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TEACHING THE 1914 CHRISTMAS TRUCES Lesson, assembly and carol service plans to help RESOURCE PACK teachers commemorate the 1914 Christmas Truces for the centenary of World War 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS Activity Plans Key Stage 3/4 31 How to use these resources 4 Creating Truce Images to the track of ‘Silent Night’ 32 Art / Music Introduction: A hopeful bit of history 6 Interrupting the War 34 The Martin Luther King Peace Committee 8 English / Creative Writing Christmas Truces Powerpoint: Information for Teachers 11 Christmas Truce Street Graffiti 37 Section 1: The War 12 Art Section 2: Opposing the War 13 Section 3: Combat and Trench Warfare 13 Research Local Participants via Letters to Newspapers 38 Section 4: The December 1914 Christmas Truces 14 History Activity Plans Key Stage 2/3 17 What’s the Point of Christmas Today? 40 Introduction to the Christmas Truces 18 RE / Ethics / PSE History / Moral Reflection Court Martial 41 Writing a Letter Home 20 History / Ethics / PSE English / History Overcoming Barbed Wire 44 Christmas Truces Game 22 Art P. E. Perceptions and Images of the Enemy 45 The Handshake 23 Art / PSE / History Art / Literacy Truce Words: Dominic McGill 46 Multi-session: Christmas Truce Re-enactment 24 Art History / P. E. / Ethics / Music / Languages / Drama Shared Elements of the Truces 47 Christmas Cakes for the Truces 26 Modern Languages Cookery Christianity and World War 1 48 Learning about Countries in 1914 28 RE / History / Ethics Geography The Christmas Gift 30 Fighting or Football 51 Art / Literacy History 2 A Christmas Truce-Themed Assembly 53 A School Carol Service 55 Appendices 60 Appendix 1: Images 60 Appendix 2: Eyewitness Testimonies 62 Appendix 3: Further Resources for Teachers 64 Appendix 4: Multi - Lingual Resources 65 3 HOW TO USE THESE RESOURCES The purpose of this pack is to provide teachers with concrete lesson plans as well as pointers and ideas for developing their own ways of bringing elements of the 1914 Christmas Truces to their schools’ programme between 2014 and 2018. The exercises and activities within are designed to be used in the immediate run-up to Christmas during this time, and also in the November / December half-term. The Resource Pack is a pdf document containing a variety of of the slideshow is to enable teachers to talk their pupils through the activities and lesson plans across a range of subjects including History, origins of the war, popular support of and opposition to it, and the realities English / Literacy, RE, Music, Drama, PE, Cookery, Modern Languages of combat and life in the trenches – all of which form a background to its and PSE. These are aimed primarily at 8-14 year-olds, with some main focus on the outbreak, conduct and termination of the December actitvities for 15-18 year-olds, but can be modified for younger school 1914 Christmas Truces. Some lesson plans suggest modifications to the pupils. slideshow, and teachers are welcome to alter it according to their needs by adding or removing images or text. This pack contains accompanying The pack also contains ideas for a ready-made assembly to be used at any notes for teachers allowing them to talk students through the slides. point during the commemorations but particularly at Christmas time, and also for an entire school Christmas carol service. There are two other slideshows available for download that are used for specific lessons, mostly art. Instructions are provided in the relevant lesson To accompany this pack, other resources are available at www.mlkpc.org plans. for free download. The main one is the Christmas Truces PowerPoint slideshow. Almost all the lesson plans in the Resource Pack refer to the Finally, the website also contains a text only document with the words for slideshow, which has been created specifically for this pack. The purpose the carol service, so that it can be easily modified into booklets for parents. 4 The individual activities in the Resource Pack can be used in isolation or as part of a themed week to assist them in thinking about how to connect their lessons beginning with an assembly explaining the truces and followed and other elements of the school diary with the marking of the up with various lessons during the week. As the 1914 Christmas December 1914 Truces, exploring their relevance today. Many of Truces were made possible because of the shared traditions of the ideas within have been devised by teachers and tested in the Christmas celebration, they readily lend themselves as the theme classroom. for such a week in December between 2014-2017, or a school Christmas carol service. The pack thus includes a complete carol We hope that these resources will not only be used flexibly, but service plan as well as an assembly plan, but teachers should feel will themselves be flexibly developed over the coming years. To free to incorporate any elements into their own classes or events. this end we would encourage teachers who have modified these resources or created their own to send them to us. With your As well as providing ready-made lesson outlines, the ideas in permission we will incorporate them into future versions of this this pack are intended to help give creative teachers inspiration pack or add them to our website to be used by others. 