4s Study Remembrance Poetry

This term, our 4s students have been studying Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo in their English lessons, a novel set during the First World War. The main character, Thomas Peaceful looks back over his childhood from the war-torn battlefields of France and remembers how things used to be before his life changed forever.

In their lesson with Mrs Spellman on Wednesday 11 November, students read the poem ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ by Wilfred Owen, which served not only a useful comparison to the novel they are studying, but also as a fitting way to mark Remembrance Day.

In class, students explored the unambiguous anti-war message presented in the poem and reflected on Owen’s visceral and haunting use of language. Students were tasked with matching quotations from the poem to images of soldiers on the front line and they considered whether they agree with Owen’s rebuke of the Latin saying ‘Ducle est decorum est, pro patria mori’  which means ‘It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country’.

In class discussion, student Polina explained that people at that time were very patriotic and therefore they may have agreed with this sentiment. Elizabeth said that she understood the anger expressed in the poem and reflected on the futility of war.

Students were able to draw connections between Owen’s description of the way a soldier is “flung” in a wagon, almost without respect or mourning, to the purpose of the ‘Tomb of the Unnamed Soldier’ mentioned in this morning’s Remembrance Service led by Chaplin Rachel Ross.

Mrs Spellman was able to tell the girls that the Poet Laureate Simon Armitage, who visited Queen Anne’s a year ago, read a new poem, ‘The Bed’ in Westminster Abbey as a tribute to the 100 year anniversary of the burial of the tomb. The poem’s title is a metaphor for the anonymous soldier's grave and was read by the Poet Laureate in a televised Armistice Day service.