- County name: Nottinghamshire
- Group/School name: Grosvenor School
- Age group: 5 - 11
- Group type: Year 5
The Head Teacher of Grosvenor School contacted War Memorials Trust soon after the Learning Programme started to express an interest in being involved with the development of the programme and the Trust’s learning materials. It was felt that the Trust’s plans for the Learning Programme were an interesting project for the school to support. The Trust’s Learning Officer visited the school in May 2012 to teach the Year 5 pupils and trial some of the materials which were, by then, being developed.
During the visit the Trust’s Learning Officer taught the school’s Year 5 class two of the lessons from the cross curricular topic, which are now available on the Trust’s learning website. These covered the key questions, What is Remembrance? and What are war memorials?
The pupils studied pictures of different war memorials and were surprised to discover that war memorials could be many different types of structure, from crosses, plaques or monuments to buildings, windows and benches. As one pupil commented, “it was interesting to realise all the different types of war memorial there are, which we will now keep an eye open for.’ They described some of the war memorials near their school and their own experiences of Remembrance Day. They also looked at inscriptions on different war memorials and discussed which ones they liked and what they thought the words meant to the people who had chosen them to remember friends and family members lost in war.
The pupils were also keen to learn more about the work of War Memorials Trust and how the charity protects war memorials. After the lesson they discussed how it was "interesting to hear about how the Trust is helping with those memorials that have been damaged, and that one memorial had names carved in stone under the metal that had been stolen." This refers to the war memorial in Carshalton that had its metal plaques stolen in 2011.
Following the visit, staff at the school were given examples of other learning materials by War Memorials Trust and now plans to use them in future lessons.
