This morning p7b were learning about the Battle of Dunkirk and we’d like to share our learning with you. We’ve been using QUESTIONS FOR THINKING to help us with our learning and these came in very handy.

 

 We used our UNDERSTAND skills to summarise the key events which happened:

Dean: “British troops went over to France in May 1940 to try and take back land from Germany.”

Isla: “Instead of pushing the Germans back they lost more land because the German army used Blitzkrieg fighting.”

Christopher S: “The British troops ended up stranded on a beach in Dunkirk with thousands of Belgian and French troops.”

Freya: “Winston Churchill organised for ships to come over from Britain to transport the troops off the beach. They saved 340,000 troops.”

 

We developed our APPLY skills by thinking about what would have happened  if:

Sam: “If the Battle of Dunkirk had been fully successful then I think the war would have been over a lot quicker and less people would have died.”

Christopher S: “If they hadn’t managed to rescue the troops then I think that D-Day might not have happened because there would have been no soldiers to fight it.”

 

We developed our ANALYSE skills by thinking about the arguments for and against Winston Churchill deciding to rescue the French and Belgian soldiers, along with the British:

FOR:

Christopher A: “If he hadn’t rescued them they wouldn’t have been friendly with the British and backed us up later in the war.”

Dean: “It would have made things awkward with France because we are just across the sea.”

Isla: “If we had just left them there it would have been just like handing them to the Germans.”

Rabeea: “If they had just left them then Hitler would have killed all the French and Belgian soldiers. Also, they were Allies in WWI.”

Eve: “If they had just abandoned them there wouldn’t have been a D-Day because it would have meant not enough soldiers.”

AGAINST:

Alistair: “They could have lost even more ships and planes and it might have been a suicide mission.”

Eve: “It would have been really dangerous due to all the German planes bombing. The German planes were called Stukas.”

Josh: “If they did try to rescue the others and got destroyed then all their good work would have been for nothing.”

 

We developed our EVALUATE skills by deciding whether we think Dunkirk was a success or a failure for the Allies:

Sophie M: “I think Dunkirk was a bit of both because they failed to push the Germans back but it was a success because we managed to send over boats to save the soldiers.”

Fraser: “I think it was a failure because the mission was to start pushing the Germans back but the opposite happened and the Germans made them retreat.”

Rebecca: “I think it was a bit of both because the target was to push the Germans back but they ended up on the beach but it was also a success because they managed to save the soldiers we needed for D-Day.”

Taylor: “I think it was a fail because even though they saved most of the people we still left all of the weapons and tanks behind for the Germans to take.”

Callum: “I think it was an epic fail because the mission failed and the Germans pushed us back and even though they saved the soldiers we lost the artillery.”