Alien Invasion: The Benefits of Enrichment Activities for Students
How an extra-terrestrial teaching experience left a lasting impression
Immersive experiences are here to stay. Film sets, escape rooms, interactive art installations: they’re a thing. So, ‘Immersive Experience’ is a moniker I’m going to use to describe what we probably just called ‘Extra-curricular’ or an ‘Enrichment Activity’ at the time.
Perhaps the compound phrase ‘Immersive Educational Experience’ will become a thing.
Anyway, the Immersive Educational Experience that I’m pre-ambling towards here was for Year 7, and we called it ‘Alien Invasion’.
My school was in a picturesque coastal location. We’re talking pinewoods and sand dunes. So, it was no hardship to be at school at 7am to place cones and props in pre-determined spots around the woods and over the dunes. 100 printed maps attached to clipboards awaited the arrival of the students, and, once in situ, the cones created a track and the props contributed to ‘sets’ that would become live once our actors were in place.
Our pupils arrived at school with no knowledge of what was ahead of them. Except we’d requested that they wore “practical outdoor clothing”. This did not garner too much excitement in itself. But that was ok, we wanted to surprise them.
I was part of the welcoming committee that greeted the pupils upon their arrival at school. I was happy to don a police officer’s uniform to escort the children to the main hall; here they were immediately addressed as journalists - we were going for an in media res approach - and informed by an ‘Important Spokesperson’ that a spaceship had crashed into the ocean, just off the coast. Eye witnesses had reported aliens scurrying ashore and heading towards the pinewoods. As respected journalists, it was their job - clipboards in hand - to head out and start investigating.
They departed in waves. Each group of 12 students accompanied by a member of staff. The five minutes between each wave would allow our actors time to re-set between groups.
Once outside, they were to stick to the route outlined on their map and further established with cones. It would take them over an hour to complete the route. A loop that took in all manner of carnage: over-officious police officers; a UFO enthusiast with a determination to get past the over-officious police officers in order to take photographs; a distraught dog-walker whose dog had been eaten by an alien; a group of schoolchildren on a cross-country trip, several of whom had been injured by the extraterrestrials; over-zealous protestors from SOSB (Save Our Space Brothers) eager to communicate that aliens have rights too.
We had a really talented group of staff and A-level drama students to call upon, and they all did a sterling job in their roles.
The Year 7 pupils were fresh from recount lessons in English, so were able to call upon their W5 questions and uphold journalistic integrity because they had confidence in the calibre of their inquiries. We made sure photos were taken for later when pupils would be working to write, edit and produce their newspapers.
The pupils arrived back to school in their waves. There was time for a catch-up and cookie in the dining hall before it was back to the main hall for a press conference. Here, the students were given an opportunity to speak again with the characters they had encountered on their trek. Characters were able to offer a more concise reflection on what they had just witnessed. And enthusiastic English teachers were able to do a bit about reported versus direct speech.
After lunch, it was time to go to classrooms and computer suites to write up articles. Our ambitious target to have all the pupils leaving school that day with a printed version of their Alien Invasion article was not quite met. There was an inevitable spillage into the rest of the week’s English lessons.
But every pupil did leave school at the end of that day with a story to tell, an event experienced, and a memory made.
Furthermore, while it may have all been a little bit alien, so too did the teachers.