Posts Tagged ‘Living Planet’
Calling all Eco Schools….
Posted on: September 27, 2010
We are delighted to be able to offer four primary schools the unique opportunity to be part of an exciting and innovative partnership project beginning in autumn 2010 involving The Manchester Museum, the BBC 21st Century Classroom and the University of Salford.
Taking inspiration from the Manchester Museum’s forthcoming Living Planet gallery the ‘On My Doorstep’ project will encourage Year 5 pupils to engage with their local environment, and to consider issues related to biodiversity, ecology and sustainability. The project aims to provide pupils with the knowledge, skills and inspiration required to produce a short film about nature on their doorsteps. All four films will be shown on the BBC 21CC website and will provide a comparative resource for exploration of local environments in four contrasting areas of the North West.
The project not only supports the Eco Schools Framework (particularly the Biodiversity topic) and also offers an array of cross curricular learning opportunities in Science, History, Citizenship, Geography and ICT. Groups will get to grips with multi-media and learn a broad range of film making skills. Under the guidance of BBC staff and professional camera crew they will have the opportunity to use industry standard equipment and software.
The project will last for three weeks and each participating class will complete four activity days during this time.
Activity days include:
- Initial Museum visit – pupils will discover more about the project and take part in a number of special workshops to develop their skills as naturalists.
- Museum Comes to School – the Museum will visit school to help the class develop their ideas for creating their film.
- BBC 21st Century Classroom visits School – working with BBC 21st CC staff, professional cameramen and student mentors from the MA in Wildlife Documentary Production course at the University of Salford, groups will learn how to storyboard their ideas and film on location.
- Visit to the 21st Century Classroom – the class will work with 21CC staff to edit their films.
The project will end in April 2011 with a sharing event in which all participants will be invited to a film launch at the Museum.
Only four places available.
Don’t miss out on this unique opportunity!
For further information contact:
School Outreach – The Manchester Museum
Tel: 0161 306 1779
Email: schooloutreach@manchester.ac.uk
Summer School Extravaganza!
Posted on: July 29, 2010
The Darwin Summer School cohort - including Group Leaders, Ambassadors, workshop facilitators and Mascots!
On the week of the 19th July The Manchester Museum was taken over by 58 Gifted and Talented Key Stage 3 students from a variety of Manchester schools in order to take part in our Darwin Summer School. This consisted of five days of frenzied activity where participants were split into four groups entrusted with the task of creating a presentation to voice their ideas for our new Animal Life 1 Gallery due to be redeveloped in September to become Living Planet.
Image, Winners of our Darwin Summer School Mascots with our Director who presented the awards
The aim of the week was to allow students to explore their personal, learning and thinking skills and create opportunities for them to demonstrate cooperative working, communication and leadership abilities within each group. Prizes were awarded at the end of the week for each group’s “Best Team Player”, their “most improved member” and “the member most deserving of the group mascot”. I’ve never seen anyone so pleased to win a giant cuddly bear!
The skills and abilities developed and nurtured throughout the week were clearly highlighted in their final presentations, which were the best we have ever seen on a Summer School here at The Manchester Museum. From inspirational slogans or mottos and an improvised scene from Dr. Who to a 3D computerised gallery design and a very impactful videos – these students gave us a LOT to consider for the redevelopment.
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- Taking part in Clippy Island
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- Putting the final touches to their Natural History display created in the Curation Workshop
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- Visiting the John Rylands University Library
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- Object handling with David Green, Curator of Mineraology
We take you further…
Posted on: July 21, 2010
Image, Children in the Museum intrigued by a tree frog!
The Amazon outreach session has been very popular with primary schools for over 2 years and our Big Saturdays in the Museum with live animals are always a favourite. Pupils get to handle some great objects including a jaguar skull, Brazilian Indian fishing arrows, a parakeet and Amazon insects. During the sessions we often get asked questions about what life is like for children living in the Amazon and we thought it would be a good idea for pupils to find out themselves. A great opportunity arose a few weeks ago when Johan Oldekop from the University’s department of Life Sciences offered to help out.
Johan is a PHD student who has visited Ecuador a number of times and spent time with communities in the Payamino area. The Payamino Project is a community conservation and development project. Situated in the foothills of the Andes, east of Quito, the indigenous community of San Jose de Payamino entered into an agreement with Aalborg Zoo in 2002 to protect their forest and way of life from the increasing pressures of oil, logging and mining.
Johan left on his final PHD visit to Ecuador on 9th July and he very kindly took a gift pack from the Learning Team to give to the children in the community. We sent pens, pencils, rubbers and furry bugs, photos of Manchester school children enjoying our Amazon outreach session and lots of questions for the children in the community from Year 2 of St Augustine’s Primary in Manchester. Johan is translating the questions into Spanish and we are looking forward to him returning with lots of interesting answers, as well as questions for the children of Manchester.
Image, Willah and his sister from San Jose de Paymino on the banks of the Payamino river
We also sent out a couple of footballs and we hope to post some photographs of the children having a kick about when Johan returns at the end of the summer!
We are hoping that this is the start of a valuable relationship between children in Manchester and the Amazon and an excellent opportunity for them to share and learn about all aspects of each others lives.
If you would like to find out more about Johan’s work you can visit
http://www.madasascientist.com/
For more information about the Payamino project go to http://www.payamino.org
And to find out about the new Living Planet gallery opening in 2011 visit http://www.museum.manchester.ac.uk/community/blogs/nature
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