Students SHARE Tributes

Prior to the visits, I was approached by the SHARE with Schools team as they had heard about my Second-Year Project through a mutual contact. They asked if I would be happy to run one of the activities from my project at their return visits and I was extremely excited and happy to help. Thus, began the process of adapting a youth pack for a museum into an activity that could be done in half an hour in a seminar room. From my project of four activities, I selected one that I believed would be best suited to the location and time frame I had been given – this enabled a smoother transition from the museum to classroom. This led to an adaptation of my ‘Tribute Procession – Act it Out’ activity. The real challenge was to construct a plan that gave the students some background information on Ancient Iran (as they knew nothing about it) to enable them to do the activity in only five minutes! To tackle this, I used maps and images to give them a visual of the Empire and spoke to them about the relevant aspects to their activity. y were given a small lecture by Professor James Hegarty (Mountain Ash) and Dr Laurence Totelin (Cathays High) before having the chance to ask any final questions and give us some feedback. Both visits were huge successes and I am very proud of all we achieved.

Prior to the visits, I was approached by the SHARE with Schools team as they had heard about my Second-Year Project through a mutual contact. They asked if I would be happy to run one of the activities from my project at their return visits and I was extremely excited and happy to help. Thus, began the process of adapting a youth pack for a museum into an activity that could be done in half an hour in a seminar room. From my project of four activities, I selected one that I believed would be best suited to the location and time frame I had been given – this enabled a smoother transition from the museum to the classroom. This led to an adaptation of my ‘Tribute Procession – Act it Out’ activity. The real challenge was to construct a plan that gave the students some background information on Ancient Iran (as they knew nothing about it) to enable them to do the activity in only five minutes! To tackle this, I used maps and images to give them a visual of the Empire and spoke to them about the relevant aspects of their activity.

To create more of an atmosphere, I played Persian folk music in the background throughout the sessions – something many of the students and staff enjoyed. I began each session with this brief introduction before splitting the students into four groups and assigning them a delegation each – Medes, Lydians, Armenians and Elamites. I then asked them to read through their pack I had created for the day and discuss their delegation and tributes in their groups. After this, they made their tributes using the paper, pens, tape, glue etc. that we provided. There were some extremely creative ideas going around with people making 3D versions as well as ‘becoming’ the object through masks. Once their tributes had been crafted they were to process to the King (their accompanying teacher) to present them and prostrate before them. Many were reluctant to act this out at first (especially prostrating) but everyone joined in and enjoyed the activity.

I received wonderful feedback for the activity and I feel very blessed that so many enjoyed it and learnt from it. The highest praise of all was from Mountain Ash when they took my activity back with them to use in school for the future.

The experience of these return visits has been wonderful – I have loved every minute and received valuable experience in outreach. It was amazing to be part of inspiring the next generation of students (and hopefully historians) and I hope these activities can go on to inspire more.

There were some very creative takes on the tributes for the King and the procession. By encouraging the students to create the objects and act out the motions, this activity enables them to place themselves in that situation thus adding to the experience of studying history.

Some students decided too 'become' the objects they were giving - here we have someone pretending to be a vase.

We even had some sculptures with moving parts and interactive aspects.

All the students would prostrate before their King/Queen (aka the teacher/staff member with them).