Secondary education resources

People of the Great War (Imperial War Museum)

Download the Teacher Notes for ideas about how the People of the Great War film can be used in lessons or as an assembly. Notes include subject links, background information, summary notes and a step by step guide to each activity.

People of the Great War, The making of... (Imperial War Museum)

The short Making Of... film explains the processes by which the People of the Great War film was initiated, researched and developed, and is useful as a resource for media studies, English and history lessons.

The Teacher Notes provide ideas and activities about how to use the film in assemblies and in the classroom.

Watch the Making Of... film here

or download it to your school or personal network for free.

Shaping the Modern World (Imperial War Museum)

Shaping the Modern World resources encourage students to explore the ways in which the First World War helped to shape the world we live in today. The resources contain original source material, historical notes and a selection of teaching activities and ideas.

Remembrance Day Assembly Plan (Ministry of Defence)

The short Defence Dynamics Assembly Plan is an excellent introduction to the two minute silence as it presents some thought provoking questions for students to consider during the period of reflection.

Access the Assembly Plan here.

Lesson plans linked to the Remembrance theme (Ministry of Defence)

The Defence Dynamics website provides lessons plans across core subjects that explore events, experiences and themes associated to remembrance. Click on the links below to access the online resources:

English

Explore, analyse and imagine – memoirs from UK Prisoners of War
Writing to imagine – making a case for the construction of a local war memorial
Analysing persuasive text – First and Second War Propaganda

History

Life in the trenches – trench warfare, conditions of trenches and personal effects
Recruiting, recruits and recruitment – First World War recruitment material and kit
Role of women in the Second World War – insight into the ways women contributed to the war effort
End of the First World War – technological advances that contributed to ending the War

Citizenship

Remembrance, loss and sacrifice – importance of remembrance
Freedom and justice – relevance of The Battle and Britain today
Ethnic diversity – history of ethnic minorities in the Armed Forces
Conflict and cooperation – consequences and characteristics of conflict - Bosnia War case-study
Human rights – discussion and debate over Human Rights - Bosnia War case-study

Who Cares? (Commonwealth War Graves Commission)

A DIY PowerPoint presentation with downloadable notes. It examines many aspects of remembrance, includes a brief history of the CWGC and poses thought-provoking questions about its future.

Access the resources here: http://www.cwgc.org/education

Remembrance assemblies (Commonwealth War Graves Commission)

Two ready-made remembrance assemblies.

Access the resources here: http://www.cwgc.org/education

CWGC Learning Zone website (Commonwealth War Graves Commission)

A user-friendly website containing excellent cross-curricular resources produced by CWGC including:

FREE CD Roms and DVDs. For example, Let Us Die Like Brothers - an award winning CD-ROM, suitable for Remembrance Time and the study of black history. It tells the story of black South African troops in the First World War.
Downloadable resources. For example, Truth, the first casualty? - lesson plans for an English/History unit on the website Remember Me. It looks at the use of gas in the First World War and how this was recorded in factual documents, personal accounts, poetry, fiction and images.
Web-based resources. For example, Respect! - thought-provoking material to support you if you’re planning a school trip to a CWGC cemetery, particularly a battlefield tour to N. France and Belgium.

Access the resources here: http://www.cwgc.org/learningzone

Radiowaves (IWM and Commonwealth War Graves Commission)

To mark the 90th anniversary of the end of the First World War, the Imperial War Museum, in association with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, took a group of prize-winning students from across the UK to visit the battlefields of Northern France and Belgium. The group travelled as Remembrance Ambassadors to sites such as Ypres Salient, Arras and the Somme to discover some of the remarkable stories of men and women who experienced life on the Western Front during the First World War. They shared their experiences, and the histories of the sites and people they encountered along the way, through blogs, videos, vox-pops and audio reports. These are all available for teachers and students to use as stimulus for exciting classroom activities at www.radiowaves.co.uk/90

You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to view pdf files, please download it here