Teaching the Spanish Armada

I was at the Rogate village BBQ in the woods last night, down in Sussex, no photos thankfully. One of my old University mates lives there and helps organise the event every year. It tends to turn into a kind of Warwick Graduates reunion of sorts.

I was talking to an old friend and we came up with a great way to teach the Spanish Armada. Get the class to make lots of paper boats. Then arrange them a little like the Armada and English fleets were on some open space on the floor. Next get a select few pupils to simulate the destruction of the armada through various means - perhaps throwing a hacky sack at them of representing the violent storms which beset the Armada after it was scattered.

What I liked most about this idea was that it was active learning and it struck me as a great way to get the students really involved in the story. I think this would be a really neat way of teaching this topic to year 7, 8 and perhaps 9. I need to look at this as a tactic for other subjects too. Whilst I was thinking about this method of teaching the Spanish Armada I also started thinking about Elizabethan fashions, following on from my last post. Now fashion is not now, nor has it ever been, something that interests me. That said, I think that a way to cover this topic would be to get the students to have a go at designing their own outfits for Elizabeth and for her favourite, Dudley. Again, it is active and gets them thinking about what the outfit needs to say and why.