Back To School With George

I’m really happy. I’m very proud of the students. You know, it’s different. Lessons are always so well-structured. They’re almost overly structured. We lose a lot of engagement. I was really surprised how much they actually took from the resources, happily surprised, you know, from just using the poem and just using the poster. They learn so much about Queen Nzinga without losing the engagement. They were engaged throughout the whole lesson and they were really into where they were really interested by it. And I just think it gave such a nourishing way to teach them. In that one lesson… I mean, we could create three or four lessons out of it. We could really go into depth about sort of her early life.

How how she became an ambassador, how she developed her political skill. We could talk more about, you know, the different aspects of trades within the African kingdoms at that point in time. You know, in this lesson, this was like a hook lesson. And they got so much from that is a great start lesson, but then we could really go in depth and build upon that.

And we hadn’t even looked at the historiography and how that she was portrayed by the historians, but also how does that relate to the wider context of history we touched on the lesson was that the idea of history being a construct and if we look to the historic for more, I think that will really embed into the students knowledge and understanding. I mean, we’re very lucky in history because we can we can diversify our curriculum and we can add things in. So in history, using these resources is fantastic. But, you know, this could be used in a PSHE lesson, that could be used in an English lesson.

I mean, Lawrence’s poem is such an emotive, beautiful piece of art, you know, I’ve taken so much from it and a historical perspective. Imagine what an English teacher could use with that for other lessons as well. I mean, in an art lesson, they can definitely use that poster. I mean, I’m sure an art teacher could spend a whole half term on the Queen Nzinga poster or even longer infact.