St John Houghton School Reporters share experiences with their elders

By Year 9 School Reporters St John Houghton Catholic School, Derbyshire

A total of 30 Year 9 students from Saint John Houghton Catholic School hosted an intergenerational workshop to find out how alike they were with several people from different generations.

As part of BBC School Report and First Click, the Year 9 students spent the morning talking to their visitors and then got an opportunity to show them how to use the internet.

School Reporters get stuck into their interviews

Mr Curtis, the teacher helping organise the session, said: "It was a fantastic opportunity for the students to get a taste of journalism. There were a lot of hard-hitting questions that I'd struggle with. However, the visitors answered them with relish."

The students asked questions relating to hobbies and entertainment when their guests were teenagers, including: "What did you do to occupy yourself on a rainy day?" and "Do you think films have got better or worse over time?"

The students found some interesting results, such as parents not liking their choice of music and how much freedom teenagers used to have in the 1950s and 1960s.

We got to learn so much about life for teenagers years ago; we learned it's not that different and we had similar feelings Year 9 School Reporter

The Year 9s realised that there are some benefits and drawbacks of being a teenager in 2011.

They felt that they did not have the freedom to go out and play as much as the visitors did when they were teenagers. However, they had a lot of benefits like technology and resources for entertainment.

One student summed up the whole experience by saying: "It was a great day! It was really fun and we got to learn so much about life for teenagers years ago. We learned it's not that different and we had similar feelings.

"We also learned a lot about the BBC and jobs in journalism, which was very interesting."

Overall, the experience was a great success and all the generations learned something.

There is clearly no generation gap as the students got a chance to learn about Elvis Presley and his music, and realised that there is not much of a big difference between Elvis and Justin Bieber!

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