Intended Learning Outcome

We intended to find out 'What has changed?' in relation to our chosen building.

We found that to really answer this in depth we needed to look not only at the history of the building, but also the general life of the people of the past time who lived in our city. We touched on building styles in different periods of time, building construction techniques and why these have changed also, building materials, technologies, the make up of our city to cater for changing daily lives, and even aspects such as paints and decorative restrictions of the times.

Our work was deeply embedded in social sciences but branched into almost every other curriculum area to get to the depth of understanding that the children achieved. It was powerful to start with a building the children knew well as this gave them a solid 'now' viewpoint to make comparisons against.

The inclusion of visual art into the inquiry process was to build the students ability to create a narrative and emotive response to something such as a building that may otherwise be seen to be cold and clinical. Viewing of photographs and floor plans also added to their ability to imagine they were there in previous eras.