5 INTRODUCTION: A HOPEFUL BIT OF HISTORY Christmas Eve 2014 sees the 100th anniversary of one of the most remarkable events in the annals of modern warfare: the unofficial Christmas Truces of 1914. They commonly began with German soldiers and officers putting up Christmas trees, shouting or writing Christmas greetings, and singing songs recognisable to their British counterparts such as Stille Nacht (Silent Night). From German fronts from the North Sea to Switzerland, made possible by these beginnings troops met in no-man’s land to bury their dead, shared traditions of Christian celebration. It was a hopeful moment of exchange gifts and souvenirs, share festive food and drink, give recognition of common humanity and a (brief) rejection of the terrible cigarettes and cigars, sing and entertain each other, swap names and violence of industrialised war pursued by rulers in a deadly game of addresses, conduct joint religious services, and even, some letters global imperial competition for territories and resources. It was quashed home claimed, to play football. These were not isolated incidents by orders backed by threats, and by replacing troops with men ‘untainted’ but were widespread right down the Anglo-German and Franco- by the truces. 6 Although the most famous, the 1914 Christmas Truces weren’t one-off events in the war. They followed weeks of unofficial and ‘national spirit’ risks teaching the wrong messages. Therefore fraternization by soldiers who discovered that, rather than being the including the December 1914 truces in our remembrance of the monsters portrayed in state propaganda, the other side were men like First World War is one way to help young people engage with the themselves with a preference for staying alive rather than dying. Indeed commemorations whilst also questioning the militarism of the throughout the entire war many combatants managed, through a ‘live- time (and our time) and giving an original angle to approaching and-let-live’ system, to reduce discomfort and risk of death by complicated Christmas. The truces are worth teaching about because they are local truces and tacit understandings that angered the high commands of simply extraordinary in themselves and so inherently evocative both sides. Nonetheless the December 1914 truces are a key moment in that even younger Key Stage 2 pupils can imaginatively engage with the history of the period that reopened the possibility of a Europe based them, while older pupils can be pushed to think hard and creatively on peace and solidarity rather than imperial violence and nationalism. about some of life’s big questions. But they are also worth teaching because of what they symbolise about the choices that individuals or As Britain marks the centenary of World War I, the question of how we societies can make for war or peace. remember is being hotly debated. In 2006 Harry Patch who, when he died in 2009, was Britain’s last World War I veteran, told Prime Minister Tony Blair that, ‘War is organised murder, nothing else’ and said that for him the annual November 11th Remembrance events are ‘just showbusiness.’ In contrast, when announcing in 2012 major plans to fund and organise four years of commemoration, Prime Minister David Cameron said he looked forward to ‘A commemoration that captures our national spirit in every corner of the country... that, like the Diamond Jubilee celebrations this year, says something about who are as a people.’ This contrast reminds us that memory is always contested and politicised. The government’s commitment to remember this important episode in modern European history is welcome, but it is a concern that the language of ‘celebrations’ 7 THE MARTIN LUTHER KING PEACE COMMITTEE These resources have been put together by the Northumbria and Newcastle Universities Martin Luther King Peace Committee. Rev. Dr. King came to Tyneside in 1967 to receive an honorary degree, Newcastle University having the distinction of being the only UK university to so honour him. The Committee commemorates his visit and exists to ‘build cultures of peace’ by drawing on his ideas and example. 8 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King receives honorary degree, Newcastle University, November 1967. What does this have to do with World War One? King’s distinctive Christian philosophy of enemy love and nonviolent resistance to injustice was decisively influenced by mentoring from members of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FoR), of which he was a member.
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