The Royal Albert Hall is developing an educational resource Showtime produced by Bongo LLP. Designed in alignment with the National Curriculum and in particular Functional Skills, Showtime offers pupils a fun way to understand how their educational learning can actually be useful in real life.
There are three subjects – English, Maths, ICT. Units contain recorded sessions with Royal Albert Hall staff where they talk to the pupils directly telling them briefly what they do and setting tasks relevant to their work that need to be accomplished with help from pupils.
Within the English section, pupils learn about marketing through the use of language, publicity, presentation and the importance of grammar and punctuation. In the fund-raising section, they discover the differences between putting on a show in the Royal Albert Hall compared to one at school. They discover that certain rules of engagement exist when you’re trying to get money out of businesses for a good cause!
Each component of the subjects comes with teachers’ notes and extension activities to widen the scope of the sections and encourage pupils to discover the world outside school and home.
Within the Maths section, pupils have to use equations to solve accountancy, lighting and staging problems in one unit, while in another, they find out about sound measuring and amplification. The extension activities provide further problems, or thoughts on wider issues concerning sound and listening to loud music.
The ICT section focuses on the how and why of modern communication methods, and the uses of spreadsheets and databases within the Royal Albert Hall. The extension activities explore how these can all help pupils organise themselves in their own lives.
It’s a visually attractive resource with an original approach to education – using real people in a real setting, setting real problems. The Royal Albert Hall is a fantastic choice of venue because through the resource, pupils learn about its history and activities which are eventful and many, and so absorb information on one of our great cultural and historical icons without the slightest
twinge of pain.
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