About the Dazzle Ship Resources
This free digital resource focuses on three major public art commissions in Liverpool and London by artists Sir Peter Blake, Carlos Cruz-Diez and Tobias Rehberger. It has been designed for teachers and pupils with activities, teacher’s notes and lesson plans related to subjects across the curriculum as well as exciting interactive games for all the family to enjoy.
Creative writing project
Classroom Activities
Creative writing
Much of what we know about what it was like in World War One comes from first-hand accounts from people alive at the time, whether these were war poems or letters home to family from soldiers. These documents give us an insight into what the conditions were like either in the trenches, at sea or back in Britain.
In Groups
Discuss how people may have felt being sent away to war. This could be a soldier in the trenches, a soldier at sea, or a nurse treating soldiers on the front line.
Think about what they heard, smelt and saw while they were in in the trenches or at sea.
Writing task
Imagine you are a nurse or a soldier fighting on a Dazzle Ship in the First World War or in the trenches. Write a letter to a member of your family describing what it is like to be a soldier…
- Are you home sick?
- Describe what it is like on the ship, in the trenches or in the field hospital?
- Have you been in any battles?
- How many soldiers have you treated?
Write a description of what can you see, hear, smell and touch.
Materials List
- Pencil or pen
- Exercise book or paper
Extract from curriculum
Pupils should be taught to:
Spoken Language
- listen and respond appropriately to adults and their peers
- ask relevant questions to extend their understanding and knowledge
- articulate and justify answers, arguments and opinions
- give well-structured descriptions, explanations and narratives for different purposes,
- including for expressing feelings
- maintain attention and participate actively in collaborative conversations, staying on
- topic and initiating and responding to comments
- use spoken language to develop understanding through speculating, hypothesising,
- imagining and exploring ideas
Writing
Pupils should be taught to:
Plan their writing by:
- discussing writing similar to that which they are planning to write in order to
- understand and learn from its structure, vocabulary and grammar
- discussing and recording ideas
- draft and write by:
- composing and rehearsing sentences orally (including dialogue), progressively building a varied and rich vocabulary and an increasing range of sentence structures
- organising paragraphs around a theme
- in narratives, creating settings, characters and plot
Teachers Notes:
These activities could be used in conjunction with a project around World War One.
The Persuasive Writing activity could also link to the Dazzle Art and History projects.