teacher creates an online video, which students watch before the lesson.

This frees up class time for activities which let students apply that knowledge – and frees up the teacher to circulate the classroom and deliver more personalised support to students.

With online video, students can learn at their own pace, on any device, anywhere – putting them in complete control of when, where and how they learn.

7. Sharing the learning journey with parents
Online parental reporting is now a familiar feature in many secondary schools – but often, it revolves around dry numbers, figures and charts. Parents may be able to find out that little Johnny has risen 2 sub levels in Music, but what does that really tell them?

By using video to share students’ learning journeys with parents, schools can provide a window into students’ school lives and learning which is so much more engaging and insightful than numbers alone.

The question ‘what did you do at school today?’ has become something of a running joke, because it’s so difficult for parents to get a sense of what their children are doing and learning during the school day – but by using online video to share the learning journey, schools can finally answer that question for parents.

By James Cross, Educator in Residence at MediaCore.

Interested in more ways to use technology in the classroom? Subscribe to our e-learning publication, e-Learning UPDATE for access to new issues, archived articles and 7 free training videos. It's CPD online!

Introduce emojis to your classroom!

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It's a whole new language entirely, but one your students will already be very familiar with. 'Emojificate' your classroom with this range of tips and ideas for using emojis to gauge student understanding, encourage reluctant readers, foster friendships and more.

Our new marketing intern, Olivia, has even made them into a fabulous infographic!

Click the thumbnail below to view in full and access the links:

Less is more? Teaching students to summarise

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Summarising a piece of text is a skill that students will need time and time again throughout their school life and beyond. Help them develop this skill with these two simple activities to teach summarising skills to pupils of any age group.

Activity 1. 'In a nutshell...'

'In a nutshell...' requires students to read a story or piece of text of your choice and then retell it in 25 words. Once students have reduced the text to 25 words, they then reduce the summary to a three word headline.

The activity provides an opportunity for students to concentrate on the main ideas of a text. It demonstrates to pupils that recording small details can prompt them to remember a good deal of information. Pupils will also see the need to ignore unimportant information, and evaluate whether they have captured the gist of the text.

You can download this task's worksheet for free here.

Activity 2. Word Splash!

This activity requires you to select ten key words from the text you'd like your students to summarise. Give students a copy of the text, write the ten words up on the board and tell the pupils they are going to write a paragraph summarising the story. They must use all the words on the board.

A limit of words can be given, a paragraph of no more than 50 words to summarise the text, for example.

The Wordsplash activity is a great way to differentiate for students who might struggle with 'In a nutshell...'. It's not as challenging, as students have more words to summarise the story with and the support of the key words on the board, but it still helps focus students on capturing the main ideas of the text.

If you are a subscriber to our magazine, you'll recognise these activities from one of our recent project plans. They were created by the fabulous Jane Jones, who designs all of our spectacular cross curricular projects. Don't miss out - subscribe to Creative Teaching and Learning today!