Agent One is a time traveller who is lost in space. He's bumped his head and can't remember any of his training. He's forgotten everything he ever knew about how to be an explorer.
He needs to complete his mission to the planet Marzipan and is in desperate need of help. The 6 and 7 year old children of Sir John Lillie Primary School have been invited to join the time travelling agency. They will need to retrain him and give him the tools and equipment he needs, developing their own skills in the process.
Once the children had been formally accepted into the Time Travel Agency, they would enter the time portal that the students had created for them using green screen technologies.
The students researched the lives of Alexandra David Neel, Nellie Bly, Ibn Battuta, Neil Armstrong. and created blogs, writing in role as these explorers from the past. These blogs would support the children to understand why these explorers were 'significant people' and help them to make comparisons between them.
To prepare for this challenge, the children contacted explorers from the past to discover the skills and qualities they posessed and how these helped them complete their own missions. The children examined the blogs written by Nelly Bly, Neil Armstrong, Ibn Battuta and Alexandra David Neel which contained videos, images and short written texts about their adventures and discoveries. They also read picture books about these explorers and made notes about their lives. Once they had gathered the information they needed, each group listed the skills and qualities that they felt these explorers posessed and placed these in order, from most imporatant to least important. Each group then compared and discussed their views and opinions with the other groups.
The children were told that the Agency needed new recruits. To join the agency the children must first complete an agent profile for the website. The children were told that each profile should include their agent self-portrait and a list of skills and qualities that make them good explorers.
Once they had been accepted into the agency the children set about helping Agent One.
In order to piece together the SOS message from Agent One, the children needed to locate capsules containing memory sticks, which had been scattered around the playground. The hunt for these was very exciting and the children were keen to return to the class to reassemble the message and discover the challenges they would need to tackle.
Agent One's spaceship had broken down and he didn't know how to fix it! The children set about building him some tools and machines that they thought might help him. In doing so they met learning objectives related to the Art and Design aspects of the curriculum.
Agent One was lost so the children made a map to help Agent One find his way home. They looked at the maps past explorers used to learn about the features of maps and also learnt about navigation tools that explorers used to help them discover there whereabouts.
Agent one had lost several items during his journey, including his laptop. The children used time portals to look into the past and find the items he had lost. The children then scripted and filmed news reports about the discoveries they had made.
News Report from ARGLE.NET on Vimeo.
The explorers of the past had sent some artefacts through the time portal. These included a Victorian ink pot and pen from Nelly Bly, a cine-camera from Neil Armstrong and many other items too. After examining these items and discussing why they were useful during the expeditions, the children created a list of items that Agent One would need to find before he could complete his mission successfully. For example, Neil Armstrong had used a camera to document his discoveries and Nelly Bly had written her accounts down by hand before they were printed. The Children decided that Agent One would need a digital camera to film and photograph his travels.
Downloads
Blog entry
Join the conversation