The Sea Company

Sunday, January 07, 2007

EPISODE 19 - LETTER FOM THE MUSEUM

The company have recieved a letter from the local museum asking for their help. (Our local museum service are very keen to support MoE and we have liased with them to create this scenario). The museum have recieved some objects salvaged from a shipwreck in the North Atlantic Ocean. They would like our salvage company to come and examone them as they believe they might come from The Titanic, but are not sure. If we are interested in helping them we will need to bring a portfolio about our company and some background information about The Titanic to show we are equipped for the job. ( When we visit the museum the children will handle the 'salvaged' Edwardian artefacts and write up reports on what they have discovered from them. The museum will then commission them to go to the Atlantic to finish the salvage operation.)

The class were pretty excited about this - some of them had already been talking about the Titanic and some had seen the recent film. The problem here was sorting out the real world from the drama world. I had to explain that we would really visit the museum and we would really handle the old artefacts, but they would not really be from the Titanic. Again I used the phrase 'I think it will feel real' - which they seem to relate to and understand. I also needed to explain that the museum staff will be in role in our drama and they will be behaing as if these are reall Titanic objects. Further confusions happened when the children talked about the film, so we discussed how most of the events depicted actually happened, but the love story was imaginary. We talked about how the film director would have re-created how he imagined it would all look using sets and actors.. As the children have already been working with British Film Institute materials I felt this really helped with their understanding of how films are made. I really want to use footage from the film over the next few weeks so we can discuss more of these issues, particularly interpretation - also so the children begin to get a feeling for atmosphere, personal stories of those on board and the emotional impact of the disaster.

HOWEVER - at this point one of the children declared they were not interested in the museum's request and was going to quit the company. This came out of the blue and I was a bit taken aback, as were the rest of the class! I didn't want to detract from the interest the others were showing so I asked him to just keep that on hold for the moment and we would discuss it properly a bit later - i.e. a bit of stalling so I could think through how to deal with this!!

The rest of the company agreed that they would spend the next few weeks researching information about the Titanic and working on a company Portfolio to present to the museum. we will use information books, the internet, an excellent CD Rom produced specifically in relation to MoE work , the feature film and a brilliant interactive CD Rom where the children can operate a submersible to look at real footage of the wreck, examine artefacts etc.

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