GCSE Yr 11
Revision Papers

Learning to Learn

This term has seen the launch of a new curriculum for Year 7's across the county which places greater emphasis on pupils' Personal Learning and Thinking Skills' Hall Mead Schools' response has been to develop a combined Geography and History, throughout which the pupils are given much more enquiry based work designed to develop their independance as learners and teach them not just what to learn but How to learn.

This exciting course is being supported by a parallel programme in P.S.H.E. and enables pupils to relate their learning to 5 key 'Learner Attributes' ("the 5 Rs"):

Resilience; Responsibility; Reflection; resourcefulness; Reasoning.

Mrs Shearing, Head of Humanities is leading the course and believes, "We have noticed a huge difference in the way the year 7's learn. They are more independant and show alot more inititive as a result of the learning to learn approach.

The Upminster tithe barn museum was originally built in the 15 century; the timbers can be dated back to 1420. It was built by the abbey of Waltham when the hall (now the golf club) was a retiring place or hunting seat for the abbot. Commonly known at the Tithe barn it now holds about 14500 artefacts. When it was in use it had small holes at the top of the barn so that barn owls could get in and kill the rats and other vermin that might eat the corn. The Tithe barn is a big barn, it stands at 18 metres high (same height as the windmill minus the sails) by 12 metres wide by 45 metres long.

Near where the Tithe barn lays there is an area of grass where the Essex barn stood. The Essex barn was a granary barn. There are 2 doors either side of the barn one is noticeably taller, this is because the cart used to come in piled high, well over its own height, then unload and leave through the smaller door. It might also have been called the rising barn because it used to have ramps under it so that, to stop vermin getting the corn, it would be raised off the ground.

Among the many artefacts there is a table with objects from the first and second world war. One of these is a bit of a Spitfire. Spitfires where in use during the second world war because they were much better than the previous fighters. The Spitfires were much faster because they were monoplanes, which meant they had less drag, they could travel speeds up to 374 mp. The main fighter being used at the time was the Glostor Gladiator, they could only travel at 255mp. The Glostor gladiator was a biplane so it had to have support on the wings to stop the wings breaking, this created more drag slowing the plane down. The RAF desperately needed faster fighters because by the time they had got the planes in the air the germane bombers had already gone. The Hurricane had been invented just 6 months before the spitfire.

There are also some gas masks, one for a child and one for a baby. Gas masks were given to all people during the second world war in little boxes. They were to be worn round your neck at all times in case of a gas attack, which never actually happened during the war. The baby’s gas mask was very different to the normal gas mask, it mask more like gas suit because the whole baby went inside. The baby would be put inside, and when the flaps had been folded in and the straps had been done up the baby was completely enclosed. There was a hand bellow at the side to for the parent to operate that allowed air in without any harmful gases being breathed in.

Life was not easy for children during the war. Most would be evacuated to the country were they would be safer from attack. Children would still have to be taught. Some evacuees would have to temporarily taught in other schools, pupils would have half days, until they found some where more suitable to stay and learn. Schools were not just used as places for children, they were sometimes used as places to grow vegetables. Children would have all there books in their satchel. There were drills encase of gas attacks.

Technology is an essential part of our life and has changed a great deal for the little time it has been around. The phone has an interesting history. From being basically a box, it then became wireless and was called the mobile phone, although being the size that it was it wasn’t very mobile. From then it’s changes were terrifically fast, in just a few short years there were touch screens. The television has transformed to, it started as a box with a small screen that they attached a giant magnifying glass to, but now they have massive screens that are wafer thin. Some technology has gone out of fashion like the radio, people mostly watch TV instead. There is a great collection of radios of different shapes and sizes.

There are some interesting stories that are there as well as artefacts. One story is about a boat, the Susannah, it was the last boat to leave the ancient heven Raynham creek before it was damned. The boat left at noon on the 3rd June and arrived at Ostend in Belgium on the 8 th June. The last thing I will mention is the brickworks factory. There were two locally, one in Cranham the other in Hornchurch. They did not just make bricks, if the mixture wasn’t quite right then they would make something else with it, like a money box. The brickworks closed in 1935, 4 years later,in 1939 the Cranham brickworks closed. There are plenty more amazing artefacts in the tithe barn that I did not mention but you could go and see them your self.