Inspiration Days
Inspiration Days are one day Adventures in Learning designed to inspire pupils to engage with Key Stage 1 and 2 Curriculum topics.
“Children are highly motivated by this type of learning and in numerous cases, children who are usually quite hard to reach, engaged fully in their learning for the first time.”
- Juliette Jackson, Executive Head of four primary schools
Reception-Year 1: Space/Alien Egg
Pupils find a large, strange egg in the playground and care for Nanoo, the alien who hatches from it!
Curriculum links: Science, space, materials, speaking & listening, caring for others, singing & dance.
Reception-Year 1: Fossils/Dinosaur Dig
Pupils become palaeontologists as they help passionate-but-useless fossil hunters to unearth an array of real dinosaur fossils (buried sneakily in advance by KIT).
Curriculum links: Science, letter writing, speaking & listening, dinosaurs, singing & dance.
Year 1-2: Fire of London
Pupils use a Time Machine to send messages back in time to Thomas Farriner, assuring him that London survived the fire and that he is forgiven for starting it.
Curriculum links: History, persuasive writing, group writing, speaking & listening & drama.
This Inspiration Day can also be adapted to focus on WW2 Evacuees and London Landmarks.
Years 2-3: Chocolate Inventors
Having run out of ideas, Chocolate Imaginators arrive at school and recruit pupils to design extraordinary new chocolate bars. Pupils experiment with molten chocolate and real ingredients before creating marketing campaigns for their creations to impress the chocolate factory boss.
Curriculum links: Science, persuasive writing, speaking & listening, singing & drama.
Year 3: Unexpected Archaeologists - Romans
Two amateur archaeologists lead an excavation outside where the pupils discover and investigate a Roman hoard which inspires them to create writing and drama.
Curriculum links: History, writing, speaking & listening, singing & drama
This Inspiration Day can also be adapted to focus on Stone/Bronze/Iron Age artifacts.
Year 4: The Lost Australians - Natural Disasters
Pupils undertake natural disaster survival-training from two (very) lost Australians who are supposed to be training children in Australia. Going undercover as Australians pupils create writing and drama around hurricanes, earthquakes and volcanoes.
Curriculum links: Geography, fact-finding, script writing, singing & drama.
Year 5: Alfred The Great Time Capsule
Pupils discover an ancient chest buried by King Alfred The Great which contains objects and scrolls telling the story of Anglo Saxon life and Alfred’s struggle against the Vikings. Pupils investigate the Anglo Saxon treasures, write speeches and create a Time Capsule about their lives which they bury for future generations to unearth.
Curriculum links: History, letter writing, speech writing, speaking & listening.
Year 5-6: Lost Gods
Zeus sends Apollo and Aphrodite to ‘relaunch’ the Greek Gods in the modern world (as punishment for cutting off his beard). Pupils help them by creating marketing campaigns & TV ads to bring the Ancient Greeks and their gods up to date.
Curriculum links: History (Ancient Greeks), song writing, persuasive writing, speaking & listening & drama.
Note – this can be adapted to cover other ancient civilizations studied such as Romans, Ancient Egyptians & Mayans.
Sorting through Lost Property, pupils discover an old WW1 Kitbag belonging to a soldier, Private Jack Brigham. They create a presentation about the soldier’s life to present to Jack’s grandchild (now an old man) who visits to collect the bag.
Curriculum links: History, poetry writing, speaking & listening & reading comprehension.
“The ‘Inspiration Days’ are a really effective means of creating memorable and exciting learning experiences without having to travel outside the school. They will never forget what they learned on these magical days.”
- Rebecca Smith, Head Teacher, St Eugene’s Primary School.
All the projects above were originally developed with teachers. Please contact us if you would like to work with KIT to develop a new Inspiration Day about a topic not featured above: