Action Research Report 4 : History Here and Now - Katoomba Public School

by Christina Boyd

Introduction

Katoomba Public School is a school of approximately 300 children situated in the upper Blue Mountains, an area rich in local history including aboriginal and convict sites, historic houses (from miners' cottages to grand mansions), commercial buildings, museums and an entire historic village at Hartley. There are active historical societies preserving a wealth of artifacts and information. Some of the school staff are well versed in local history and there are links with the local aboriginal community.

However, given all of the advantages above, I suspected that the teaching of the history strands of the syllabus was patchy at best due to the crowded nature of the current curricula, some crucial staff changes and a current reworking of the scope and sequence in HSIE within the school.

Many of our families are poor, and yet there has been a trend in recent years to take children out of the area on excursions which can be expensive and involve a long day away. Most of the children have never been to a local museum.

I wanted to increase the amount of history teaching in the school and to reintroduce the local area as a major resource for that teaching, especially in stages one and two.

The Project

To develop an easily accessible, teacher friendly resource to facilitate teaching the history strands of the curriculum with links to the local community. This resource would meet the needs of teachers in all stages. In addition to teach some history strands of the curriculum to early stage one and stage one classes during RFF lessons, and arrange local excursions to link in with the area studied.

To do this I needed:

• to research local historical sites and find out how they can be accessed for excursions

• to bring together the many available resources; books, artifacts, useful people etc

• to link all these with the outcomes for the HSIE curriculum

Planning

For the project to proceed I decided on the following courses of action:

• to circulate a questionnaire to all teaching staff to find out how much history had been taught over the last two years and which outcomes had been covered
• to interview each teacher and tell them about the resource I was planning and ask for suggestions as to what else they think it should contain, and if they would like to contribute activities that they may have designed and which worked well for them
• to teach 'history' units to early stage one, stage one and stage two in my 'relief from face to face' time, culminating in excursions to local sites subject to negotiation with classroom teachers
• to visit a number of places in the local area with a view to assessing their suitability for excursions
• to photograph as many places and artifacts as possible with a view to including these photos in the final resource in hard copy and on CD
• to collect and collate old photos and have them available on disk and in hard copy to keep in the resource folder
• to investigate the resources available in the school library in terms of children's books and teacher's resources and also artifacts with a view to collating them
• to investigate the resources of the local council and library and include contract names and numbers.

Project Development

1. Survey results

The results of the survey, which covered the last two years, showed that, as suspected, History was happening in a fairly piecemeal fashion. Some aspects of the curriculum were covered well and others not at all. Stage Three had all covered Gold and Federation. Half of one class had gone out into the local community to look at local sites this year, and last year some classes had gone to visit an historic house in Lithgow. All staff completed the survey.

3. Additional survey

I have interviewed a number of staff on the second survey. I asked each teacher how they would view a resource which contained all the information needed for them to teach the history units for their stage, where to locate the resources, who to contact to provide extra information, and where to go on excursions in the local area. I also asked if they would like to contribute any information of their own or worksheets they had designed to this resource. They have been positive in their response to their resource as completed so far and those I have spoken to will share any suitable resources they have. Having teacher generated or commercially produced sheets which could be used in the classroom seems to be important for the resource to be a useful tool.

Visits to Local Sites

1. The Toy and Railway Museum at Leuralia in Leura

I was well received and I have written to the Evatt family requesting permission to photograph the exhibits. The curator is happy to accommodate school groups and is willing to help with any program I devise to best use the exhibits there to fit in with the class program. It would be suitable for all children but particularly suitable for early stage one and stage one as there is the emphasis on toys.

2. Hobby's Beach Museum at Tarella in Wentworth Falls

This property also houses the resources of the Blue Mountains Historical society. I was not able to gain permission to photograph any of the exhibits but they do welcome school groups, and will accommodate a pre-excursion visit by teachers at a mutually convenient time. They have devised an 'I spy' sheet to get children to examine the collection carefully. The museum houses some artifacts from Katoomba Public School and has a child's bedroom set up, so it would be a great place to visit. Stages one and two would appreciate this museum.

3. Mount Victoria Railway Station Museum

This is the home of the Mount Victoria and District Historical Society. The curator was happy to allow photography of any of the exhibits. They provide a comprehensive guide to the museum and also welcome school groups. Their collection of locally acquired artifacts is extensive and well worth a visit. Later stage one and stage two would find this a very interesting place to visit.

4. Hartley Historic Site

This site is run by Parks and Wildlife and is well set up for visitors. They were happy for me to take photos and they run a special schools program involving a mock trial, where students can participate and dress up as the characters. There are a number of buildings at the site. Ideal for stage two and three.

I have also been to Explorers Tree and at the aboriginal site on the Kings Tableland Wentworth Falls.

There are other sites which I have not yet visited, including The Gully, an aboriginal site in Katoomba, but I will go there with a class in term 4.

Photos

All of the photos I have taken are in the resource and are also on CD ROM.

I have yet to select and scan old photos from the large number which are available.

Contacts

I have made a number of useful local contacts, though the school librarian is a mine of information and his input has been marvelous. He has searched out all manner of interesting information we actually had at school, and has extensive contacts in the local community.

Development of the Teaching Resource

This has been a much larger than expected task as there is so much material available. The response to it has been favourable and I hope it will be well used. I have still more photos to include and have not investigated children's books for older readers. I also need to visit more local sites particularly aboriginal sites so I can include them as well.

I want to link each item in the resource to specific content areas in each stage as I think that will also make the resource more user friendly.

I would like to devise a 'Katoomba Trail' so that a class could walk from the school and see a specific selection of historical sites.

I can see this project taking me into next year.

