The Mantle of The Expert
What is The Mantle of the Expert? • Dorothy Heathcote (1980’s) • Drama based approach • Whole class enters a fictional world and take on the role of expertise in a particular area • Carry out tasks that would be expected in that role • Can be short a short term or a long term project
What are the benefits of MOE ? • Children have a sense of belonging • Children gain a sense of responsibility
• Learning in a context • Children develop social skills (communication, team work, problem solving) • All children can be included
What children and teachers think about Mantle of the Expert • “If we didn’t work for a company it would be really boring. While you work for a company you don’t actually realise while you’re learning.” Gabriel, Y2 • “Making it more exciting helps you learn better... because we're doing it ourselves” Pupil (8) • “If we read it out of book we would learn stuff, but we wouldn't learn how we would do it” Pupil (7) • “It has made me re-examine my beliefs surrounding the education system. By using MOE you see the ‘big picture’ and consider the children’s learning as a life-long process” Class teacher
How to plan for Mantle Of The Expert • Mantle of the Expert is not based on the National Curriculum topics and subjects. The enterprise comes first and then the curriculum feeds into the mantle of the expert frame. • Key Questions to consider include: What social/cultural question can I use? What 3/4 learning skills do I want the children to work on? • Next create an enterprise: Who needs these skills? Who is asking the question? Make the company real to help to engage the children. • Decorate the classroom to look like the enterprise and have props that would be in the enterprise.
How to plan for Mantle Of The Expert • Have a stimulus to introduce the enterprise and key problem / question to the children such as a letter or presentation. • Have an oral starter that encourages the children to get associated with the enterprise and into the role of experts who work there. • Plan a series of activities that allows the children to work as that expert but at curriculum levels
• The plenary should always be reflective to allow children to discuss what they have learnt and what the need to review in the future.
Example plan for Mantle Of The Expert • Fictional context: The Writers Cooperative Company, recently awarded the ‘Writer of the Year’ gold medal for a collection of short stories, have been head hunted by ‘Book World’ publications of the USA. • Educational premise: find ‘ghost writers’ to invent and write stories based on the late Harris Burdick’s last set of illustrations which have been left in a will to his life-long friend and bookseller Tom Gardner
Example plan for Mantle Of The Expert • Steps undertaken by teacher:
Phase 1: Pupils engage in ‘big picture’ (context of the Will of Harris Burdick) we meet solicitor, editor and publisher from U.S.A. Phase 2: Pupils discuss the size and nature of the task to be undertaken in the story so far. Phase 3: Pupils engage in ‘imagination setting’ to create a place of inspiration for writing. Phase 4: Contact with ‘editor’ U.S.A. Tasks set Phase 5: Writing! Phase 6: This will be directed by the narration the pupils will create throughout the day. Phase 7: ‘Assessing’ outcomes of the day with pupils