During today’s lesson, Crew Hamill had the opportunity to experience a mining tunnel for themselves. Using tables and dark material, we recreated what a tunnel might look like. We turned out the lights to make things darker and played a coal mine soundscape to mimic the sounds of the mine. One at a time, we made our way through the tunnel, experiencing the dark, cramped and noisy conditions. We then had a small debrief explaining how we felt – lots of us were claustrophobic! Following this, we played true or false and moved to the side of the room that we felt was appropriate when presented with different facts about mining. If we agreed and thought they were true we went to one side, if we disagreed and thought they were false then we went to the other. To further demonstrate our learning, we read some fact sheets about life in the mine and created chotting sheets in mini crews that detailed the early conditions.
