First week of Term 2 - ANZAC Day - school wide learning focus

This week our whole school is learning about ANZAC Day.

Our main areas of learning for this week are:

• The ANZAC's landing at Gallipoli
• ‘In Flander’s Fields’ poem
• World War I stories
• How did World War I start?

Narrative Writing
We have been writing narratives from the viewpoint of a child, soldier, nurse, medic, doctor, mother or father of a soldier.

'Gallipoli - The scale of our war'
A great website we have viewed is through the Te Papa Museum of New Zealand. It is an informative mosaic about life during World War I.  Take a look at this website by clicking on the heading above. If you click on each picture or heading you will learn about something new.

How did World War I start?

We have been learning about how World War I started.  It is a complex piece of history, which involved a lot of European countries who took sides against each other.  It is written that when Archduke Franz Ferdinand from a country called Austro-Hungary was assassinated and the Germans and Russians would not retreat from each others' borders that war began.  New Zealand and Australian soldiers became involved in World War I because they were allies with Great Britain.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand

'In Flanders Fields' - poem by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae

For our class item at our school ANZAC Day Service one of our students is to read out this well known poem, while the remainder of our class will lie down on the ground and hold up a white cross. Some students from our buddy class Room 2 will wave red poppies between the crosses, just like the poem says.

We are going to make the poppies and crosses together.