“Today was a beautiful day, despite the dreadful weather. All EAL leavers went for a cultural trip to York. At first when we arrived in York, we had some time to walk around the city and to visit some small shops. After the walk around, we went to the York Castle Museum. We visited the world-famous recreated Victorian Street, Kirkgate, and The York Castle Prison. The York Castle Museum is the perfect venue to explore things and to understand how people have lived over the past 300 years. I loved walking along the Victorian street and looking in the shop windows.” Mona, Y12
“The replica Victorian street was extremely detailed as you could even hear audios of people talking and carriages driving over the cobbles. The museum also had a separate section about the First World War with original photographs and videos and a few rooms had old items that we were able to touch whilst a very helpful member of staff told us things about their history.” Natisha, Y11
“In the afternoon we attended a Victorian schooldays workshop. It started with an explanation of the basic rules by our teacher. She taught us the 3 ‘Rs’ which were the basis of the Victorian lessons and she treated us like the pupils in the past. We also had a drill and were doing strict, monotonous exercises. Back in the classroom we had the chance to write our names on slates and read some poetry.” Paula, Y11
“In the Victorian days you needed to sit with a straight back and your arms crossed. If you didn’t do that you got hit with a stick”. Alvaro, Y9
“The teacher was strict so we weren’t allowed to talk to each other at all, and we had to say Ma’am after every single sentence. For us it was very difficult not to laugh all the time because we didn’t know this way of teaching before but for the students who actually went to school in the 19th century it must have been really hard”. Wiebke, Y11
“This trip was very informative and we could understand everything which was shown in the museum, although our first languages are not English”. Louisa, Y11
