Welcome to this year’s challenge, yes we are a year early for the big one but the subject is no less important! The key task of the event is below but there is also a teacher guide to help you plan what is best for you. Please send us lots of images of the children working during the day on Thursday 26th and we will post them on this page. Send to: andrew@sparkteesvalley.com

Click for teacher guide

Learn all about the S&DR with the resources below:


Click here to view the accessible version of this interactive content

And if you are doing a general ‘trains’ or industrial revolution topic, the film below explores the history of train evolution as part fo wider social change. It is based on the collection at Locomotion in Shildon (tasks have been removed but you ca watch as short sections).

So let’s see what you have been up to!

First thing this morning, Jenny from Tees Valley Museums visited St Peter’s Primary in Elwick:

And then she dropped in on Holy Trinity Rosehill:

And where was the start of the S&DR line in 1825? At Witton Colliery. The children of Witton le Wear got stuck into the resources as well.

West Cornforth are another school that is really close to where the original journey started in 1825. Their teacher told us:

We recorded a news report discussing the reasons for and against the introduction of the railway, completed the Geography task looking at how popular the railway became worldwide, used scratch to show off our programming skills and made a train move along a variety of different tracks, and finally created a lovely poster in a railway style to promote these nearby places to people in our local area who will have been able to travel there for the first time when the passenger trains became accessible to all. 

Busy!!!