Teach-Primary-Issue-19.8

Eyewitness accounts can help us learn a lot about emotions and feelings from any historical event. They can tell us whom people supported, whom people hated and how people felt about anything from getting up every day to fighting a life-or-death battle. This lesson uses my graphic novel 1066 The Battle of Hastings to illuminate what it might have been like for those on the battlefield. Hopefully, there are some pages and characters which have caught your pupils’ interest – they’ll help them create a gripping piece of writing. 1 | WHAT HAPPENED? Explain to the children that their task for this lesson is to write an eyewitness account of what happened in 1066. Give them the option of writing a description of fighting in one of the battles against the Vikings, or fighting at the Battle of Hastings, or being involved in William and the Normans’ burning of the land afterwards. Pupils can choose whether they’d rather be on the ‘winning’ side or the ‘losing’ side. Explain that their accounts will need to be in the first person, and what this means. You may also want to remind them that, since they are writing an account of something that has already happened to their characters, verbs will need to be in the past tense ( I fought… I ran… ). Begin by asking children to plan some describing words for the setting of their chosen part of the story. They could work individually or in groups. Some important considerations for content include: • Who are you and what ‘side’ are you on? • Look at the graphic novel. What was the weather like? • What sort of noises or shouting might there have been? • What could you see? START HERE MAIN LESSON l Who did what at the Battle of Hastings l How to write about them in an engaging way l How to practise writing skills l How to bring history to life History, English In order to get the most out of this lesson, it would be great to read the whole graphic novel as a class. Ask pupils to pick out some facts or pages that they found particularly interesting, and then to briefly summarise. You could also divide the class into groups to read different sections and then feed back their findings to the rest of the class. If you don’t have access to the whole book, there are some pages available for download at the link on the right, and you can combine this with your existing research into the Battle of Hastings, or task children with using books and online research to find information such as the key players, why the Vikings posed a threat, William’s invasion, and some details of the battle itself. Investigate one of the most famous conflicts in British history, and have pupils write an account, with Stuart Douch KS2 LESSON PLAN stuartdouch.co.uk @northlancingbloke What was it like at The Battle of Hastings? WHAT THEY’LL LEARN 94 | www.teachwire.net