Battyeford Primary School – Creative Writing

It was a pleasure to spend three days with the very enthusiastic Year 5 pupils at Battyeford Primary School. Some of the pupils had managed to research their own family connections to WW1 and they shared their fascinating findings with their classmates. The children enjoyed looking at the WW1 postcards and picking out some of the old-fashioned words and phrases. We discussed everyday life in the trenches and listened to extracts from real diaries from the frontline. The pupils went on to create wonderful character sketches of either a soldier or nurse. They stayed in character to write a postcard home to a loved one and then a diary entry. The children were gripped by the story of the 1914 Christmas Truce and a number of pupils chose to write a diary entry from the point of view of a soldier who had taken part in this symbolic event.