Teachers' notes
An evacuee's story
Aims:
- To make useful notes and use evidence from a text to explain events and ideas.
- To understand the writer’s perspective from both direct references and inference.
- To experiment with different narrative forms including writing in the first person.
- To know more about the experiences of child evacuees in the Second World War.
Age group 9–11
- England and Wales
Year 5/Year 6 - Scotland
Year P6/Year P7 - Northern Ireland
Year 6/Year 7
Literacy skills:
To read and understand a first hand account. To identify direct and implied references about the writer’s emotions. To write a first person account of an evacuee’s story which implies how the child is feeling.
Curriculum links:
- History – England and Wales
- Environment and society – Northern Ireland
- Environmental studies – Scotland
Content:
- Whiteboard: Read the Headmaster’s notes on the landing page and notice the precise attention to detail. Can the children imagine the scene? Read Margaret’s story and then ask the children to identify the key phrases which give clues about how she was feeling that day. Children can then write their own evacuee story.
- Activity sheet: Children might like to role–play the villagers’ conversation before writing the story from their point of view. Talk about what is implied and ‘reading between the lines.’
- Extension: Write a first person account which conveys how the evacuee feels about their foster parent through description and inference.
Suggestions for questions:
- Activate prior knowledge: Have you stayed away from home, without your parents, in a strange place? How did you feel? What are the reasons for children to do this?
- Reflect on learning: How do we communicate our feelings without directly telling someone e.g. ‘I feel sad’? How do you think you would have coped as an evacuee?
- Stimulate further research: Has anyone in your family
a story to tell about being an evacuee? Can you find an evacuee’s story
which implies that their experience away from home was happy and positive?