Teaching About Dinosaurs, Mammals & Birds In Birmingham Museum, Also The Odd Sessions At The Nature Centre…

 Teaching About Dinosaurs, Mammals & Birds In Birmingham Museum, Also The Odd Sessions At The Nature Centre…

I watched Jane Duffield work a session or two with visiting Key Stage 1 classes about dinosaurs but when I took over those sessions after Jane had given birth to a child and didn’t return to the Museum, I actually taught the pupils, rather than relying on a short chat in the palaeontology gallery and then dispersing the children and their accompanying adults with printed worksheets.

THE M.A.G...

I loved doing that session, mainly because of three visual aids: the huge model of Tyrannosaurus Rex, the fossilised skull of a Triceratops and a fine fossilised skeleton of a Giant Deer, or Irish Elk. The Triceratops and Elk are still on display at Millennium Point, I believe.

ABOVE: THE TRICERATOPS SKULL & BELOW: THE IRISH ELK/GIANT DEER, BOTH NOW AT MILLENNIUM POINT, I BELIEVE...

The teaching I employed involved handling some small fossils in the gallery but using those three featured creatures to engage the children in conversation, rather than simply tell them facts about how many years ago they existed. Using tough jargon for infants, like Jurassic, carnivorous, or predatory without any real explanations had been rather pointless in previous years…

Eventually, some technicians made me a ‘dinosaur’ from plywood but I then asked them to saw it into small pieces, so that the children might try to assemble what amounted to a wild jigsaw of a prehistoric creature, having no image to work from. Never was the finished shape the same of course, which underlined to the children that essentially it had been guesswork from available evidence which had originally portrayed prehistoric creatures. They also began to understand that when more detailed fossilised remains are found our conceptions of what creatures might have looked like can always change. 

There was no greater example of that than the huge papier mâché T-Rex which was the star attraction in the Museum’s gallery…  

THE FEARSOME T-REX...

It was built in a round shaped gallery on floor three but when it was constructed it was generally accepted that T-Rex’s long, powerful tail dragged close to the ground and access to the gallery meant that the Museum’s model needed a tail well off the ground and so it was built thus. However, as time had progressed palaeontologists began to realise that the predatory creature would be more likely to have had a forward leaning stance and therefore its tail would have been well clear of the ground… By accident, Birmingham had got it right… 

A button could be pushed to activate a roaring sound too, which was supposed to sound like a T-Rex might have sounded but it scared the pants off children and adults alike…

Eventually, to make way for the Light On Science galleries, the model was hacked to pieces and chucked away, to the dismay of many. Years later visitors would enquire where the dinosaur was and they were always alarmed and upset when they were told the story of its tragic demise. No asteroid extinction for our T-Rex though…

When 5pm arrived, all main gallery lights had been switched off but to get downstairs to clock out from the far end of the natural history galleries where our office was situated, we had to walk beneath the T-Rex, which was lit across its face by a simple night light. No natural lighting was available in that area and it really was rather a spooky experience…

I was asked to do several bird and animal handling sessions too with younger children, so they were able to touch a fox, a badger, a rabbit and a squirrel amongst other things, also some birds like a starling, a jay, an owl, etc… It was tough to get the kids to be gentle though.

A TYPICAL STUFFED BADGER...
BUT WHY MAKE IT LOOK MENACING?

Those handling animals ended up in the classroom at the Nature Centre, where I was forced to substitute for Jane Duffield when she was indisposed.  It was never clear what kind of teaching there worked best in truth but I guess that an introduction worked well and then as the pupils used their eyes and their worksheets around the site, I went with them to add extra information about the animals and birds in the compound.

THE NATURE CENTRE, CANNON HILL PARK, BIRMINGHAM...

I also had to cover a whole week there when Jane was again indisposed and this was to implement ‘Minibeasts’ sessions, which involved pond dipping for skaters and other delights, plus looking under numbered rocks, etc, to identify which creatures were hiding beneath them. The poor woodlice, ants, millipedes and spiders could almost be heard complaining, “Bloody hell, not again… Why can’t the buggers leave us in peace?” 

Needless to say, overnight I had to learn to identify all of the likely creatures which might appear during the sessions, rather than carry Jane’s sheet of paper with me which had images drawn upon it. The kids and their helpers had those but it looked better for me to appear, er, knowledgable…    

However, other teachers began to be employed to teach permanently at the Nature Centre, such as Rosemary Dewar, Jan Anderson, Karen Dyer, Joanne Stops, Steve Hagues and the inimitable Pauline Morgan…

Teaching about animals and birds fell by the wayside in the Museum and I began to branch out and use a special set of Roman, Greek and especially Egyptian artefacts regularly and quite often I carried out the sessions in role…

However, when talk of the removal of the stuffed animals and birds was first mooted from floor three there was much ado, for transferring the hands-on Light On Science gallery to the main Museum wasn’t universally approved of. Incredibly, one Friday afternoon at around 3.20pm those galleries suffered flooding…

KIDS LOVED THE TIGER'S FACE...

The story was that a group of schoolchildren had been using the toilets on the top floor and one of their bag-straps had snagged on one of a number of large nuts holding a circular metal plate firmly against a wall. The nut had apparently loosened, the plate had been forced away from the wall by gushing water and the rooms were flooded, some of it seeping through to the art and history galleries below on floor two. 

This explanation was total trash… There were no children in the Museum at 3.20pm, for all visiting groups had left by 3pm and that metal plate with its tightly fixed nuts which had been painted over so many times could never have been dislodged by a strap from a child’s bag.

Apparently one curatorial guy who was called upon to help clear up the mess was in some trouble afterwards, for he was somewhat inebriated, having spent his `Friday lunchtime at a pub, as was his usual habit. He kept his job though…   

Remarkable then that Light On Science found its way into the very gallery which had been earmarked for it… Skullduggery? Never… 

Next: the Museum staff…