It worked for me: key stage 2 cameos

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Spying on Stephenson: a reconstruction relay

Setting the scene

Julie’s class started this activity by finding out about the first steam engines and how they were originally developed to bring coal from the pits in around 1800. They talked about the first pioneers: Trevithick, Blenkinsop, Hedley and George Stephenson and how Stephenson’s engine Locomotion was the first train to pull passengers as well as coal.

To set the scene for the reconstruction relay she read the class the story ‘George Stephenson and the steam engine competition’ from the Read aloud history stories. Julie’s dramatic storytelling took the children back to 6 October 1829 to Rainhill, near Liverpool and the forthcoming competition where George Stephenson and his son Robert were to enter their latest engine ‘the Rocket’. She explained that the competition was intense and that everybody wanted to know about the latest designs.

The children were going to be spies. They were to go to the shed where the Rocket was kept and they were to try and steal the design. They would only be able to get a quick look through a high window as a guard patrolled every few minutes.

The activity

The children were put into small groups and each child was given a number 1–4. Each group also had a piece of paper and a pencil.

A colour picture of the Rocket was placed close to each group upside down. The teacher explained to the children that number 1 in the group would go to the picture and have 10 seconds to look at it and take in as much detail as they could. Returning to the table, number 1 should draw what they could remember and then have 10 seconds to prime number 2 about what to look for. Number 2 would repeat the process, as would 3 and 4.

With a ‘ready, steady go!’ there was a lot of excited activity. Julie timed the sessions with a stopwatch and went around observing the drawings. There was a mixture of pace and urgency followed by quiet periods while children concentrated on their drawings.

After number 4 had finished in each group she gave the children two minutes to refine their pictures. There was some interesting discussion about period detail. Then the original was handed back to each group so that they could compare their picture with the original.

Follow-up

Acting as reporters from the time the groups were asked to think of five questions that they would have liked to ask Stephenson about the Rocket. The groups fed back to the rest of the class and after a discussion the best five questions were selected as a basis for further research. The children researched the answers to their questions from a variety of written sources and pre-selected websites from the internet.

Reconstruction relays work very well in other contexts, for example Viking longboat, the Parthenon, a Victorian invention, the inside of Tutankhamun’s tomb.

Contents | Under the sand: an exciting way of using artefacts in the classroom