- County name: Kent
- Group/School name: Weald Community Primary School
- Age group: 5 - 11
- Group type: Primary School
Weald Community Primary School contacted War Memorials Trust in April 2014 in response to a newsletter about the charity’s Learning Volunteers visiting schools in Kent. The school was keen to commemorate the centenary of the start of the First World War and arranged for two Learning Volunteers to visit in the summer term to work with classes across the whole school.
The visit started with a lesson with the Year 4 and 5 pupils, which focused on examining where some typical Remembrance traditions come from and then on what war memorials are and why we have them. Pupils considered what it is they remember on Remembrance Day and why it is important that they remember the people involved in wars in the past. They had the opportunity to listen to a recording of the Last Post and saw images of some of the battlefield cemeteries of the Western Front so they could really understand what Remembrance is about.
Moving on from this, the idea of war memorials was introduced and pupils were shown pictures of a range of local examples (including their village memorial) to help them understand that war memorials can have a variety of designs, from the traditional (such as a stone cross) to the more functional types such as village halls or shelters. Pupils learned how many war memorials there are in the UK, when many these were created and, most importantly, why so communities wanted to create war memorials in the aftermath of the First World War in particular.
The Year 3 and Year 6 pupils were also visited by the Trust’s Learning Volunteers during the day and studied similar ideas during their lessons. The younger pupils enjoyed activities such as creating a timeline showing when some of the key wars remembered by war memorials took place, to help them understand the chronology of the events involved. They were also surprised to learn just how many war memorials – approximately 100,000 – there are in the UK because they had only seen some of the local ones.
At the end of the school day all the classes - including the younger children who had not been involved in lessons earlier – came together for an assembly so that the older pupils could share what they had learned. It was wonderful to hear how much information they had taken in during the day and to see even the younger children contributing facts they were aware of. One of the things that really seemed to make an impression on the pupils was the fact that there are so many different types of war memorial and many of them said that they would be looking out for local examples from now on.
Following the visit by War Memorials Trust’s Learning Volunteers we received feedback from the school saying that both pupils and teachers had commented on how much they had found out during the day. We are pleased to be supporting young people’s learning about war memorials and the First World War centenary in this way and look forward to working with other schools across the UK.
