Claire Cooper describes how The Tank Museum provides an inclusive learning experience for children on school trips with special educational needs.
Adapting to individual needs
Every child’s visit to us here at The Museum is extremely important and we believe that everyone has the right to access our collective history in an environment tailored to them.
Teachers are invited to have a pre-visit before any school trip. This allows the teacher and the museum’s Education Department to create a timetable that works for each individual school. This may include shorter sessions, extra breaks or an adaptation of the workshop.
How The Tank Museum enhances the learning experience for children with SEN
The Tank Museum, which is located in Dorset, welcomes thousands of school children each year. We have several local SEN/BESD schools that visit us on a regular basis. The museum provides a unique sensory experience. The large open spaces filled with tanks not only provides inclusive access, but also allows pupils to get up close to the vehicles which makes them appreciate the scale and formidable presence a tank has. They can touch the tanks themselves, but we also have lots of hands-on activities in every hall including dressing up stations, play tables, learning interactive and touch screens. Aroma boxes, which are placed around the halls, are popular with children who can smell some of the strange and wonderful aromas that soldiers would have experienced.
Cross Curricular
Tanks were a British invention that first saw use during the First World War. This makes “tanks” as a topic very versatile. History can be linked with any war of the past one hundred years and many schools use personal stories of local soldiers who served. This approach can be used for creative writing with descriptive diary entries and the museum offers a free scheme of work to support this. STEM subjects can also offer a range of activities such as the design and technology that is needed for the development of tanks. The Tank Museum uses ‘Lego Mindstorm’ for pupils to build a tank to drive around an obstacle course. This teaches pupils to predict and plan as well as adapt and develop their ideas if everything doesn’t go according to plan.
The museum has several models of special tanks that were adapted for D-Day during the Second World War. Pupils can handle these models and experiment using them on a series of problematic beach landing obstacles to discover which tank was adapted for which problem. A giant water bath is also used to demonstrate swimming tanks and pupils enjoy plunging their hands into the water to retrieve their sunken “tanks.”
Getting inside a tank
We can verbally tell a pupil that tanks are cramped and uncomfortable but nothing can compare to physically climbing into one and experiencing it for yourself. There are a few options for school groups depending on needs. One of our First World War tanks has a few steps and a large door to climb in through. Pupils can choose to sit on the steps if they do not want to go all the way inside so this can be easily adapted to individual requirements. Our Chieftain tank is accessed through the top of the tank so pupils need to be a certain height to be drop inside. Our most accessible tank is a cut in half Centurion that has a gangway through the middle which is suitable for wheelchair users. Most of the museum is on one level, but other levels can be easily accessed via ramps and lifts.
The Tank Museum will work with the school to create a bespoke package that works for any SEN group so that a fun and educational visit is always guaranteed to be had.
Author: Claire Cooper
Claire Cooper
Claire Cooper has been the Education Officer at The Tank Museum for 7 years.
W: tankmuseum.org/services/school-trips/ F: @tankmuseum
