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Children Investigate UFO Crash At School (Learning Exercise)

staticgirl

staticgirl

Abominable Snowman
Joined
Oct 12, 2003
Messages
994
Best day at school ever for some. A bit frightening for others...

PUPILS arriving at a York primary school today had a close encounter - when they found an alien craft crash-landed in their playground.

Youngsters starting their day at Clifton with Rawcliffe school this morning were met by police tape, a NASA investigation unit and a small silver craft billowing smoke and resting on the grass opposite the main entrance to the school.

The scenes were part of an elaborate stunt arranged as part of a day-long exercise to test the youngsters’ investigative skills and to fuel their imaginations as part of a school-wide topic looking at space, said head teacher Chris Wigley.

The craft itself was made by three teaching assistants and the production also involved local police, The Press coming along to investigate and report on the 'crash' and a BBC cameraman in the shape of BBC Look North presenter Phil Bodmer, whose son attends the school.

Drama pupils from the nearby Canon Lee secondary school were also drafted in to play the parts of NASA staff and eye-witnesses, including 14-year-olds Isobel Liptrott and Rachel Wilkinson.

Beverley Wright, deputy head teacher at Clifton with Rawcliffe, was among those claiming to have seen a green man leave the ship and make his way into the building, and children were captivated by the drama.

Five-year-old Dominic Proctor said: “I think it came from space and the man went into the woods. We have to look around to find him. He is green I think he’s an alien.”

Nine-year-old Louis Yeomans, said: “I have really only just come into school and there are a lot of people coming up to me saying aliens have crash landed and that there’s aliens in school. I don’t know what to believe.”

Charlotte Dyson, eight, said: “The aliens must have come from another planet with air, oxygen and water, if they didn’t then they wouldn’t be able to survive here.”

Leah Howell, nine, said: “I was staying at my grandma’s house which backs on to the school and when we woke up my grandma told me to come to the window and look at the smoke coming from the playground. It’s really weird. I didn’t know what was going on.”
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Charlotte Dyson sounds like a born scientist.

http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/1067409 ... ry_school/
 
How cool ! Id almost go back to being a technician if i could help open kids minds like that :)
 
Strangely, I think that we might already have a thread on a very similar exercise, somewhere.
 
Oh, that's fantastic!

What a brilliant idea, I hope other schools do similar things in the future (as long as they don't all do crashed saucers!).
 
Actually I do remember when I was a technician we used to have an induction where the junior school kids about to move to big school would spend a day touring different departments, and we used to do a kidnapping forensic mystery in science.

Chemistry was an ink chromatogram from the ransom note, Biology was fingerprints on a door and for the life of me I cant remember what we did for Physics, might have been shoe depressions. All the kids got Forensic Detective certificates at the end of the day. Used to love setting that all up :D

Edit, somehow Ransom became a classic childrens author.
 
this could belong in the weird school test thread

fortean daughter had recent less elaborate version

now she wants the crashed spaceship version ...
 
It has certainly been done before...

Link 1 (http://community.tes.co.uk/tes_primary/f/36/t/494174)
Link is dead. Unable to locate archived version.

Link 2 (https://www.examinerlive.co.uk/news/west-yorkshire-news/mount-pleasant-school-pupils-find-4924086)
Aliens are here! 'UFO' found at Mount Pleasant school
A crashed spaceship left a puzzle for youngsters at a Huddersfield school.
Children turned up at Mount Pleasant Junior, Infant and Nursery School on Monday to find the wreckage of a UFO in the grounds.
There was also pink goo and slimy footprints all over the playground suggesting aliens may have survived the crash landing.
The silver wreckage was taped off and a Streetscene ranger, Fatih Uddin from Kirklees Council, stood guard.
Fortunately, the crash scene was only a mock-up courtesy of scrap metal merchant Billy Wells, of Meltham.
The idea, from literacy co-ordinator Marion Oya, was aimed at inspiring youngsters during the school’s transition week – when two weeks before the end of term youngsters move up a year. ...
School spokesman Hazel Ettienne said the crashed spacecraft gave youngsters inspiration for their writing.
She said: “Most of the children have English as their second language so this gives them something real for their writing. ...
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Link 3 (lincolnshirelive.co.uk/feeder-8211-aliens-crash-school-dinner/story-11221829-detail/story.html)
Link is dead. No archived version found.

Link 4 (halifaxcourier.co.uk/news/calderdale/the-day-a-spaceship-crashed-into-school-1-4601416)
Link is dead. No archived version found.

...and so on
 
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I did a version of this scenario in the the very first lesson I did during teacher training. It did not require any props or planted physical witnesses - just a few chums acting on a cassette tape. My notes say it went down well, though there was no mass-exodus from Wrexham. By the end of the week, that and my give-away college scarf had assured I was known as Doctor Who! :)

Sp: Docter! Sp!
 
Why are schools staging UFO crashes in their playgrounds? Children are taken out of class and brought to the staged mock-up where they witness a police presence surrounding a depiction of a crashed alien vehicle. Inspecting the wreckage are forensic officers and the children are told to take it all in before later writing up their feelings and thoughts about it all. The children are then allowed to dress up as investigators themselves and inspect the scene.

Why acclimatise (or groom)young children to such things when their own government denies all existence of aliens. Wouldnt a mock-up of a crashed plane of helicopter be more useful in this bizarre exercise?

Weird!

