Roman Day with New Marston Primary School
On Monday 5th February, 30 pupils from Year 4 at New Marston Primary School visited Headington School for a Roman Exploration Day.
The day was coordinated between the schools, with New Marston looking to extend their pupils’ knowledge of the Roman history and culture while Headington staff volunteered to showcase their knowledge and skills in this area.
The day started in the Theatre with a rehearsal of a play about Julius Caesar.
Mr Phil Macken, Director of Drama at Headington School said: “The children performed wonderfully, and many showed brilliant acting skills as well as comic timing and a thirst for traitorous murder!”
This was then followed by a dynamic and engaging lesson exploring the positives and negatives of the Roman invasion of Britain. The pupils were still split by the end as to whether they thought it had been overly positive or not.
Then came an opportunity to build a fully-functioning aqueduct in the creative engineering and design workshop. The models were tested with water and several groups created an excellent working structure.
The pupils ended the day with a Roman apothecary style experiment, using a pestle and mortar to mix ingredients such as charcoal, fennel and egg shells to make toothpaste. The pupils then used sticks with bristle ends as toothbrushes on stains to see how effective the paste was.
Mrs Sallie Campbell, Science Teacher at Headington said: “The pupils from New Marston were engaged, hardworking and inquisitive – a pleasure to teach!”
