As part of our Victorian topic in History we were transported back in time to a Victorian classroom. The children all dressed up in period clothing and spent the morning following the strict Victorian approach to education.
The morning started with dictation with the children listening intently to the Bible passage making sure to write down everything that was read to them.
Everyone worked incredibly hard to keep with the pace of writing that they needed to do. It certainly wasn’t their favourite lesson of the morning.
After dictation the children had an Arithmetic lesson where they had to complete addition and subtraction using Victorian money making sure they converted their pence to shillings and shillings to pounds. Later we discussed how this was difficult for us to understand because we are used to decimalisation. The children said that if they were Victorians and had only known pounds, shillings and pence then they think they would have found it easier.
Following the morning break the children came back to the class for their reading lesson. The children continued to read the class text of Street Child by Berlie Doherty one by one making sure they were following in case they were the next to be chosen to read.
Our final lesson of the morning was Art and the children had to work in complete silence whilst they created a still life drawing of items on top of the desk at the front of the classroom. The children said that this was the most like a modern lesson that they would have at school. However they don’t normally have to work in complete silence during Art lessons.
Overall, the children enjoyed their morning and said that they are glad that they live in a time where the cane is not used and the teachers are not as strict as the Victorian teachers.