KidsUFO.jpg

brain_alien.jpg-pwrt2.jpg


http://www.guardian-series.co.uk/news/10254610.Sight_of_crash_landed_UFO_greets_schoolchildren/
 
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Making it a crashed UFO adds the element of fantasy and play to the lesson, I suppose. Showing the kids what it would be like to be first on the scene at a car crash would be a lot more traumatic.
 
Well you could do the same with a crashed MiG 29 or F-22 Raptor and exclude the pilot instead of a crashed UFO minus its occupants. Just feels wrong to me.

If they had to use a outer space theme, why not create a damaged satellite instead?
 
George, thanks for bringing this up. I was thinking about it recently and I can't get my head around it.

I wish I was parent in such school and just bore to death the school authorities on who authorised this and what is the purpose/benefit to the kids.

If they are grooming kids to accept aliens... why showing the crashes.... does it mean we are on the verge of intergalactic war? Are Vogons close by?
 
Cheers buddy, its been worrying me for some time too. :)

Apparently its to improve creative writing.

Im wondering if its designed to groom kids into accepting the things we've had to learn of from books on the subject. Who knows, maybe in the future the governments wont be able to keep the lid on it all and in a last ditched attempt at control will shoot them down in populated areas. The UFO will then become our enemy and thats why they covered it all up....yawn
 
My thoughts exactly... this will all end in tears
 
Changed days from my education. I was at primary school in the 60s during the Mercury and Apollo missions and our teacher would fly into a rage if anyone mentioned space travel. "Ridiculous nonsense!" was her usual response.
Needless to say I became a real space buff thanks to her disapproval :)
 
I usually look for the angle but I think that this may be more harmless than what you're suggesting, GeorgeP. Somebody, somewhere is trying to be hip with the kids and trying to find an exciting role play/creative writing topic. We take this stuff (moderately) seriously on the board but everyone else thinks it's just silly, open for laughs and not that serious at all. Why not let kids have an afternoon of firing up their imaginations and pretending that aliens have crashed?

There may be a few future forteans in there, having their curiosity piqued. Don't forget that the UFo scene has been very quiet recently. Some of these kids weren't even born when X-Files and what not were all the rage. They may never have been exposed to this before.

There were TV programs when I was a kid about aliens, dragons, space and magic torches but the nearest I got to playing it out/roleplaying was on my computer. I would have loved the chance to play detective around a crashed UFO.

As for (Lake) Grooming them (See what I did there), it's more likely that if there is an ulterior motive, then it's prepring them for a real war and downed aircraft as opposed a martian invasion. A real War scenario would be too upsetting and parents would be up in arms. "Little Johnny is too young for this! What were they thinking? Come on Johnny, we're going home. Yes, you can play GTA5 all afternoon".
 
Love it!
It's a bit of fun to fire up their little imaginations.
I clearly remember being that age, and the teacher told us all to write stories about the school being invaded by aliens. One of my best friends wrote a really good story about a UFO landing on the school's roof.
So... it's nothing new.
 
We never did owt that entertaining at my school. The only time you were allowed outside was either, playtime, P.E. or a bloody fire drill.
 
GeorgeP said:
We never did owt that entertaining at my school. The only time you were allowed outside was either, playtime, P.E. or a bloody fire drill.
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Usually on a cold, wet, windy November morning :)
 
We had at least one visit from the Police, teaching us road safety in the playground. They drove two motorbikes past us, and asked which one was going fastest. We all opted for the loudest one, but the cops explained about gears, and said the loudest one was actually revving high in a lower gear, but going slower.

This was before I'd even heard of flying saucers!
 
My only UFO related school incident would be a damp and windy afternoon when I glanced out of the window. I saw a upturned ice-cream container being blown around by the wind. It was one of those screw-ball thingies with the bubbly gum at the bottom. Its antics out doors resembled a naked Darlek and made me giggle. Mrs Betts didn't find it funny though, probably down to her age and stuff....:D
 
There was a thread somewhere here about strange tests in school, but it has such a vague title I can't find it. Real Cold War creepy stuff. Maybe a threadfinding expert would care to step in?
 
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Good man! The Force is strong in you...
 
Ringo said:
There may be a few future forteans in there, having their curiosity piqued. Don't forget that the UFo scene has been very quiet recently. Some of these kids weren't even born when X-Files and what not were all the rage. They may never have been exposed to this before.
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Their current teachers, however, may well have watched the X-Files during their formative years and wound up thinking this would be a great idea. I was an avid X-Files fan in my teens, and I have to admit my own teaching sometimes brings in elements of the unusual and Fortean.

Like others have suggested, I'd say the rationale behind this is a "UFO crash" is "safe", in that it so outlandish that most kids would accept it as a fiction (whereas the crash of anything identifiably "real" could be traumatic), and that a young-ish teacher may have thought it was engaging and fun enough to go along with.
 
Those would be very small aliens. Anyhow, what is the guy in the hazmat suit actually doing? He seems to have put a small tent over the flying saucer and done not much else. Is this how you prevent an alien invasion? By covering their craft with tents?
 
graylien said:
Those would be very small aliens. Anyhow, what is the guy in the hazmat suit actually doing? He seems to have put a small tent over the flying saucer and done not much else. Is this how you prevent an alien invasion? By covering their craft with tents?
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Perhaps the tents are to hide the emerging aliens who then eat all the kids.

Would make a brill movie, that would :)
 
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