Connected Curriculum at the Pitt Rivers Museum

On Wednesday 28th September all of Year 8 enjoyed a trip to the Pitt Rivers museum and the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. This was part of a ‘connected curriculum’ day where Art, English, and Religious Studies came together.

The girls walked down to the museums through the parks in glorious sunshine and began by exploring and sketching the ‘ghost forest’ exhibition of trees outside. Then we split into groups and were led by the Pitt Rivers staff into the wonderful world of the museums. A particular focus of the trip was the collection of artefacts from the Haida people, including the iconic Pitt Rivers totem pole. This built on work the girls are doing in RS. In Art the girls are creating totem poles based on coil pots depicting animals that are important to them. The time in the two museums looking closely at how animals are depicted proved inspirational for this art project. For English, the girls were set to seek out (or perhaps be grabbed by) an object that ‘spoke’ to them, and they are now telling the stories of these objects as follow-up work in class.

In the afternoon the girls returned to school and, after a special lunch together, worked in house groups on a creative response to the stimulus of the morning. They created sculptures and presentations which reflected their shared values.

Feedback and evaluation of the day indicates that it was a great success and the girls enjoyed broadening their learning and making the most of the resources available to us in Oxford.