Cauldeen Primary E-twinning Project

An ICT partnership

Cauldeen Primary, Inverness, Scotland, Dun Salv Portelli P.S. C Gozo

Zespol szkol Fundacji Primus Warzaw, Guzeppi Agius Primary ‘B’ Malta

‘Talking through Time’

• Cauldeen Primary School in Inverness undertook an ambitious project to electronically record for future generations the impact of World War Two on our local area. Locating, visiting and evidencing sites of interest involved many hours of research and information gathering. This included extensive use of the internet. Contact was made with many individuals, organisations and groups who were exceedingly supportive of the pupils and the project. High quality cross curricular work facilitated the production of a teaching resource which was shared with every school in the Highland area.

You can judge the project for yourself on http://www.ww2inthehighlands.co.uk

• This session, through eTwinning, we have exchanged and developed curricular materials with schools in Malta and Poland to gain different perspectives on this significant historical period.

• Through the support of a ‘War Detectives’ grant from the Scottish Museums Council it has been possible to record personal stories, the thoughts and feelings of the generation who lived through and participated in this period of European and World history.

• Our partner schools in Malta and Poland were involved in researching the local impact of World War Two in their own areas and some partners also collected accounts to share in the eTwinning project.

Those were really difficult times, when bread was more expensive than gold itself! George Tabone from Victoria Malta

• Cauldeen pupils invited local veterans, grandparents and community members to share their memories and first hand experiences of this time.

• These were recorded using digital video. The children extensively researched and carefully prepared questions.

• The bonds of mutual respect and admiration grew as the two generations, separated by half a century or more, interacted in a very real and meaningful way.

• The feedback from the children on this was extremely positive. It also raised their estimation and increased their understanding of the senior members of the community who lived through the war. The response of the contributors was equally positive.

…. every family was affected, sometimes we only had potatoes for our meal, you know potatoes and milk or something like that, there was very little else. Sheila MacKay Inverness in school during the war

Jock Dunbar Cameron Highlanders 51st Highland Div.

Transcript of Mr Sutherland ex Wellington Bomber Crew

• “Come and help me Bob”, who was the bombardier. They were cursing and swearing trying to get the wing up. It wasn’t going to come up. For eight or nine seconds we had a terrible thought of what was going to happen to us. We are going to die, we are going to be killed there’s no doubt about it. The wing was down like that, and you know what he did? He shut off the port engine and the left wing lost power and it came down. We got on the runway, right along the runway and off the end of it. But we came down in one piece.

• I was the smallest of the crew so they said “see if you can find what’s blocking the controls”- and we found the seat of the Nelson toilet jammed hard against the controls. The next day the ground crew took the seat of the Nelson toilet, put nails in it and hung it up above our huts to remind us of the Nelson toilet that almost killed five men on a cold dark night in England.

Malta GC

• The head teacher of Nadur Primary School, Ms Angela Camilleri, thought of an innovative way to make children more pro-English. This is what she wrote in the school’s log book:

• This afternoon the first ‘school parade’ was held in the school ground. At the southern side of the ground a mast flying the Union Jack and the Maltese flag was fixed. A photo of His Majesty King George VI was attached to it. All the school children were filed up. I delivered a short speech on our indebtedness to our brother soldiers and sailors far away in France and on the high seas. A short prayer was said in common and a minute silence followed as a sign of respect towards our fallen brethren. The singing of the National Anthem closed the ceremony. Henceforth a School Parade will be held every Friday afternoon.

All of a sudden I heard a low-flying plane and the noise of falling bombs. They hit the Il-Hara tar-Rokon, a quarter in San Lawrenz village. We saw flames engulfing the houses; we heard the shrieks of frightened children and people. Confusion was everywhere. Many people were injured. Louis Cauchi 15 years old Gozo Malta

Rock Shelter in Malta visited by our partner school

Comparative study of bomb shelters in UK and Malta

Anderson Shelter London

Rock shelter MaltaTunnel Shelter Malta

Family Anderson Shelter Inverness

During an air raid, children would be rushed to the nearby shelters. For them all this was an adventure, since they would always be happy, as they would not be in school!

Joseph Buhagiar from Xaghra

• The pupils then transcribed many of the stories and recollections. Pupils used editing software to focus on the personal stories, thoughts, feeling and intense personal experiences related to them.

• The primary seven children then researched graphics, photographs, film archive and historical documentation, to illustrate and provide background information to support the memoirs.

• This was complimented particularly by material from our partner school in Gozo which enabled our pupils to compare and contrast the experiences in a broader European context.

• E-mails, written accounts, photographs and CDs were exchanged with the partner schools to provide multi-cultural, multi-faceted curricular material for each school to use in its own way.

I was very pleased for the atomic bomb because it meant I wouldn’t have to leave home again after being away for five years. I could go back home to my mother and father and live a normal life.

Alex Sutherland Inverness ex Bomber Crew

……if we saw a solider that was near by or home on leave we always wondered if it was our father because we didn’t really know what our fathers looked like, so we thought that every man in a soldier’s suit was Dad.

Sheila MacKay Inverness aged 7

Everybody carried an identity card in this country. They would keep track of where everybody went so that they could be checked on. In the area where I was born, the identity card system had not started operating when I left. But during my 3rd leave coming home I couldn’t get in. Nobody was there to verify who I was. They had to phone up the local hotel in my little village to verify who I was. This is the registration book and identity card. Every time you moved you had to put your new address in it. You’d get stamped from the place you were leaving and the place you’re moving to. Eventually when I left Inverness in 1949, the registration and identity card was still in operation, it had every shift I had. I had six addresses in my identity card booklet.

Donald Grant ex Marine Landing Craft Commander

“ ….when you are frightened and terrified you pray that it (V1 bomb) keeps going, you don’t want anything to happen to you. After it passed you thought am’nt I a coward, it will kill innocent women and children in London. Perhaps it would be better if it landed here.”Alex Sutherland Inverness ex RAF Wellington air crew.

http://www.ww2inthehighlands.co.uk./etwinning/index.htm

Educational Gains• Project used to hear at first hand and record local veterans and citizens

relay their real experiences and share these with our European partner schools as well as provide actual archive material.

• Pupils had the opportunity to use their research skills in a real and meaningful way.

• Supports second language teaching in our partner schools who teach English as a second language.

• Helped to develop the citizenship agenda by using the resources of our local community to support our curriculum.

• Provided opportunities to compare and contrast the wider experiences with children from other European countries as well as their own community.

• Extensive use of ICT in a real context to support the wider curriculum.• Supports different learning styles through the use of visual, written,

auditory and creative stimulus. • Provides additional motivation for pupils while addressing the need to

continue to implement an international dimension to our curriculum.