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SCOTTISH HISTORICAL CHARACTERS

  • SCOTTISH HISTORICAL CHARACTERS

    Holyrood SecondarySchool: S3 Geography class

    Geografía and historia project

     

    Background

    For this project we worked with our partner school in Boadilla del Monte to discover historical charachters and monuments in Glasgow and Boadilla del Monte. Thirty S3 (age 14-15) pupils worked on the project to investigate important people from Glasgow´s history and look at the monuments and buildings associated with them. We combined classwork with homework to research the different characters and monuments and gather information about them. The pupils used their research to conduct interviews and information posters to show  our partner school  IES Arquitecto Ventura Rodriguez our work. This project has strong links to the European year of Cultural Heritage and will be an exciting way to learn more aboutthe people who shaped Glasgow and Boadilla del Monte. 

     

    First task:

    Firstly the class were asked to think of five important important buildings in Glasgow.The class then had some time to think about the important people connected with these buildings. The pupils suggested a range of people and places both historical and modern. The class were then given the following aims relating to historical characters

    Our class will be working on a project that will be shared online with our partner school in Madrid.

    We will:

    •Investigate famous people  and special places in Glasgow to find out their history.

    •We will discover who has been involved with the buildings past and create questions to “interview” a person from the past.

    •We will also practice our geography skills by finding these locations on OS maps.

     

    Second task:

    Our class did some research voted for the most interesting characters. We voted for the following characters: Charles Rennie Mackintosh a famous artist and architect, William Cunninghamme, a tobaco lord, William Elder, an important figure in shipbuilding, Archibald Leitch a famous football stadium architect and also musicians, athletes, comediens,politicians, religeous figures.

     

    Third task: 

    To engage more with our Spanish partners I created a picture quiz showing famous people and monuments in Madrid. This enhanced our link with Boadilla del Monte and we tried to guess people from there. We also did some map work as part of this to enhance our geography skills. 

     

    Fourth task: 

    Research and investigation homework task. Pupils had to find out at least eight facts about any of the historical characters and the buildings they were associated with. This information would be used during the interviews for pupils to have sufficient background information.

     

    We Found Out About

    Charles Rennie Mackintosh - a very famoud Glaswegian architect, designer and artist. He designed many of Glasgow's beautiful buildings inlcuding the House for an Art Lover, The Willow Tea Rooms, The Lighthouse and the Glasgow School of Art. The pupils work shows that there was avery devastating fire and restoration work had been taking place over the lpst few years, unfortunately there was another fire in June 2018 which has again devastated the building - https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jun/16/firefighters-tackle-blaze-at-glasgow-school-of-art

     

     

     

    We also found out about more negative parts of Glasgow's history, including the people and monuments associated with the transatlantic slave trade. William Cunninghamme was a "tobacco lord" who profitted from the slave trade. The Cunninghamme mansion was built in the city centre and is now a reminder of this part of our past.

     

    Another person we found out about was Archibald Leitch, a fanous architect who designed many of Britains football stadiums. He fanously designed "Hampden Park" - this is the national football stadium for Scotland and is only a 5 minute walk from our scool.

     

    Fifth task:

    Pupils used the information from their homework research to make up note cards to refer to during interviews; these note cards can be seen above.

     

    Sixth task:

    Pupils worked with each other to share their findings about their historical characters. We decided to compile the note cards pupils created to display our information. The interviews were very successful as pupils were well prepared and had done some excellent research.

     

    We really enjoyed working on the E-twinning project and look forward to more international learning in future!