Bella Feltwell: East End housewife - Museum of London€¢ Write a letter to a friend in the country explaining what it is like to be in an air-raid. • Create a drama scenario focusing

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Bella Feltwell: East End housewife

Videoconference support materials KS2

© Museum of London 2009

Contents

Curriculum links and session description 1

Practical guidelines 2

Preparation and pre-videoconference activities 4

Follow-up activities 5

Background information 9

1


Curriculum links

KS2 History – World War Two

Unit T9 1a/ 1b/ 3/ 11b • What was it like for children in World

War Two?

• Understand the complex and varied feelings that children had about war.

• Develop skills of investigating historical evidence.

• What was it like to be an evacuee?

• Where and how the local area was affected by World War Two?

• Make connections between World War Two and modern conflicts.

KS2 English / Literacy

Eng 1 Speaking and listening / Drama 4a – Create, adapt and sustain different roles, individually and in groups.

4b – Use character, action and narrative to convey story, themes, emotions and ideas in plays they devise and script.

KS2 Design and technology

Year 3 Unit 3A Packaging. Design and make a box for a gas mask. Year 6 Unit 6A Structures. Design and make a model of a shelter.

Session description

Pupils will meet Bella Feltwell, a housewife in Poplar during the Blitz. Pupils will find out about wartime life in the East End, rationing, evacuation and much more.

This session lasts 40 minutes.

Thanks to the Imperial War Museum for providing scenery images.

2


Practical guidelines

To maximise the enjoyment and value of the videoconference please consider the following:

• check your equipment is working prior to the day of your videoconference (please arrange a test call with JVCS and the Museum may wish to arrange a test call with you too)

• please call 020 7814 5574 for any videoconferencing enquiries prior to and after sessions

• if you need to get in touch during sessions please ring 020 7001 9813

• seat your pupils so that they can both see and be seen. We suggest that they sit on the floor in rows with the back row on chairs or benches

• please join in with any interaction yourself, and encourage pupils to join in

• seat yourself close to the microphone, in a position from which you can be seen and heard by our facilitator and from which you can best support your pupils' interaction. It usually helps if you can repeat pupils’ questions with the name of the pupil who has asked the question

• responsible teachers should not leave the classroom or hall when the session is taking place

• please note that you are responsible for students’ behaviour at all times during the session

• please note that no filming or recording of the videoconference is permitted

• please fill in an evaluation form for the session. Your feedback is very important to us and our funding depends on it.

Cancellation charges

We are able to offer these sessions free to schools thanks to generous funding. However, any cancellations will incur a charge. For details of cancellation charges please see www.museumoflondon.org.uk/schoolsbookings

3


Videoconference preparation and pre-session activities

To maximise the enjoyment and value of the visit please consider the following:

• introduce to the group some general background about Museum of London

• undertake at least one of the suggested pre-session activities.

1. Start a picture timeline of wartime events.

2. Collect and study commodities imported from around the world and others manufactured in Britain. Discuss which ones would have been unavailable during the war and why.

3. Look at maps of Europe and aerial photographs of your area to compare bomb damage after the war with the landscape pre-war.

4. Discuss the effects of the Blitz on children and how their lives compare to today. How would children feel if they were evacuated, separated from their relatives or caught in an air-raid?

5. Study photographs, articles, posters or letters to find out more about real events, the reactions of everyday people to wartime and the approach of the government in controlling the lives of civilians.

Preparation ideas before the videoconference

Explain to the children that for the videoconferencing session they must imagine that the year is 1940. They should get themselves into the role as children in the war.

• Using parcel labels and string make labels for children to wear, either with their own

names or fictional ‘wartime’ ones, for during the videoconferencing session.

• Make gas mask boxes from brown card. The originals measured approx 16 x 10 x

10 cm. Use string to make a carrying handle.

• Make and complete an identity card. Discuss why it was necessary to carry them.

• Design and make a model of a shelter that must be quickly manufactured and easily

assembled for thousands of people and can withstand falling masonry. Look at the

designs of both Anderson and Morrison shelters. How did they work?

4


What was London like in the past?

Browse the Museum of London online resources for materials to introduce pupils to the themes and concepts they will encounter during their session. Visit the Museum’s website at www.museumoflondon.org.uk/learning for downloadable resources.

5


Follow-up activities

Preparation

Bella Feltwell was based on a real person. The experiences of Isobel and her family are real, and still in living memory. Discuss what ‘in living memory’ means and how the character was researched. Much research was done talking to an older person who was a child during World War Two. This older person was Dennis – Isobel’s eldest son, who grew up in Silvertown in the East End of London, and went to stay with his aunt Alice in Kent during the war. How else can we find out about the lives of ordinary people during the war? What else can we look at? Perhaps your class could try talking to an older relative about what they can remember. What was the effect of the war where you live? Bombing wasn’t just in London – was your town affected? Research what children at your school (or a school nearby) did during the war. Was there an air-raid shelter near by? Were children evacuated from / to your area? Why?

Air-raid activities

• Write a letter to a friend in the country explaining what it is like to be in an air-raid.

• Create a drama scenario focusing on the moments just before and during the

warning. Work in groups to collect words describing the feelings.

• Write a newspaper article about local bombings, including eyewitness accounts.

• Britain was not the only country to be bombed: do some research into the British

bombing of Germany.

• Imagine you are an air-raid warden. Write some instructions telling people what to

do and how to behave if they hear the siren. Include them in a poster design.

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War-time kitchen

• Write a dialogue between two women standing in a queue outside a shop

discussing their shopping list and recipes (using the ration list for guidance).

