Our department has been fortunate to welcome lots of school pupils over the past month. Sharing our craft is an important part of our department, and several events were organised by our outreach director, Dr Daniel Renshaw. Alongside him this month was Dr Jacqui Turner and a group of PhD students, who developed several sessions to engage pupils of different ages.
On the 6th June, we welcomed sixth form students from the Queens’ School, a visit that was aptly aligned close to their mock election campaign. During this visit, students were treated to an interactive session by Jacqui, who challenged them on civil disobedience, protest and politics. After a campus tour and lunch, Dan gave a lecture on migration, where the students thought more about the movement of people, and who is missing from history. To finish off the day, the group was joined by PhD student Abbie Tibbott, who delivered a session about her path to PhD, and ran a small social experiment where students tried to reflect upon what they were good at. As predicted, they found it difficult, embarrassing, and maybe a little cringey to highlight their best attributes but came to understand that thinking reflectively would be important for their UCAS personal statements.
All in all, both staff and students had a great day, and this is a model that the department would be happy to extend to more sixth form colleges in the future, depending on what type of history that students are interested in.
On the 18th June, the department delivered their inaugural ‘Unlocking History’ day, where around 100 schoolchildren arrived on campus for a day full of interactive activities. These students were pre-GCSE exams, so the whole idea of the day was to get them inspired about history and what they could learn further down the line. After being split into groups, students rotated around several activity sessions, each delivered by a member of our department. This was great experience, especially for PhD students Amy Longmuir, Fiona Lane and Abbie Tibbott, as they developed brand new sessions for this outreach event.
Amy concentrated her session within the heart of second-wave feminism, working with her groups to examine the demands of women’s organisations. Fiona continued the theme of protest and activism, challenging pupils to look at both photography and the written word as historical sources. Abbie ran a session on the 1920s, looking at technology, society and culture, complete with a treasure hunt! Dan delivered a session on migration, while last (but certainly not least) Jacqui put on a fantastic handling session for all groups, where the students were able to handle real-life historical documents and think more about childhood.
We asked our session leaders to share some of their teaching tools, and what a diverse range!
Initial feedback has been fantastic, with lots of interest from a waiting list to run the event again in the next academic year. Just under 91% of attendees rated the day ‘excellent’ or ‘good’, with 94% indicating that they are thinking about going to university in the future. Most reassuring was the 99% that said they’d learnt something new! It was a different style of teaching for the department, but we are immensely eager to welcome our future historians, as well as support the careers of our postgraduates.
Dan reflected on the experience:
“It has been great to welcome students from local secondary schools to Reading over the summer months. On 6th June a large group of A-Level students joined us to discuss political and social history, and to find out about possible routes through higher education, with Jacqui, Abbie and myself. This week we had almost a hundred year eights taking part in a history day school, where lecturers and doctoral students talked about their research interests. It was great to see the enthusiasm of the students and their willingness to engage, and hopefully, for the younger pupils, it will make history seem like an interesting and useful choice when they’re deciding on which GCSEs to pick. It’s good fun to work with the pupils, especially because they are always willing to ask questions and discuss ideas in front of their peers! All of this took place because of the amazing central outreach team, and the student ambassadors who looked after each group of pupils, as well as our fantastic PhD students, who discussed their work with the pupils. We’re hoping to do more events like this over the next year.”
If you would like to find out more about what the department is getting up to this summer, do make sure that you follow us on X (Twitter) and Instagram, both @unirdg_history. We are also in the process of developing our YouTube channel, where we are publishing student and staff research projects.
This blog was published on behalf of staff in the Department of History. If you would like to find out more about what we can offer to schools, please email d.g.renshaw@reading.ac.uk
READING HISTORY 
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