- County name: Dorset
- Group/School name: Haymoor Middle School
- Age group: 5 - 11
- Group type: Year 6
War Memorials Trust approached the school in the early days of the development of the Learning Programme to ask if the school would be interested in helping to trial new learning materials. Each Year 6 class was taught using the Trust’s lesson plan, Why are war memorials important? The three class teachers were also involved in discussions about how the Learning Programme could develop, and offered valuable suggestions for further resources.
The lesson that was used during these visits involved the pupils finding out what war memorials are and why they were created. This was followed by examining cases of war memorials that have been vandalised or stolen, and discussion of why and how this affects communities who use the war memorial to remember their fallen.
Many pupils were surprised to find out about these cases and enjoyed discussing their opinions of what should be done to prevent theft from war memorials and repair damage caused by vandalism. They thought about the impact of these events on the people who use war memorials as a place of Remembrance. As one pupil commented, war memorials are often the only thing left to remember the fallen by, and so should be looked after by their community. The pupils also came to realise the significance of war memorials as a source of information, and recognised that, “war memorials are still as important as when they were first created because there are not many people now who were alive during the wars to tell us how things were.”
Following the visit, the school received a letter from Lord Cope of Berkeley, Trustee of War Memorials Trust, thanking the staff and pupils for their valuable input into the development of the Learning Programme.
