It worked for me: key stage 1 cameos
Contents | History that’s out of this world 
The children in year 1 of Sarisbury Infant School near Southampton devised a board game based on Scott’s expedition to the South Pole. This activity helped the children to begin to think about why Scott’s expedition ended in disaster.
The teacher, Nicola Beazley, read out the story the expedition and the children spent some time exploring pictures and photographs relating to him. They worked together to put the pictures in the correct order and these were gradually arranged on a class ‘washing line’ to give an outline of the expedition.
Developing the game
Next the children chose an event either in the life of Scott or from the actual expedition and drew a picture that would be used to illustrate the board game. Meanwhile a learning support assistant worked with a group of more able pupils to decide which factors were helpful to Scott’s expedition and which ones resulted in its ultimate failure. They made labels for the board game, such as ‘miss a go’ for those reasons that held Scott back and ‘move forward 2’ for the more positive factors.
A different group of children helped to stick the pictures that the class had drawn in the right order on the board game. This helped the visual learners to see for themselves the story of the expedition in chronological order.
Using counters and dice the children played the game in their ‘Antarctic corner’ as part of their history and geography role play. This reinforced the sequence of events and encouraged them to think about the reasons for the failure of the expedition. The learning assistant who read the instructions and simplified the vocabulary supported some children. In a final discussion the children were able to talk about the significance of some events in the story of Scott and the Antarctic.
Part of a board game devised by some of the children in Sarisbury School
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