Running your own Medicine Through Time workshop

If the dates that we offer are not convenient, or you wish to bring a larger group of students; we have some suggestions as to how you can use the existing resources and materials for our formal workshop to run your own session as part of a pre-arranged self-guided visit to the museum.

This session would not include the handling materials and library sources of the formal workshops so would last around 1 ½ hours.

Below are instructions and links through which you can download everything that you need to create student packs which will cover the four Medicine Through time topics of:

• Blood
• Patient wellbeing
• Seeing inside the body
• Cleanliness

Please download and read our Teachers' Guide for the Medicine Through Time Workshops.

Students should be divided into groups of 5-6 people. If this can be arranged prior to the visit then it does save time on the day. Large groups of students may have more than one group following each topic.

Each student in a group is given a set of materials that focus on their topic. This should contain:

• Workshop guidelines
• ‘Tips’ cards (topic specific)
• Object record cards (4 per student)
• Museum floor plans (Blood, patient wellbeing, seeing inside the body, cleanliness)

Ensure that each student has a clipboard and pencil on which to work while in the galleries.

In the museum

The task that the students are set is to identify and record items on display in the museum relating to their group’s theme, with a view to creating a ‘virtual tour’ that can be presented to their classmates back at school.

Information for the virtual tour should be captured by the students on their object cards. This can be recorded in written form, or could include drawings of the objects. Students should record the object number so that they can then look for more information about this object using the museum’s online catalogue. Examples of completed cards can be downloaded here.

Students can identify which areas of the museum contain objects or information that relates by using the pre-prepared maps that they are given. On these maps the red dots represent objects which are of significance to their topic. When searching for and recording objects students should consider the questions that are listed on their tips cards and think about how these objects might relate to the wider history of medicine. Individual students within a topic group should take responsibility for individual objects – information should not be repeated within the work that the group does as a whole.

Allow around 1 hour for students to go around the museum collecting information

Plenary session and gathering together of materials.

In their groups students assemble the objects that they have collected on their cards and begin to put together the outline of a presentation. They can present information in a linear or chronological way, or they may wish to group objects together by theme or centre around a particular individual associated with an object on display. Students can link their objects using the arrow cards provided.

If there is time students can be encouraged to think about ethical questions that may have been raised through the work that they have done. Topic extension cards can be found here.

Follow-up activity at school

Using the information that they collected at the museum, students can find information and images of their objects online through our museum catalogue Surgicat. These can be used to augment a presentation that they can deliver back in the classroom, this could be a powerpoint presentation or students might want to create an online exhibition using Surgicat images and other material relating to the day’s activities.

Planning your visit

To arrange a date when you and your group can visit us, please call 020 7869 6566 and speak to the learning and events officer.

A self guided visit here could easily be run in tandem with a visit to one of the other London Museums of Health and Medicine. Information about these can be found on their website.