Making a First World War battlefields visit meaningful to all students

Having already reflected on ways of improving their students' understanding of historical diversity at Key Stage 3, Joanne Philpott and Daniel Guiney set themselves the challenge of extending this to post-14 students by means of fieldwork activities at First World War battlefields sites. In addition, they wanted to link the study of past diversity to another of their objectives and concerns, the need to address their own students' growing diversity. In order to increase students' sense of personal connection with First World War sites, Philpott and Guiney decided to select stories and sites that would take account of the changing cultural and ethnic population of their community in N orfolk. In their rationale for their revised enquiry, they also link overview and depth and make connections between international, national and local history. In all these ways Philpott and Guiney sought to help students find meaning and interest in events that many had previously found too distant, large or complex for meaningful study...