The Principal has given a T & D meeting this term to explain the resource to the staff. I have been able to enthuse him about the project and he is keen to see the school as a whole adopt a real local history focus in the new HSIE scope and sequence that we are developing in the new year. Perhaps this is my major success.

Unexpected Things

Leuralla

Since my initial contact with the curator at Leuralla I have been asked to assist in developing HSIE outcome linked material for them, so that they can encourage school groups to attend.

Difficulties

I had initially thought that term three was the ideal time for me to take on this project. However, a number of things occurred which have made this seem like a very foolish decision. For various reasons I was away from school on eight days during the term. This, coupled with the disruption to routine caused by the activities of education week, visiting performers, sports carnivals and excursions, meant I had far less teaching time on some classes than I had anticipated and as I only have on hour a week anyway, my program was much reduced. My excursions have been an impossibility and I can only hope that a planned infants' excursion in week 8 in term 4 will actually happen. A stage two excursion to Hartley courthouse is also planned for term 4.

I have encountered some resistance to taking photos at some sites, though in one case this may be overcome.

The enormous number of historical sites and information in the Blue Mountains area has meant that what I have accomplished so far is but a scratch on the surface. This is a work in progress, and I will continue with it for some time to come.

Teaching History units in ES1 S1 & S2

With the limited time available to me I decided to look at some aspects of the Change and Continuity outcomes.

Kindergarten

With these very young children I began by measuring them and seeing how much they had grown since the beginning of the year. Then I read them stories about grandparents and we talked about growing up and getting older. The children made a pictorial time line about growing up. We also talked about remembering things and how it is important to remember things. We looked at old photos and discussed how we would know that a photo was old.

The children brought in two photos of themselves as a baby and as a toddler and together with a photo taken at school, class books were made. The pages read:

This is ............... as a baby
This is ............... as a toddler
Look at ............... now.

Finally we talked about toys and how what they play with has changed as they have grown up. They each brought in a favourite toy and talked to the class about why they like it and where it came from. I brought in some toys 40-50 years old and we looked at the differences to today's toys.

In term 4 we will go to the Toy and Railway Museum at Leuralla in Leura and look at selected parts of the toy collection there.

The children were very much engaged with the topic and ready to talk about their memories and their toys. They were also observant when it came to comparing old and new toys, and also when looking at old photos and working out how they would know it was an old photo. The response 'because it's black and white' was not allowed! They began to say things like 'they wear different clothes' or 'there's an old fashioned car in there'. With the old toys they noticed the different materials, eg metal vs plastic.

I was very impressed by how much the children understood about the past and how observant they were even when it came to details of how they would know whether one adult was older than another. I loved being told that the lines around my eyes were like little butterflies!

Years One and Two - Stage One

Due to the previously mentioned difficulties these were the classes where I missed most lessons.

I began reading the book Too many Sevens by Stephen Gard and then developing a series of lessons talking about memories, old photographs, growing up etc, much the same progression as kindergarten but extending into the olden days and how things have changed. The children also made a pictorial time line of growing older from birth to old age.

Further extension in this area came from reading Lights Out by Stephen Gard.

I collected a number of artifacts from old books and toys to medals, a camera, coins and notes, snuff boxes and a vesta case. The children were intrigued. I also had modern equivalents for them to compare. I am intending to take these children to Leuralla as well, to look at the collection with more emphasis on the furnishings and other artifacts. The toys will be a bonus.

The children thoroughly enjoyed the lessons, often asking whenever I saw them what we were going to do this week. They were fascinated by the artifacts and were able to talk about old things they may have had at home. As there were a lot of older homes in the area, many of them had seen things like a fuel stove. I was once again impressed by the way that many of the children had a good concept of the past and could look perceptively for details in old photographs or explain why an object was old by looking at its shape or what it was made of, or could look for a date on coins or medals.

Years Two and Three - Stages 1 & 2

I have had one cross stage class comprised of mainly fairly able students. I followed the same format as with the stage one classes, but added extra activities such as interpreting time lines, and attempting to do a time line of their own lives. They had been to the Powerhouse Museum, so I was able to draw on their experiences there in addition to looking at the artifacts I had collected.

Once again I was impressed with their understanding of the past and particularly with this group, their ability to articulate their understanding in terms of what they had seen or been told by older members of their families.

This term, Term 4, I am going to look at the First Fleet and convicts with this group and then the crossing of the Blue Mountains, and will take them to Hartley Courthouse as an end of year Excursion.

During the term I liaised with the school librarian who looks after the school archives, and he produced old school things to show the children while he had them in the library, and also read them old fashioned stories to link in with what I was doing.

Teaching Assessment

Having such a limited time with each class has been immensely frustrating and missed lessons were a further complication. I was only able to scratch the surface with regard to the outcomes in this area and yet I was very satisfied to see the enthusiasm of the children for the topic.

I did get them looking critically at artifacts and understanding the concept of time lines, and was able to see the kind of development in historical thinking that Carmel Young cites in her Workshop Material 'History and the Learner'. Being able to work with a range of different age groups has been great in seeing the different levels of thinking.

The big 'Local Experience' is yet to come with excursions planned for fourth term.

On the down side I have not been able to include the local experience as much as I had hoped. I think I was too ambitious as knowing the time constraints an RFF teacher has.

Summing up

In terms of my professional development this project has been the most useful thing I have done in years. It is not finished, although I believe I have accomplished the majority of what I set out to do. I have learned a great deal about teaching history to young children, and I have learned how to put history in the local context. The resource I am still in the process of developing will be useful in terms of lifting the profile of history in the school and making the local community links. With the principal really enthusiastic I believe that History will be more fully taught in the future at Katoomba Public School.