Resources required

• Resource K: Commemorating war
• Resource L: A nation remembers
• Resource M: The impact of memorials
• Resource N: Teachers notes on memorials

Rationale and learning intentions

• To understand the concepts of commemoration, memorial and remembrance
• To explore the key features of memorials
• To reach a judgement on the effectiveness of a memorial
• To apply this judgement to a range of memorials in Washington D.C.
• To assess the importance of remembrance and commemoration.

Starter – the purpose of this is to stimulate student interest and discussion

Students are given Resource K: Commemorating war. Students try to link and/or work out the odd one out. The objective is for students to understand that they represent different ways of commemorating twentieth century conflicts. The odd one out is the Cenotaph which is a British memorial, whilst all of the others commemorate specifically American involvement in wars.

To further this activity and link into the next one, it would be beneficial to discuss students’ prior knowledge and understanding of types of memorial they have seen or know of (e.g. statues, architectural structures, buildings, plaques, sculptures, books, paintings, films, museums, parades, music).

Main activity

This leads on to a discussion about what a memorial should be (e.g. sombre, respectful, beautiful, thought-provoking, educational, imposing, inspiring, enduring, simple, personal, touching etc). Using Resource M: The impact of memorials, students have to choose the 5 things they think are the most important to create an effective memorial.

Explain to students that they are going to be examining images of the memorials of America’s capital city, Washington, D.C. When they look at each memorial, they need to decide if it meets all or some of their criteria for a good memorial. If it meets all of their criteria, they can give it 5 out of 5. If not, then the memorial received a mark for each criteria that it does meet.

Students are then given the set of images depicting a range of Washington’s memorials taken on Memorial Day weekend (Memorial Day is always on the last Monday of May). After considering a memorial, they fill in the table in Resource M: The impact of memorials.

The purpose of this activity is for students to reach an informed judgement about the memorials based on their (or the class’s) chosen criteria.

Feedback and consolidation

Students feedback their findings in small groups/whole class.
 
Plenary

• What have you learnt today about commemorating conflict?
• Is commemoration important?

Leads into homework opportunity.
 
Homework opportunity

Research some of Britain’s main (or local) war memorials, using local or national archive offices, internet, newspapers etc. How effective are they as memorials when compared with the American ones studied, and why?