The Impact of War

Causes of WW1

In pairs today we were given a set of events with different dates on and we had to put them in order. Mrs Crowther told us they were all from different places and that it was our job to inform the other groups about the events happening in our country.

We presented our information so everyone had an overview of all the countries and then we created one collaborative timeline so we could accurately see everything that contributed to the beginning of WW1.

Using an atlas we spent some time discovering the European map and showing where each of the main countries are located.

The Home Front

We had a class discussion about the impact of the first world war on children at home in Britain when talking about cause and effect. We learnt about different aspects of lives that were changed including education, fathers and brothers not home and women needing to work outside of the home for the first time. The effects on children because of the war such as being more frugal or salvaging for metal was something we found interesting. In groups we created a freeze frame and discussed feelings of people in different scenarios.

We looked at examples of propaganda posters from WW1 and in groups we created our own to promote different ideas. Once we had designed our own we compared UK propaganda posters with German and discussed any similarities and differences.

The beginning of WW2

Continuing on from our work about WW1 we started to think about what lead to WW2 after the War of all Wars ended. 

We took an image in a zones of inference grid and in groups questioned what we could see, what we thought was happening and what we need to find out.

We were given a lot of information about events leading up to the war and we sorted through them to put them in order.

Neville Chamberlain and Appeasement

We began with another zones of inference activity today and this time we took an image of Chamberlain from Heston Aerodrome. We learnt about how he had returned from a meeting and watched a clip of his speech.

We talked about the term 'appeasement' and exactly what it meant. We then split in to two groups. We were given lots of reasons for and against appeasement. In the groups we read either for or against and decided on which arguments we felt were the most important. We wrote notes in order to prepare for a class debate.

Winston Churchill

We learnt about Churchill's life and what led him to become Prime Minister along with some quotes from speeches he delivered, it was interesting discussing these to infer the meaning.

1938-1940

In small groups we worked with a set of instructions to demonstrate German movement in Europe during this time period.