Year 6 Class Assembly: Time Travelling to 1851

Aided by a little bit of time travel, the Year 6 class took us back to 19th-century London with a visit to The Great Exhibition of 1851 – Prince Albert’s celebration of British industry and design. 

In the spirit of innovative design, Peter and William had been working on a time machine (strongly resembling a large black sheet), which was fortuitously ready just in time for the assembly…

They landed successfully in Hyde Park, May 1851, and witnessed a conversation between Prince Albert (Aubrey), Mr Cole (Zak) and Mr Paxton (Joshua), the architect of the venue for the exhibition. The three congratulated themselves on the success of the purpose-built glass and iron structure, which was large enough to house over 100,000 products from all over the world, and became known as Crystal Palace – as Mr Paxton said ‘It was quite the engineering achievement, if I do say so myself!’.

Excitingly, Queen Victoria (Phoebe S) also stopped by to admire the exhibits, which included elm trees (inside the building), a stuffed elephant, a locomotive engine and a marble statue of a slave, where abolitionists had met to demonstrate against slavery. At this point, our time travelling duo are spotted and land back safely in Cambridge, October 2025, where the Year 6 class are poised to share a few modern day inventions that they feel would deserve a place in a Great Exhibition today!

As Zac informed the assembly, the children researched and wrote the following speeches themselves. Phoebe S gave some historical context, explaining that Britain no longer has an empire, as it did during Queen Victoria’s reign, but that we are now part of the Commonwealth of independent nations who once were a part of the empire. Aubrey and Maya spoke about the expansion of women’s rights following WW1, which included gaining the right to vote and to the same education as boys. Phoebe P, Zoe, Arabella and India shared modern art and music, including Taylor Swift and K Pop music. Other topics mentioned were Charlie on AI and Alexa; Izabella on Space Exploration; Peter and Zac on big business, such as Apple and Amazon; Esther on submarines and underwater exploration; Felix on planes, such as the Boeing 747 – the first passenger plane to cross the Atlantic Ocean non-stop; then finally, Joshua, Kavira and William on the invention of cars, and in particular racing cars and electric cars. 

Year 6 finished their assembly with a prayer, thanking God for all the wonderful things we have learnt about from the Victorian period into the modern world.

Thank you Year 6 and Mrs Watkins – your enthusiasm for the creative inventions and discoveries you shared was contagious!