Room 14 Kirklandneuk: March 2009

We have been working very hard on a very special “Joyning the Learning” topic. We wanted it to be a big surprise for our families and invited guests so we did not say too much about it during the topic.

The topic Primary 6 have been working on is World War 2 - The Home Front. We started by learning about how the War actually started, and began to think about areas of the topic that interested us to be our "Big Questions" for group research. We chose Evacuation, The Homefront, The Blitz and Hitler, Germany and the Nazis. After a few weeks of research we gave group presentations and created our own display.

During this time we were also working on transforming our classroom. We started by making a "Blitz" wall, then we had an Evacuation scene - a steam train at a station platform with our photos in the carriage windows, we moved on to the kitchen (we blacked out our windows and displayed some work here), then our 1940's living room where we had to design and make appropriate wallpaper. We also used technology skills to create 3D objects to display in our living room and kitchen.

Throughout the topic we had several core writing tasks to do. These were - Declaration of War (newspaper report), and Evacuation sense poem, an Evacuee's letter home, an annotated diagram of an Anderson shelter, an imaginative story called Air Raid! and a war-time diary entry. All of our writing had to be of a high standard.

We were also given lots of challenges, task and research to do at home. These included finding a suitable evacuee costume to wear for our open evening, creating a 3D 1940's room and making a ration book.

Our open afternoon and evening were very successful and enjoyed by all! All pupils (and the teachers!) dressed in 1940s style clothing. These consisted of a play and performance in the hall - including some war-time songs- then a tour of our classrooms. We had made up several activities for our guests to do in the class and we showed off all of our tremendous work!