DS 7 has been asked to pretend he is in the battle fields and about to go into war and write a letter home to his family for homework

[Lemith]

This terms topic is ww1, but this piece of work really takes the

I don't want my ds to be thinking about what it is like to go into war. This topic is not suitable for someone so young, war is a terrible thing and the people that survived it were mentally and physically scarred for life.

Aibu?

That's what I thought too music.

When the Romans are studied much is made of the Roman civilisation and way of life. There is far more to the topic than invasions.

The same cannot be said for World War 1 where the tragic and senseless loss of life is the main theme. I would love to see some planning for this topic.

Do they go into the causes of the war? The death toll? The conditions in the trenches ? Shell shock perhaps?

The mind boggles.

When we studied the war at primary school, we did lot about the Home Front.

New curriculum? It does seem like the same old stuff , only covering history where the Brits win.

Has the opium wars been in any curriculum ever?

Sorry sister I should rtft. Fellow teacher?

Homework in reception, writing about life in the trenches? Good grief.

When my DD was in Yr3 age 7 she was asked to write a narrative piece imagining that she was an Aztec sacrifice. She wrote how she was taken up to the top of the temple, held down and watching the knife come down to kill her. "Here comes the knife, I'm scared... arrrrggghhh!!!" she wrote. I still remember it!

She's turned out alright. No ASBOs yet.

It would have to be done in such a hugely sanitised way, to be age appropriate for a 7yr old, that it loses all meaning. I don't see the point of teaching these things so early.

They're not going to cover the senseless waste of a whole generation of men due to political and military foul-ups and mismanagement are they?

Better done a bit older when they have a greater understanding imo.

No :) I have DCs in primary and I just remember reading that history is to be chronological now and thinking that makes sense. ( after topics getting repeated, in the same school).
Children will get much more out of learning about WW2 when they are that bit older.

I did a very similar lesson with SEN 7 - 8 year olds, including role play, mock and real letters from family, life on the home front etc. I promise you that no one was scared for life learning important information about our history. It was part of a whole school theme week on WW1.

People get upset when we don't teach enough about "our British history" and now this... Are parents really this over protective or just on MN?

I very much doubt the teacher is discussing firing squads for shell shocked teens, or battlefield amputations and handing out Sassoon as comprehension. It's perfectly possible to teach things in an age appropriate manner.
Dd knew about the kkk and hitler younger than 7. It didn't mean I told her about gas chambers and lynching in gruesome detail.

last year our whole school studied WW1 because it was 100 years since the war began and the whole country was talking about it.

It was done because it was a relevant topic in our community and country.

It was brilliant. For each age it was done in an age appropriate way. The children were asked to go home and ask questions of parents and grandparents. My dds were really enthusiastic about it.

dd2 aged 7 took in a collage she made, it was a family tree with her great grandpa and her great great grandpa, who both fought in the war. She took in a small piece of trench art made by her great grandpa, and the story of him eating his jam sandwiches when the german soldiers appeared in the trench and arrested them. She wrote up the story of her great great grandpa with his horse, and carefully stuck copies of their pictures on the family tree and worked out how she was related.

The school made loads of red poppies and created a poppy wall similar tp the Tower of London. As a family we went to the Tower too. The school finished the topic by holding a remembrance service, attended by kids and parents and very moving.

No child was traumatised, but lots of them did have thoughtful conversations about their own histories and the impact of war, in an entirely healthy age appropriate way.

I agree - WW2 is a much more suitable topic for primary school children. The Home Front, evacuees, rationing, the Blitz (and V1's and V2's) can all be made relevant to their lives now. There will be relatives still alive who can talk about their experiences. In major cities, there will be streets where newer houses have been built on bomb sites, interrupting the original terraces. And the conflict itself is much easier to explain.

Is WW1 now part of the primary curriculum? Much better left till secondary when it can be linked with Eng Lit.

If ww1 is taught in an age appropriate manner to 7 year old it loses meaning, and therefore its point.

angels actually it was fine, there was an exercise where they had to answer questions like what caused trench foot and what no mans land was and they were all fascinated by the concept of the soldiers fighting one day and playing football the next. ds's grandad marches on Remembrance Sunday and comes to stay with us, so ds got to look at medals passed down through the family and took pictures in to show his class. Of course they are too young to hear details about the pain and suffering but I don't think that means they can't think about what it must be like to live and fight in such horrible conditions and the sacrifices made by the soldiers on our behalf.

I think it is reasonable and does enable to make sense of stuff they will inevitably see on the news about refugees and wars in other countries. Understanding something tends to make children less fearful and it's never too early to start thinking about what conditions are needed for peace.

Surely any war taught in a child friendly way looses meaning? It's WAR?? Mass slaughter, soldiers disabled and disfigured for life, racial hatred, rape, destroyed families... Is there any war where these features don't apply?

Apart from WW2 obviously, because that was about cute refuge children being sent to the countryside with luggage tags and funny gas masks.

My son had nightmares for weeks after learning about the evacuees when he was 7. When I finally figured out what was bothering him, I had to tell him that we would use his US passport to get out of Britain and go to the US and then escape across the Canadian border into the North woods where no one would find us or evacuate us or bomb us.

I'm not saying they shouldn't learn about it, just remember it's not all anodyne. Kids pick up on things, often very unpredictably.

I do understand where you are coming from OP. These things have to be handled carefully. We were taught about the Titanic at school when I was about 10. It has stayed with me forever and affected me really badly as a child. I refuse to watch the film.

I think teaching about evacuees to young children is bound to be more likely to upset them. When you are very young, the idea of having to leave your family is terrifying

We were taught a bit about the opium wars in primary about 50 yearsago. I wasn't very interested, and don't remember much of it though.