ANZAC Day is a national public holiday for Australia and New Zealand on April 25th, honouring members of the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) who fought in World War I at Gallipoli, Turkey.

Even though this is an Australian & New Zealand holiday, remembering the war heroes extends to so many other countries, and classrooms, which made me wonder, what does ANZAC Day mean to Australian/New Zealand teachers & students? I know what it means to me, but for a younger generation of students growing up without grandparents who experienced WW2, how do you teach this piece of history in the classroom?

In order to answer my quest, I met up (virtually) with teacher, Sally Puzey, from Little Grove Primary School in Albany, Western Australia, to see how she approaches the subject in the classroom using a mixture of resources from Planet resource packs to YouTube video. Albany in particular has cause to remember the ANZAC heroes as it was here where the troops departed for Europe in 1914.

How do you teach ANZAC Day in your classroom?

Because I teach a variety of age levels , my plan for teaching ANZAC must be flexible.  Recently with the upper grades I used a flipchart which I found already on Promethean Planet.

I printed off the ‘What is ANZAC Day?’ chart and the children worked in pairs on the internet site provided to decide if the questions posed were true or false.  After ten minutes (we used the timer function in the Activsoftware) they then returned to the whiteboard and the answers were ‘revealed’.

Then we went to the ‘ Hero’ flipchart page and one of my students put the puzzle of Jack Simpson together (an Australian war hero who worked as a field ambulance stretcher bearer).  They then returned to the internet in the same pairs for ten minutes to read the story of Simpson from the website link in the flipchart,  listing the key words. A sharing time of the key words then followed.

Using the ANZAC Day Resource Pack

With another class I used the photos in the resource pack of scenes from Gallipoli and also photos of local ANZAC history, particularly of significance to the class as Albany was the last Australian land many of the ANZACs saw. We then used these images to create some discussion work around what they saw.

I also managed to find on YouTube some rare footage of ANZAC cove, which we’re able to watch on the whiteboard.

Because of our local history attachment to ANZAC our students have a strong awareness of ANZAC Day.  It is remembered/taught in some way at most Australian schools, with many having their own ceremony.  The Dawn services are held in many places and are well attended.

Mixing The Experience: The Practical with The Interactive

In order to further the students understanding of ANZAC Day, we are taking our Year 7 class to the War Museum in Canberra, which is huge!

We are hopeful that the information they cover in class will help them understand what they will experience in Canberra as they visit the museum and also the national ANZAC ceremony.

Further ANZAC Day Resources

If you’re looking for further ANZAC Day (as well as other Australian & New Zealand content) then please visit the special ANZAC Day feature on Promethean Planet.

Sally Puzey is the Library Resource/ICT Teacher at Little Grove Primary School in Albany, Western Australia.