- County name: Berkshire
- Group/School name: Easthampstead Park Community School
- Age group: 11 - 18
- Group type: Secondary school
Easthampstead Park Community School, in Bracknell, was keen to work with War Memorials Trust on Remembrance Day 2013 to give pupils a wider understanding of why we have war memorials and of their historical importance.
War Memorials Trust’s Learning Officer visited the school on 11th November and worked with four different classes during the day. The first lesson, with Year 9 pupils, focused on learning about the history of war memorials; when and why they were created, how many there are and different types of war memorial design. The class were familiar with their local war memorial (www.warmemorialsonline.org.uk/node/105269) and many had participated in Remembrance services held there in previous years. The class used pictures of different war memorials taken from War Memorials Trust’s online gallery of war memorial images to find out about different war memorial designs, and were particularly interested to see examples of less traditional, more functional designs such as village halls and church fittings. They considered why different designs might have been chosen and what the community’s motivation might have been for choosing particular design elements. Because this lesson coincided with 11am, the class also participated in a two minute silence and so had the chance to reflect on what they had just learned and the significance of Remembrance commemorations.
The next lesson, with a Year 8 class, took a more practical focus. Having already learned something about the significance of war memorials in the context of the day’s Remembrance commemorations, this group concentrated more on war memorial designs. After looking at different examples they were set the practical challenge of creating a design for their own war memorial. The designs they came up with varied but most pupils seemed to favour more traditional designs over more functional memorials.
The third lesson of the day was with another Year 9 group who took part in a similar session to the first group earlier in the day. Finally, the Trust’s Learning Officer spent time working with a Year 7 class. They were particularly keen to share what they had learned throughout the day and enjoyed using inspiration from pictures of war memorials to develop their own designs, as shown in some of the photos on this page.
