The Smith’s Dock Company Limited was formed in 1899 and was the biggest dry dock owners and ship repairers in the world, employing thousands of local people.
Funded by Historic England and led by the North Shields Heritology Project, we sought to introduce a class of Year 5 pupils to:
* Understand what ‘Research’ is and how to approach it
* Learn some key facts about Smith’s Dock
* Visit the North East Maritime Trust and see how Heritage skills are kept alive through traditional boat building
* Visit the remains of the site of Smith’s Dock and the WW1 Memorial to Smith’s Dock employees
* Explore what makes a good interviewer and prepare a range of questions to ask former employees of Smith’s Dock about their working lives.
* Design a boat. Using ‘junk’ material, build that design capable of transporting six pennies across a water tank powered by a waterproof sphero Bolt ball.
The material and resources below may be used by other schools within the region. Teaching Resources include lesson plans, handouts, key Smith’s Dock facts, a video and an audio recording of what it was like to work in Smith’s Dock from a former employee.
Resources can be found here and are free to use.
The North Shields Heritology Project 