CASE STUDY

Roman Heritage Encourages Pupil Attendance in Perthshire

Rebecca Barclay's Story

A pupil lead project exploring the Romans in Scotland. The project was used for a pupil, previously struggling with attendance to help integrate them back into the classroom.

Investigate

Most of the research was carried out online, with the pupil exploring various websites, articles, and social media to find out more about the Romans in Perthshire. Maps were also used to find sites and think about how to access them.

Key questions explored in the investigation stage included:

• Where they are from?
• Why were they in Scotland?
• What did they eat?
• What did they do?
• What weapons did they use?

Engage

Using maps of the local area, a cycle trail was planned to visit different Roman signal stations on the route. This part of the project meant developing new map reading skills and supported the pupils numeracy skills, incorporating maths, one of the subjects they were missing into the project. The remains of the signal stations were observed, and interpretations panels studied at each site, adding to the pupils existing knowledge.

Inspire

The pupils chose to share the findings of the project with school nurture staff by putting together a PowerPoint presentation with maps, images, and facts from the project.

Reflect

A workbook was kept for the duration of the project, with some questions for reflection at the end.

• When asked: How did you feel taking part in the project? How did you feel when you went outdoors to learn?
• E answered:  Excited, Happy, Free, Resilient and Proud.
• When asked: How did it make you feel sharing what you have learned with other people (Inspire).
• E Answered: ‘It made me feel happy knowing I inspired someone’
• When asked: What skills have you learned?
• E answered: ‘I developed multiple skills like cycling, organising and orienteering.’
• When asked: What have you learned during the project?
• E answered: ‘ I have learnt trip planning and more about the Romans. As well as presenting and research skills.’
• When asked: ‘Do you feel you have developed any skills throughout the award?’
• E answered: ‘I have learned about the Romans, cycle skills and my understanding of maps and linking them to the history of the area.’

Lessons Learned: The Heritage Hero Award can be combined with other Awards, including Cycle Skills Level 1.

Highlight(s)

The pupil mentioned that their favourite part of the experience was getting outdoors and engaging with the history.

The nurture worker and I do believe that having an award, where they were in control of the pace, the topics learned and how they engaged, will have contributed to their overall confidence-building and self-esteem.

Outdoor Learning Worker

Roman Heritage Encourages Pupil Attendance in Perthshire

Outcome

Pupil E has previously struggled with attendance at school in the last year and has since been working on a part-time basis initially making attendance only with myself in Outdoor Education and his Nurture Worker. Part of E’s attendance with myself was to complete this award and hopefully encourage him, through a very accessible course such as this, that they do have the skills and abilities required for school life. We planned their project around the Romans, but also subtly included some of the classes they were missing such as Maths – we covered this through our map work when creating the Roman cycle trail, English – through completion of their workbook and their presentation at the end, History of course, through their research and information finding and computing through creation of the presentation etc.

Throughout their time participating in this award, amongst a few others and a LOT of hard work and effort on E’s part, they have now managed to partially integrate back into their classes and are attending on a more regular basis. Their nurture worker and I do believe that having an award where they were in control of the pace, topics learned and engaged with will have contributed to their overall confidence building and self-esteem.