To begin March, the 3rd Form embarked on the school’s annual Great War Battlefields Tour, to France and Flanders. While many schools visit the First World War battlefields, Kingham Hill takes a different approach, incorporating fieldwork into the History curriculum alongside classroom lessons.
“We find that when the pupils can see the places for themselves, putting themselves in the same positions as the soldiers who fought there, the subject comes alive and they experience a connection with their past that is priceless.” explained Head of Languages and seasoned Battlefields Tour Guide, Mr Williams.
On the five day tour, pupils have the opportunity to contextualise the cross-curricular research that they have carried out in their Digital Literacy lessons. Led by Mr Williams and Digital Literacy Coordinator, Ms Saxby, pupils research one of the men named on the school’s war memorial in Chapel, using primary sources from The National Archives and Library Archives Canada. Armed with locations gleaned from service records, battalion war diaries and trench maps, pupils use their time on the battlefields to find the very places where their chosen soldier fought and died.
“It is this particular aspect of the tour which makes what we do so special.” said Mr Williams. “Our pupils leave Kingham Hill just before dawn on a cold, crisp, Cotswold morning, leaving behind a place well known both to themselves and their chosen soldiers. They spend a week walking the fields and lanes of the Somme, Loos and the Ypres Salient, where they gain an insight into a conflict we think we know all about. However, they find that seeing it through the lens of their man’s personal experience, revealed through the evidence they have already uncovered in their classroom-based research, makes them see the Great War in a completely new way. The pupils also develop an empathy for these “ordinary men in extraordinary circumstances”, to quote the respected Great War historian, Paul Reed. And when they leave the battlefields and return to our beloved Hill, they cannot help but consider that they are doing something which our fallen were never able to do.”
Alongside the research aspect of the tour, pupils also practise their French on market day in Arras, where they buy their lunch and complete a treasure hunt around the town using only the French they have learnt in class; the school is always warmly welcomed by l’École Anatole France for a déjeuner pique-nique.
We now look forward to seeing the 3rd Form present their Great War Research Projects in the Trinity Term, when they will be able to showcase the fruits of their hard work.