Big Writing on theme of Remembrance Day? But what?

sallymgoodman · Big Writing on theme of Remembrance Day? But what?

Our Literacy Co-Ordinator said briefly at Staff Meeting that any Big Writing next week should be connected to the theme of Remembrance Day. She suggested a 'Letter from the trenches'.

BUT - my Year 4s haven't covered either WW1 or WW2. I like the idea of using some poetry for a stimulus, but I feel that they would need a lot of input information.

It so happens that I have a couple of lessons on Monday and Tuesday that I could use for some background work before actually writing on Nov 11th.

What do people think? Any other text types except Letter from the Trenches? And if I DO do that, what could I use as stimulus?

It's one of those ideas that sounded great until I actually started thinking about how to put it into practice!

Rainbow_Bright

Could you look at a variety of sources from the time - pictures, Michael Foreman's book (the one about the Christmas Day football match which he illustrated as well), helmets/uniforms, poems etc and get them to do a description/poem? Imagine they were there - sights, sounds, smells etc?

Or maybe some poetry around the poppy theme?

Or could you perhaps do the letter from home to a soldier in the trenches which might need less input information?

Not the most imaginative, I'm afraid.

queenlit

There are remembrance day resources on Bev's site;
http://www.communication4all.co.uk/HomePage.htm

smallholder

There is a wonderful digital archive of film and photographs about WW1 on here

http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/

JD1970

Could you create your own trench like conditions? Have them sitting in a muddy puddle whilst writing?

magpie nic

This might be some good
http://www.westallswar.org.uk/

or
http://www.northerngrid.org/index...membrance-day-world-war-resources

or
http://www.northerngrid.org/ngflwebsite/ww2/welcome.html

Night Garden

I f you want to do poetry there are heaps of fantastic poems linked to this that would be ideal.
You could place pictures around the room, or in groups and get each group to annotate words they think realte to the pictures.
You could get them to rotate around each table and add words other groups have not used therefore you get a bank of vocabulary and phrases.
Then read some poems.
Chn then could decide on the picture they really like and write abou it.
Your BA could have a scaffold of a poem, or maybe phrases/sentences that they could add other sentences/ words too.

bluerose

could you make it more real and relevant by looking at something current and do a newspaper report on something you could share from news re Afghanistan /Iraq etc or
Could your children write a letter to their dad in army saying how much they love them and worry re news they have been seeing

Remembrance sunday is about remembering past but is also about those currently in wars

madphil

How about a senses poem based on a picture or clip of battle/trenches:

I can see
I can hear
I can feel
I can smell
I can taste

sallymgoodman

Thank you all so much - hope I didn't seem unappreciative, but I've been away all weekend shepherding son and 15 other lovely boys around a bunch of rugby tournaments. Lots of mud...

Anyway, what great ideas - I love the senses poem - I always forget you can do poems for Big Writing! And many thanks for the links - I have pulled several of them together for a presentation for Monday. I also found the British Legion website which has lots of info on troops from the Commonwealth.

Thanks guys - what a joy to log in and find you've done all my thinking for me!