Mass Observation Results

Okay, I know that scientifically this is utterly meaningless and a very limited snapshot of students’ lives on a certain day with an infinitesimally small sample. However, in supporting the Mass Observation Project on 13th May, I did ask my classes to record a diary of what they did on that day.

The results – presented as a word cloud – look like this:

Not a terribly surprising set of words: the lexical field of education was predictably prominent with words like school, lesson, bell and subjects specific words such as Science and Maths. Time is an interestingly prominent word here as is talking and the prominence of mum over dad. On a small point, the prevalence of sat is also telling: students’ sedentary experience of education…

 

Mass Observation

Just a thought, but if anyone was looking for a socially aware, cross curricular, literacy focused lesson, 12th May is Mass Observation Day, repeating the Mass Observation Day on 12th May 1937, the day of George VI’s coronation.

A nice lesson may start with an explanation of Mass Observation, an opportunity to write diaries for the day and perhaps an imaginative piece of writing exploring how life may have changed between 1937 and 2013?

To formally submit them to the project is possible – the link is here which also gives more explanation of the project http://www.massobs.org.uk/12may – but if you were to collate any diaries and / or stories written, you could do a nice colourful word cloud to display….