The School Room at Armley Mills
The Schoolroom is based at Armley Mills Industrial Museum and enables pupils to experience, in costume and in role, either the timetable of a typical Victorian Board school, or a 1940’s classroom, where children prepare to become evacuees. For more images of The Schoolroom, please visit the Artemis Gallery.
The Schoolroom provides children with a Living History experience and subsequently enriches History topics as outlined in the National Curriculum and QCA documents. It offers cross-curricular dimensions and is sufficiently flexible to support a Local History topic.
A visit encourages enjoyment in learning and has been found to motivate pupils, arouse their curiosity and make the abstract more concrete.
The Schoolroom is available to pupils at KS1 and KS2 and is free to schools within the Leeds Education Authority.
The Victorian Schoolroom
The Victorian schoolroom session gives pupils the opportunity to explore the timetable of a typical school of the School Board era 1870-1901. In an authentic classroom pupils follow a timetable based on the 3 R’s under the watchful eye of the school “ma’am”.
The Forties Classroom
The Forties classroom gives pupils a taste of school in Leeds in 1940, just after the outbreak of the Second World War. Children learn what to do in the event of a gas attack and an air raid, learn how to Dig for Victory and prepare to become evacuees.
What does a visit to the Schoolroom involve?
If required, the Teacher-in-charge can arrange a visit to your school in advance of the day to prepare your children for their experience in the Victorian or 1940's classroom.
On the day, the role play sessions last a morning. These are planned and delivered by our fully qualified and very experienced teacher-in-charge. These sessions can be tailor-made to your requirements or can focus on a particular aspect of the historical school experience.
There are several optional activities offered to schools in the afternoon such as discovering the life of a mill child, a weaving workshop, looking at toys from the past and watching films on the theme of evacuation in the museum’s 1930’s cinema.
An area is provided for eating packed lunch.