• Design a poster reminding people not to waste food.

• Make a list of favourite dishes, look at the recipes and highlight the rationed and

unavailable ingredients in different colours.

• Use the metric ration portions as the basis for maths work; e.g. how much butter

would a family of four get a month?

War-time rations

Rations varied during the war. During the London Blitz, not all the rationing had been introduced. Find out when each foodstuff went on, and then off the ration. This list shows rations for one adult. Milk – the weekly ration was 3 pints (1.7L) although expectant and nursing mothers and small children were entitled to more. By 1941 dried milk was rationed to one tin every four weeks. Sugar – 8oz (200g) per week was for cooking and jam making. Most people stopped putting it into tea and coffee. Sometimes extra sugar was made available for jam making and special sugar coupons were issued. Butter – 2oz (50g) per week. Margarine – 4oz (100g) per week. Cooking fat – 4oz (100g) per week but this dropped to as low as 2oz at times. Every last drop was used and dripping, collected from cooking meat, was used to supplement the ration. Cheese – 2oz (50g) per week but sometimes this rose to 4oz. Vegetarians got extra cheese because they did not have meat.

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Eggs – normally one fresh egg per week but sometimes only one every two weeks. Dried eggs were used to supplement this. One packet of dried eggs, equivalent of 12 eggs, every four weeks. Sweets – 12oz (300g) every four weeks. Preserves – 1lb (400g) every two months. Tea – 2oz (50g) per week. People over 70 years old got an extra tea allowance after 1944. Meat – 4oz (100g) of either bacon or ham and one shilling and tuppence worth of meat. This would be about 1lb of beef, pork, veal or mutton depending on availability. Tuppence had to be spent on corned beef. A child had half this amount of meat. Offal was not rationed unless supplies of meat were really short.

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Evacuees

• Collect words describing how evacuees might have felt and put them together to

make a class poem. Do this by splitting into small groups to consider:

How would you feel to find out you were to be evacuated? Do you miss your home and family? Are you worried about them? What is your new home like? What is your new family like? What is school like? Think of something new and exciting about your new life.

• Explore the other side of evacuation by imagining that you are a child living in a

small village in the country during the war. Lots of city children have been

evacuated to stay in the village. You have to share your toys and even your

bedroom with one of these strangers.

How do you feel about these children? How are they different from you?

Using the previous two activities, split the pupils into two groups and use drama to create a scenario comparing the feelings of evacuee children and local people. This could be used to explore issues of prejudice and name calling.

• Make a list of all the things you would pack to go away on holiday and compare it to

what the evacuees were allowed to take with them.

• Imagine you were an evacuee – write a letter home to your family.

• Do a painting that expresses the feelings of an evacuee.

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Background to Docklands at war 1939-1945

The port and its communities bore the brunt of enemy attack during World War Two. They also played a vital part in Britain’s fight in the war. When the war was declared in 1939, few Londoners were surprised. A Port Emergency Committee had existed since 1936, and the Port of London Authority had already built 200 shelters.

London’s boats, including tugs, sailing barges and launches assisted in the evacuation of troops from Dunkirk in May 1940. On the afternoon of 7 September 1940 – ‘Black Saturday’ – the Luftwaffe targeted the riverside works and the docks. Fire and smoke, from incendiary and high explosive bombs soon silhouetted the river. The Blitz had begun and continuous night bombing was to last for thirteen weeks. The docks, factories and residential communities suffered extensive damage, destruction and fatalities. Civil defence and fire-fighting units were kept constantly occupied. Anti-aircraft guns and barrage balloons protected the river approaches.

Dockyards and riverside factories, many now employing more women in the workforce, supported the war effort. Tate & Lyle manufactured aeroplane parts as well as refined sugar. Cable works produce much of the Pipe Line Under the Ocean (PLUTO), used to supply fuel oil for the Allied advance from Normandy in 1944. Many of the Phoenix Units of the Mulberry Harbours, used at the Normandy landings in June 1944, were built in the docks and along the river. Over 2300 vessels and craft were converted, maintained and repaired on the river. Even after victory was in sight, attacks by V1 and V2 rockets brought further destruction to the area in 1944 and 1945.

10


Black Saturday and 90 days of bombing

Late in the afternoon of Saturday 7 September 1940, the Luftwaffe launched a massive daylight raid on London. Ninety continuous night-time raids followed. London’s docks and riverside wharves were prime targets for enemy bombers. Incendiary bombs, designed to start fires quickly were particularly effective as most dock warehouses had timber interiors which quickly ignited. Warehouses often had highly flammable cargoes. A molten column which is on display in Museum of London Docklands would have melted under 1525 degrees Centigrade during a warehouse fire.

The River Emergency Service (RES)

The RES came into being in 1939 as a river based civil defence unit. The RES was responsible for rescue and ambulance duties and maintaining communications. Around 1500 volunteers operated a fleet of 170 small craft and fourteen ambulance vessels. On display is an RES stretcher, photographs, certificates and an emergency whistle.

The River Emergency Service

Black Saturday

11


William Ware (1915-1997), war artist

William Ware, excused from military service because of childhood injuries, worked in a plastics factory during World War Two, but at night spent time painting and sketching the Blitz from the rooftops. Refusing to take shelter during air-raid attacks, he depicted bombing, raids and rescue and salvage crews at work.

‘Human Chain’, by William Ware

Documents

Bella Feltwell: East End housewife - Museum of London€¢ Write a letter to a friend in the country explaining what it is like to be in an air-raid. • Create a drama scenario focusing