Gorleston pupils create their own museum

Creative and history loving pupils have created a museum in their Gorleston school.

Children at Peterhouse Church of England Primary Academy have been looking at the topic How has my past been shaped? as part of a new curriculum, with each class looking at a historical subject.

To showcase their work, the children and teachers put together a whole school museum with various displays including ones on the Blitz, Florence Nightingale, fishing and the history of Great Yarmouth.

Each class displayed their work as a museum exhibit, complete with labels and artefacts.

The museum was then open to parents and visitors. Some of the children acted as curators for their exhibition and gave all of the visitors useful and interesting facts as they passed through.

The exhibits were judged by Sam Jinks, learning officer for Norfolk Museums.

He was very impressed with the quality of the work and spent a long time looking at each year group’s work.

He said: “It was very hard to choose a winner, as all of the exhibits were of such high quality.”

After much deliberation, he chose Year 5’s work about the Yarmouth fishing industry as the winner.

Each class in Year 5 will be getting £100 to spend on topic resources for their new topic and each pupil in that year was donated a free pass to the Time and Tide museum.

Ryan Freeman, headteacher, said: “I am so pleased with how the event has gone. It is the first marker of how well our new curriculum is being received. It was great to see history coming to life and the children so excited to showcase their knowledge. Due to the success, we will be holding another showcase event at the end of next term.”