22nd September 2017: Linnaeus – on the run next week!

Just one week now until our drama workshop, Linnaeus - Naming the World's Plants tours primary schools in Exeter and Plymouth. The workshop is part of a research project, funded by the Linnean Society, investigating the efficacy of drama as a pedagogical tool in science education. We are lucky to have an actor for the character of Linnaeus who is both a graduate biologist and a primary school teacher. Ben Jewell has a broad range of experience of educational and historical theatre, including this clip as John Benjamin Dancer for the BBC.

Six primary school Year 6 classes will get to meet Linnaeus, who arrives at their school on the run from Hamburg, where he has angered the city officials by revealing the city’s seven-headed hydra beast as a fake! Linnaeus will recruit the pupils as his apostles, putting them to the test with an explorer game, a classification task using live mosses, ferns and flowering plants. The students will also have the opportunity to create their own binomial plant names, using Linnaeus’s Latin dictionaries. The image shows Linnaeus’s trunk, which he carries from school to school.