Autumn Term

Topic

The stunning start to our topic this term (We'll Meet Again) was for us to be in role as evacuee children at the outbreak of World War Two in 1939. We had to imagine that we were being evacuated out of London to wherever the Billeting Officer told us to go to! Like the war at the time, this was mainly to Devon and Cornwall. We then got to handle real World War Two artefacts from the time and question what they might be used for.

English

This term, we have written setting descriptions of the outbreak of war in Germany from the viewpoint of a child, a persuasive poster encouraging people to blackout during the Blitz raids, a poem about homelessness for Harvest and a Declaration of War speech as the Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. It was a speech informing the nation that we were at war and we had to ensure that we used formal language and precise verbs so that this serious message was fully understood!

Art

In art we have been studying the work of the artist Henry Moore. When he had to shelter in an underground tunnel in London during German bombing, he couldn’t believe seeing so many people huddled and sleeping on the platforms. Afterwards, when he was back home, he imagined the shapes of the people that he saw. He sketched the composition of the people that he saw with the dark tunnels in the background. We used charcoal and some pastels to show the shapes of these people and colour. Henry Moor is also a sculpture and the shapes of people sometimes look like the shape of a sculpture.

Trip

We had a fantastic trip to Newhaven Fort to further support our History learning and knowledge of World War Two. We got to handle even more artefacts (!), experience an air raid inside an air raid shelter (it was loud!), investigate all of the exhibitions on offer and explore the Fort on foot. When we got to the top of the Fort by the Look out and Gun Emplacements, we imagined having to watch the Luftwaffe (German airforce) flying over English Tunnel and towards us!