This lesson comes towards the beginning of the topic after pupils have explored the nature and reasons for evacuation. I am grateful to Julie Tzivanidou of Cove Junior School, near Farnborough, for providing the original version of the PowerPoint presentation.
Learning objectives
- pupils learn to ask questions of data relating to evacuation
- they research answers to their questions covering issues such as: the Phoney War; German invasion of Norway and Northern France; the Blitz; the German V1 and V2 rockets
- they use their knowledge of events to contextualise a contemporary cartoon using internal clues to date it
Step 1
Start by asking the children to think about the pace at which evacuation would have proceeded. Would the number of evacuees go up, or down, or stay the same, during the war? They will not know the answer but they will at least be thinking about the issues. The point is that they begin to ask questions they would not have thought about unless encouraged to.
Step 2
Now reveal the graph to them slowly step by step. At each point encourage children to think about questions they would like to ask e.g. Why were so many evacuated even before
