Buildings are incredibly versatile teaching resources, and just one building can be used as a stimulating context for learning right across the curriculum. This article introduces some of the possibilities, subject-by-subject, taking the example of St Pancras Station in London. The more you look at a building like St Pancras, the more you see how it can support a huge range of activities. Perhaps this is because St Pancras functions like a miniature world, with its own complex life and rich history – and this will be true of any building that rewards extended work.
Statue of poet John Betjeman by Martin Jennings in St Pancras © Bleuchoi, flickr.com
St Pancras Station is one of many buildings that have an entry on the Engaging Places website, offering a description of the building and suggested starting points for teaching and learning. From this page you can also follow a link to an excellent image bank with many pictures that can be used as the focus for the kinds of activities described below.
In this article the building’s potential as a context for learning is explored in some detail, but this is still only the briefest introduction to the full possibilities. The examples are broadly targeted at Key Stage 2, but they can be versioned for other Key Stages and will hopefully stimulate ideas for many other activities for different ages.
English
The detailed examples below look at poetry, imaginative writing, and the use of the station in film. Among the many other opportunities for literacy work (and an obvious place to begin) are discussion activities about the station’s regeneration, inviting the class to think about the recent history of this place: Why was the station saved? And if this seems obvious to the class then the question becomes: Why was it ever threatened? You could bring up other images of buildings that have not survived but would now be treasured assets to their cities, asking the class to describe the feelings these pictures of vanished buildings evoke; an excellent example is the old Pennsylvania Station in New York.
Poetry
Look at the statue of Betjeman. Who is Betjeman and why is he commemorated in St Pancras Station? Read some of Betjeman’s poems and look at how he uses the names of familiar everyday objects and brands in his poetry. Together the class could assemble a list of all the things that they would include in a poem to convey a sense of the everyday world of 2010 to somebody reading the poem fifty years later.
Imaginative writing
Develop some imaginative writing based around travelling and journeys, incorporating St Pancras and the Eurostar train. The station’s possibilities should be explored in detail as the common starting-point of these journeys: a place for many unexpected meetings or other events that could either help or hinder a character’s journey before it has even begun. One example for some collaborative work is ‘the race’: divide the class into groups, and ask them to imagine the adventures of a group of characters racing to Paris with each character travelling in a different way. One group will be given a character who is travelling from St Pancras by Eurostar, and other groups can be given characters who are travelling by plane or car or even somebody who is planning to walk to the channel and swim to France! The challenge for each group is to imagine a set of problems and opportunities that means their character takes exactly four days to make the journey keeping the final result as tight as possible.
The station on film
An interesting opportunity for literacy work is the use of St Pancras in various films – extensively detailed in the station’s Wikipedia entry. Some of these films are adaptations of books. Ask pupils to think about other books where St Pancras could be used as a setting and to imagine how the action would unfold in the station. Alternatively, ask pupils to think about their favourite books and to imagine scouting locations for the film version in their own area – what are the buildings and places they would use and why?
Maths
The station provides great opportunities for work in Number, Measures, and Shape and Space. These opportunities include investigating the form of both the Victorian station and the new extension, and challenging the class to find ways to describe all the shapes using precise mathematical language – looking also for features such as patterns of repeating shapes and lines of symmetry. The detailed example below looks at all the ways that the station can be described using numbers.
- Ask the class how many ways they can think of to describe the station in numbers, rather than words. What are their ideas? The things they could think about include:-numbers as a way to understand scale: the number of platforms and the number of trains that depart and arrive on an average day (it’s best to choose a particular destination, for example Paris); the total number of passengers that can be carried on the Eurostar; the number of rooms in the new Hotel; the number of shops (including multiples of certain shops), and so on.
- measurements: the dimensions of the train shed and the other parts of the station.
- money: the cost of the station’s redevelopment or the redevelopment of the Midland Hotel.
- time: the schedules of the trains and the number of trains arriving and leaving between specified times.
And so on: encourage the class to see just how much of the detail of the station and its life at any one particular moment can be described using numbers.
Victorian ironwork on roof of St Pancras © johnjobby, flickr.com
Science
Ask the class to research the materials used in the construction of St Pancras, in each case challenging them to answer the following question: for a given feature was it essential that this particular material be used or could something else have been used instead?
Ask the class to compare the materials used to construct the same features in the Victorian station and the Modernist extension (the same features in a general sense – walls, floors – as there will not always be detailed features found in both). It’s one of the many superb aspects of St Pancras as a context for teaching that the two stations exist together, leading to all these opportunities for comparison.
