Last term students were highly engaged producing videos about their time in lockdown. We wanted to extend the students’ thinking by putting the lens on the students themselves and documenting a historic period in time. The historical significance of lockdown put the children front and center in this experience.
Melbourne museum have also been document students experiences in lockdown and have created a project called the ‘Museum of staying at home exhibition’. Students viewed the exhibits and reflected on their own connection to the projects.
Some of the questions that students were asked to reflect on included:
- Did any of the exhibits resemble any of the work that you have done in our neighbourhood?
- What are some of the main ideas of each of the exhibits?
- Do other students’ experiences during lockdown resemble yours? Why or why not?
- Why do you think it is important to share these experiences and exhibitions?
Students view the exhibits and were keen to articulate why it was important to share experiences of lockdown.
Charlotte: “Yes. It feels so nice to know that you are not alone and others are feeling the same as you.”
Archer H: “I read the Solace of Stories, and I think what stood out for me was how they made an exhibit about books in the middle of a pandemic. I found that it was completely different from the ones that the year 4 neighbourhood made. I know that the main idea was about the book reading in the pandemic. I think it is important to share books in the exhibit because people would not really think about books in the pandemic.”
Kaan: “The main idea was he/she wanted to escape in their own world and that’s the same thing I was going to do during lockdown: make a sculpture of what my dream room was.”
Karl: “I learned about how to reflect on my experience on lockdown. I enjoyed doing this and I like looking at the different links.”
Lewis: “I think it is important to share experiences so people know how other people are feeling and how they can help relate and understand them and all the wonderful things that happen when libraries are closed down.”
Lyla: “It is important to share these exhibitions because they can be feeling the same way you can be feeling and it is good to get the stuff out.”
Theo: “What stood out to me was the Fantasy Escape Room, it doesn’t resemble my experience because she or he was stuck in a friend’s house. I think it is good to share their experiences so that other people know how he or she went into lockdown.”
Wren: “I really enjoyed the museum’s Victoria activity because you can express yourself and especially be creative.”
Claudia: “I connected to most of the people who wrote the articles but my favorites were the one about pets because they really are our heroes and our lifelong companions and the one about writing letters because they are an amazing way to connect and last year I started a business called local lockdown letters which got loads of people through lockdown and that is what got me on btn.”
Emma: “It is good to see the different things they are doing in lockdown.”
Felix: “Not many of the students’ lockdown experiences resembled mine because I have not been doing a project over lockdown. But I think maybe I should because it would make me feel better about lockdown. I have in common with these people having a hard time doing lockdown.
It’s important to share these exhibits so people could get ideas for their own project which would make them happy so they would share their project so everyone would get Ideas and it would all start again”
Sammy: “I think that the main idea of all the stories was of the “coroner virus.” What stood out to me was the creativity of the students and their teachers. What also stood out to me was that all of the students of varying ages submitted the work that must have taken months to make, (I would not have put that much focus into a piece of work like that.) I have learnt similar to for example: Closed Doors or Fantasy Escape Room. Closed doors are similar to our learning experience in grade 4.
I think that it is important to share this learning because it is important to see and feel other students’ learning experiences.”
Sarah: “I think it is important to remember that these ideas do exist so that is why we can’t forget them, it is important to share them because they all might spread an important word.”
Sonny: “I leant that I do a lot of drawing and I draw on a lot of things. I liked doing this project because I do a lot of the things that the people at the museum do.”
