50 creative ways to use ClassVR| Experiencing the Trenches

Experiencing the Trenches | HISTORY| Age 10-11

Crowlands Primary School, Essex, UK

Learning Aims:

  • To understand and explain some of the major events during World War One.
  • To write in frst person from the perspective of a soldier.

CONTEXT

This year marked the 100th anniversary of the ending of World War One, and Year 6 pupils at Crowlands Primary School marked  the occasion by writing a piece from the point of view of those brave soldiers in the cold, unforgiving trenches. The anniversary is a hugely symbolic time and as such, we wanted this topic to be made even more personal, immersive and experiential. Most children started the unit of work with a limited conceptual understanding about life in the trenches and how a typical day would be; we therefore wanted to provide a learning experience to broaden and deepen their understanding and appreciation of the conditions and expectations which soldiers endured.

PRACTICAL SESSION

WW1 Trenches Experience

Firstly, the children had to come up with emotions of the soldiers and an outline of the settings using all fve senses. To provide the most real, tangible experience possible, the children were given the headsets with the WW1 Trenches Experience loaded up; they then explored the 360 video, focusing on the grime, mud, rain and sobering surroundings. As the video has background audio projecting distant battlefeld cries and war zone explosions, the children were given further food for thought and this fed nicely into expanding their choice of language and vocabulary. Whilst viewing the video, pupils were able to ask and pose questions to each other and raise further points to explore in groups and as a class. To codify and bring together this experiential learning, the pupils then removed the headsets and decorated a silhouette of a soldier with words and phrases that could describe what it might have been like to fght in the trenches.

IMPACT ON LEARNING

As 10-11 year olds, they really struggled to step into the footsteps of people that lived over 100 years ago. ClassVR helped the children to engage with the task and gave them inspiration for how to describe the sights, sounds and smells of the trenches. The children were astonished at what the soldiers had to go through even though we had already covered trench life as part of our World War Topic and had a brand new understanding and empathy for the millions of courageous soldiers that gave their lives to fght for this country. This immersive nature of VR helped them think more creatively and their work was imaginative and detailed.

ClassVR helped students to engage with the learning task and gave them inspiration for how to describe the sights,sounds and smells of the trenches.

Nibiru Technology is the exclusive reseller of ClassVR in the mainland China. If you are an educator in China, you can buy ClassVR from us and we will offer you local supports, like online/offline training and after-sales service. If you are interested in building a product like ClassVR, we can provide you custom OS with the third-party custom hardware manufactured by our ODM/OEM partners. What's more, if you are interested in reselling ClassVR to international or bilingual schools or planetariums etc, we welcome you to be our distributor.

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