Optional Remembrance lesson: What can we learn from a soldier’s story?
Investigating the life of Walter Tull through photographs and sources to learn how individual stories help us remember the past.
Learning objective
- To explore what happened to Walter Tull using photographs.
Success criteria
- I can make simple observations using photographs from the past.
- I understand the difference between a fact and opinion.
- I can ask questions about Walter Tull.
Before the lesson
Watch
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Watch
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Lesson plan
You may want to check the children can recall:
What and when Remembrance Day is.
Who is remembered on Remembrance Day.
Why some people wear the poppy.
Display the Presentation: What am I?
You may want to check the children can recall:
What and when Remembrance Day is.
Who is remembered on Remembrance Day.
Why some people wear the poppy.
Display the Presentation: What am I?
Presentation: What am I?
Make presentation full-screen
Read the definitions and words aloud. Choose volunteers to come up to the board and use the interactive pen to drag and drop the correct words to the definition. Take feedback and click the answer button to reveal the answers.
Show the children the two photographs of Walter Tull on slide 1 of the Presentation: Photographs of Walter Tull.
Show the children the two photographs of Walter Tull on slide 1 of the Presentation: Photographs of Walter Tull.
Presentation: Photographs of Walter Tull
Make presentation full-screen
Put the children in pairs and ask them to share what they can see. Take feedback.
The children may suggest: a soldier, a footballer, a young Black man. Then ask them to think of questions and answers they can generate from looking at the photograph. For example:
- The person is wearing a football uniform - What is he wearing?
- The person is working as a soldier - What is he doing?
- The photograph looks old - Is the photo from today or a long time ago?
Take feedback. Display slide 2 showing more photos of Walter Tull and ask the children to answer the following questions in their pairs:
Are the clothes like the clothes footballers and soldiers wear now? (No.)
How are they different? (The children may suggest: they are not made of the same material; they have different colours to today's football kit and soldier uniforms; the football kit looks much plainer and has long shorts; the soldier’s uniform has a different style.)
What work might the person in the photo do? (The children may suggest: he might play football because he is wearing football clothes; he might also be a soldier because of the uniform; he might be a captain in the army.)
How can we tell this person lived a very long time ago? (The children may suggest: the clothes are old-fashioned; the photo is black and white or looks old; he does not have a modern football kit; the army uniform looks different from today’s army clothes.)
What sort of person do you think he is? (The children may suggest: brave because he was a soldier; kind because he looks friendly; strong because he played football and was a soldier; clever because he was good at football and joined the army.)
Gather the class together and explain that Walter Tull lived more than 100 years ago, from 1888 to 1918. He was one of the first Afro-Caribbean professional footballers and the first English Black officer to lead white soldiers in World War 1.
Display the Kapow Primary timeline and select the World War 1 period. Click on 'view World War 1 timeline'. Locate and read the 1916, 1917 and 1918 events about Walter Tull.
Watch the Pupil video: Tull’s tale.
Gather the class and create a word bank of words to describe Walter Tull and help the children remember his story. The children may suggest: brave, strong, intelligent, talented, heroic, etc. Record their ideas on flipchart paper.
Share that every 11 November, people around the country take two minutes of silence to remember all the people who fought and helped in the world wars. Display the Presentation: We remember and read the statements before observing two minutes' silence.
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In this unit
Assessment – History Y2: How was school different in the past?
Lesson 1: Were schools different in the past?
Lesson 2: How have schools changed within living memory?
Lesson 3: How were schools different in the 1900s?
Lesson 4: How have schools changed?
Lesson 5: What is similar and different about schools now and in the past?
Lesson 6: Would you prefer to have gone to school in the past?
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Optional Remembrance lesson: What can we learn from a soldier’s story?
