Over the course of the past academic year, I have been working with two wonderful secondary school teachers to prepare a series of teaching resources based on the Secrets of Nature series. These are now available to download from the Teaching Resources section of the site.
The purpose of this site has always been to share knowledge about the history of natural history filmmaking, focussing primarily on the Secrets series. My research is concerned with situating these films within a historical context, and I have tried to emphasise this angle in the content of this site. For example, natural history films are remarkable historical artefacts that speak to how peoples’ relationship to the environment has changed over time, serving as a fascinating visual glimpse into Britain’s environmental history. On the other hand, the stories of Mary Field, Phyllis Bolté, Gladys Callow and others give us a vivid picture of the roles performed by women in the film industry during the 1920s and 1930s. These are some of the themes that the new teaching resources draw on, through a series of engaging activities for classroom use.
The teaching resources have been grouped into four teaching packs, each of which centres on an enquiry question. They include a range of interactive activities that are based on original primary sources. They have been prepared with flexibility in mind: teachers may wish to use all four themes to build several lessons, or could instead build one single theme into a wider lesson plan. Each teaching pack includes:
- Presentation slides for use in class, with activities and explanations
- Activities for students.
- An accompanying teachers’ document with completed activities and further guidance.
In preparing these resources, I worked alongside Molly Riglin (Turing House School) and Jason Langford (The Blandford School). Collaborating with Molly and Jason has been such a pleasure – they brought a fresh set of perspectives, and especially enthusiasm, to material that I had been working on for several years now.
When we first began collaborating, I was worried that my research would not be easily adaptable to History teaching in schools, or that the teachers wouldn’t find the material that interesting. On the contrary, I soon found that Molly and Jason were coming up with some fantastic imaginative ways to engage students in this material, and they were both really keen to learn more. Their students are lucky to have them as teachers – and no doubt we’ll remain in touch over the next few years.
One of the things that Jason and Molly were keen to emphasise was that these resources fit many of the principal requirements of the national curriculum in History, while covering a range of topics that students may not ordinarily encounter in class. If you are a teacher who is looking to use new material in the next acdemic year, I hope that you will find the materials helpful!
To download the materials, I have added a GDPR-friendly email sign-up. This is because we are very keen to hear feedback on how the resources are used in classrooms. What worked? What didn’t? What could we add? If you would prefer to get in touch directly, feel free to drop me an email at mel58 [at] cam.ac.uk.
Secrets of Nature 