How do we take our pupils away from the computer screen in a virtual learning environment? Ms Milner, one of Fyling Hall’s esteemed English teachers, shares her recent ideas including pairing up with our Art Studio . . .


Following feedback from parents, I decided that I should set some work that got our students away from the computer screen. I love cross-curriculum activities so I decided to combine art with English. My Year 7 class was given a long list of activities to choose from. We are working on a Science Fiction unit, and we have been discussing the theme of dystopia after completing some work on The War of the Worlds. We all decided that living in lockdown sounds like something from a dystopian sci-fi novel so I said the pupils could also write about life in lockdown. Here are the activities they could choose from:

Creative tasks:

  • Make your own alien out of boxes, paper etc or you can draw or paint one. You could even make it out of cake!
  • Create a dystopian landscape by making one using boxes etc (like we talked about before lockdown) or by painting, drawing, using modelling clay. You could even make it out of cake!
  • Create your own time machine by making one using boxes (like we talked about before lockdown) or by painting, drawing, using modelling clay. You could even make it out of cake! You could even use some Lego to make these.

Writing tasks:

  • Write a diary, poem or story about life in lockdown – let’s face it – it is like dystopia at the moment!
  • Create a video diary of life in lockdown afterwards

Take a look at what our pupils produced!

Creative Task Results:

Written Task Results:

The Diseased World

The world’s gone dark. No adults to work the big machines that powered Earth. It’s just us kids, on our own, looking out for each other. The world has changed. Not in a good, happy way, but in a dystopic, survival of the fittest, kind of way.

To read the rest of The Diseased World, click here.

Coronavirus Poem