The Open Air Classroom 

Museum launches ground breaking new website for schools 

www.openairclassroom.org.uk 

The Weald and Downland Open Air Museum, an educational charity, launches a new website designed for schools and school teachers planning visits as part of the National Curriculum. 

The website illustrates the resources available at the Museum related to the key areas of the curriculum, English, History, Science, Maths, Art and Design.  In addition to 47 buildings rescued from destruction and rebuilt at the Museum there are seven period gardens, traditional farming activities, rare breed animals, extensive supporting artefact collections, a document and photographic archive and library. 

The aim is to provide readily accessible information to enable the planning of teacher led visits to the Museum to cover a single curriculum subject or, as is more common today, a cross curricular visit. 

The website is graphically based and suggests those units of the curriculum that would be served by each of the buildings or activities on the Museums’  50 acre site.  Whilst the major focus is to encourage the development of teacher led visits, the site contains full details of the increasingly popular programme of workshops and school event days. 

Activity sheets covering aspects of Science, Maths and History are presented in down-loadable form for teachers to use or modify to suit their requirements. 

A key aim of the website is to make all educational material produced by the Museum available to teachers in machine readable form and thus reduce administration and free Museum staff to develop additional educational resources.  Furthermore, teachers will be able to adapt the material to suit their own requirements. 

News items will be published regularly on the website and these can be emailed to schools that opt in to the service.   

The site will showcase work resulting from schools visits to the Museum and it is hoped that teachers will engage in a dialogue with the  Museum schools service regarding the continued development of this website and the services offered to schools. 

The Museum believes this new website to be unique in the facilities it offers to teachers planning visits outside the classroom.

Background Information

The award-winning Weald & Downland Open Air Museum has over 45 historic building exhibits and is designated by the Government for the outstanding importance of its collections. Exhibits include a medieval farmstead; a working watermill producing wholemeal stoneground flour; exhibitions focusing on traditional building techniques and agriculture; historic gardens, farm livestock and a working Tudor kitchen.

In addition to the 47 reconstructed buildings there is a supporting collection of over 10,000 domestic, agricultural and trade artefacts, a collection of wheeled vehicles, a document and photographic archive and an extensive library.  The supporting collections are accessible, by prior arrangement, to teachers and students and represent a rich and varied resource. 

The Downland Gridshell workshop, classroom and open access store is an award winning, innovative, modern timber building which is available for educational use.

The schools service welcomes over 25,000 schoolchildren a year for workshops and teacher led visits covering all aspects of the curriculum.

Note to Editors

Reporters and photographers are welcome at the Museum. For further information call Rachel Neville on 01243 811459 or email schoolbookings@wealddown.co.uk.

Full details about the services to schools offered by the Museum can be found on the website www.openairclassroom.org.ok.

Full details of the Museum and all of its activities can be found at www.wealddown.co.uk