While Materials is the obvious area of science to explore using St Pancras Station, there are many other opportunities. The station’s interior can be used as a microcosm to explore the properties of the wider environment and as the context for a revision activity or an evolving science display. Take a large image of the station interior and divide the class into groups, giving each group a particular aspect of science to describe in as much detail as they possibly can using the specific context of St Pancras Station. The areas they could consider include: Light; Sound; Forces (both those involved in the station’s engineering and in the movement of the trains); Materials (as above); Food and Drink (research what can be bought in the station – how much does it cost to eat a balanced meal?); and so on.
History
St Pancras is a rich resource for the teaching of many key topics in KS2 history, beginning with the Victorians. Look at the history of the station’s construction and look at the Midland Hotel, whose restoration is now almost complete, as one of the most famous examples of Victorian Gothic Architecture.
The station is also a tremendous resource for teaching about Britain in the twentieth century. Why did the station and the hotel fall into disuse? What has changed in recent years to make them valuable again and worth rescuing? What was the role of the station during the Second World War?
The harder you look, the more history you find in this one building. Who was St Pancras himself? Here is an opportunity to link to Roman history: St Pancras was a Christian martyr, executed for his faith when he was only 14 years old. Investigate the story of St Pancras and try to decide which parts of the story can be more reliably thought of as history.
Clock in St Pancras © Márcio Cabral de Moura, flickr.com
Geography
St Pancras supports a very wide range of geography activities – in this subject, like so many others, the station can allow you to range freely into numerous areas of learning – and what follows is only a brief summary of a few of the possibilities, focusing on the Eurostar service. There is any number of other possible activities, particularly concerning the themes of urban spaces, journeys, tourism and climate change. One of the wonderful aspects of a building like St Pancras is the fact that it belongs to a larger complex of buildings – including King’s Cross Station – that is the subject of enormous ongoing development: and this means that all the excitement of unfinished buildings can be a part of your work as well.
Look at the Eurostar train and its route map. Discuss these destinations. Why do the routes link these places? What makes these places important? Look at how long it takes to travel to a selected place – Paris is the obvious one – and compare this with flying. What are the reasons why people might choose one option instead of the other? Discuss questions of convenience, cost, the qualitative experience, the environment, and so on. Discuss the importance of transport choices within the context of climate change. Why is it a good thing if more journeys are made by train? What are the factors that prevent or discourage people from making more journeys by train? What is being done to overcome these problems? Imagine that you have the power to decide on a new high-speed rail connection. What is the route that you would like to build? Explain its benefits and make a case for choosing this route over all the others that could be built.
Art
Contrast Victorian design and Contemporary design by comparing the Victorian station with the new extension. The two buildings are very different, both in their overall shapes and architectural styles, and in the detailed design and finish. What are the main differences? What are the reasons why the design of the two buildings is so different? Is it all about the way our ideas about how a station ought to look have changed, or is it also about the way the materials and the building techniques have evolved?
Look at Victorian Gothic design. The Midland Hotel is a very famous example of Victorian Gothic. What are some of the principal features of the style? Make a list of ideas. Then think about a project for your own Gothic design. If you were to convert your classroom into a gothic interior, what are the things that you would do? Alternatively, ask the class to imagine a modern version of Gothic design. How would they approach this idea? Would it be a simplified version of the Gothic style, or would it be just as complex but using distinctively modern imagery in the details? Discuss the possibilities and get the class to work on their ideas.
Look at the statue of Betjeman. The sculptor has made the figure of Betjeman connect to the location itself: he seems to be staring up at the roof of the station with amazement. Look at some other historical figures that the class have encountered in their recent work. If they were to design a statue for one of these famous people, how might they animate the statue’s pose either to suggest some distinctive quality belonging to this person – or even to connect with a particular place where the statue could be situated?
Paul Day sculpture 'The Meeting Place', St Pancras © three legged cat, flickr.com
Drama
Look at the sculpture ‘The Meeting Place’, designed by British artist Paul Day, which stands at the clock end of the station. Meetings, planned and unplanned, are an important part of our imaginative idea about the meaning of stations. Ask the class to imagine situations involving unexpected encounters at St Pancras, making really detailed use of the station’s geography and assets. Develop the dramatic possibilities of these ideas.
Foreign Languages
St Pancras even has applications in this area of the curriculum, thanks to its status as an international station. All around the station there is signage in both English and French, and announcements of arrivals and departures are made in both languages. Look at this vocabulary and make it the focus of a teaching activity involving a set of characters, visiting from Paris, who are all lost in the station and are all looking for different things. What is it that they are trying to find? Where should they go?
The Olympics
Another connection that can be made is with the 2012 Olympics. During the Games there will be a special train running from St Pancras called the Olympic Javelin, linking central London and the Olympic Park at Stratford. This could bring another dimension to your use of the station in various subject areas.
