In the heart of the City of London, the famous Square Mile, there is a building older than anything inside the M25 that isn’t a church.  Guildhall is an ancient 15^th century monument, intricately crafted in stone, glass, and wood, by England’s finest craftsmen.

At Guildhall our students were tasked with finding the answers to historical and grammatical questions with information gleaned from the exhibits in the art gallery and ruins of the Roman amphitheater housed in the complex’s basement.

Instead of being in a mad dash or wandering about gormlessly, our Inglans had to actually watch, read, listen, and interact with the collection to learn about London and language.

It was once a place where citizens paid their taxes, a species of town hall, and it’s now it’s the headquarters of the Corporation of the City of London, where the Lord Mayor holds his banquet and groups from around the world come to visit to soak in the history of London.  Teaching our students about the city where they live is integral to the Ingla philosophy in which having a sense of place in the English-speaking world is nearly as important as speaking the language.

Questions ranged from straightforward, gathering information (“What was the Roman name for London?”), to more complex questions that required using a bit of logic (“Who is celebrating his birthday in the Guildhall?” A: There is a painting called “Herod’s Birthday Banquet” housed in the gallery) to grammar (“Find an example of the passive somewhere in the museum and explain why it’s used.”), and even a picture matching exercise in which students were given photos of fragments of things from the museum and had to find the corresponding object.

In the end, winners were crowned, but everyone went home happy and motivated to learn more about our city and its wondrous history.