Hi everyone, this is Mr. Chandrapala, and I'm really looking forward to be joining you today.

We are going to be working on understanding the significance, and the importance of war literature today.

War literature has been written about for so long.

It's a really common theme for writers, and poets and journalists to have a look at.

And the purpose of this unit is going to be to explore war through short stories, and really grapple with the ethics of war.

It promises to be a really interesting discussion.

So let's get into that.

So our outcome for today is to be able to explain why people might choose to write about war.

Our key words for today's lesson will include the term war literature.

Which is just the text which focuses on and explores war and conflict.

Also going to be having a look at the adjective, profound, which means for something to be deep or meaningful.

We often say that war literature is quite profound in its nature.

We're going to be thinking about the adjective, specific.

Which means to be particular, precise, and exact in the way that we talk about something.

One of the hardest things to do with war literature because it's often something that so many of us haven't experienced, or have only experienced distantly, and hopefully don't have to experience first hand, is the fact that we have to really empathise with the writers, and those affected by war.

To empathise means to share the feelings of another person.

It's a stronger feeling than sympathy.

And finally, we're going to be annotating.

To annotate means to make short notes commenting on something of interest within a text.

So the first thing that we're going to do today is part of understanding why people write about war, is to explore those reasons about why people write about war, okay? I want you to start off by discussing these two questions.

You can pause the video here, and turn to the person next to you, or maybe even jot down some ideas if you're working alone.

Have you read any war literature before? This may be a story that you have read in school.

This may be something like, "Goodnight, Mr. Tom," or "War Horse" by Michael Morpurgo.

Or have you read any poems about war? What were they about? What themes were they exploring? And then secondly, why do you think people do choose to write about war? Why is it so often something they're so interesting in working? Pause the video now, and start having that conversation.

When you're ready, hit play.

(indistinct) Some really interesting ideas there from a lot of people.

It's really lovely to hear that so many of you are reading such a wide range of war literature.

The other ones that I could think of that I knew that a lot of my students in class have read recently include "Private Peaceful," Several of them have looked at stories of war, which within war poetry, so the poems of Wilfred Owen, and Siegfried Sassoon.

So it's really interesting to see that actually war is still something that the youth of today feel like they want to read about.

In terms of why do we think people write about war? Well, some people say that it's because it is such a prominent theme.

It's one of the darkest themes in our history or events in human history.

And so it's important for us to really reckon with it and understand it rather than choosing or trying to avoid.

Andeep here has got an answer to the second question.

He said, I think people are inspired to write about war because it's such an intense, physical and emotional experience thing to write about.

People write about it to try and understand it.

I think Andeep has a really good point.

It is very emotionally and physically intense.

What different ideas did you come up with? I've given some of mine, Andeep's given his, but what other ideas did you come up with? Do you agree, do you disagree with Andeep's viewpoint? Pause the video now and see if you can add to what Andeep has just said.

Really excellent work there everyone.

I'm really pleased to see how serious a lot of your discussions are because this is a really difficult topic.

I'm pleased to see that so many people were building Andeep's idea that actually it's an intense physical and emotional experience and thinking actually about for who it's intense and emotionally challenging for because it's not just emotionally challenging for the soldiers.

Simon Armitage wrote, a famous poet of the modern era, has written a collection called "The Not Dead," which looks actually how war affects those who are left behind, those who maybe don't go to war or those who return from war and actually the effects on them.

And it's often, you know the effects on those who are left by soldiers to go fight.

That can be really challenging to process.

Why do you think people like to read about war? Can only people have been to war write all about war? Again, I want you to pause the video here and really consider those two questions.

A lot of war literature is written by people who have experience of war, but not all of it is.

Why do you think that? Pause the video again.

Discuss with your partner these two questions and when you're ready, hit play.

Superb work there.

Bringing some really thoughtful ideas.

I really liked the way that people were looking at why do people like to read about war and they were thinking actually about the fact that war is, as I said earlier, a really dark moment in the human history and the human experience.

And so there's an interest in trying to understand the motivations behind war, the ethics and the choices made by individuals in choosing to go to war and choosing to fight.

And also how we sort of deal and process with those really difficult moments, these incredibly dark experiences.

Jacob was looking at answering the second question about war.

He said, "I can see how personal experiences are really important, but writers who do sensitive research could also create a brilliant text about war even if they weren't there." I think Jacob's absolutely right there have been some fascinating texts.

I can think of Sebastian Faulks and Patricia Baker who both have written really interesting pieces about war.

For wars that they want, Faulks's "Birdsong" looks at World War I.

But Faulks is a modern writer.

And so even though he is looking at "Birdsong" and looking at that sort of issues of World War I, he's had to do that by going to the history books by going and doing his research really carefully thinking about its significance.

I want you to just pause again.

Do you agree? Do you disagree with Jacob? Why do you think it's so important to do really impressive research before writing about war? Pause the video, and when you're ready, hit play.

Lovely work there everyone.

I'm really pleased to see so many of you understanding that actually because of how sensitive war is, because of how difficult a topic it is, the more specific and detailed our research is, the better we're able to understand it, the more precise we can be about the details and the more careful we can be in the way that we articulate our thoughts about it.

Now many people consider these important questions about war literature.

Why do people write it? Why do people read it? The writer Helen Dunmore, who was alive from 1952 to 2017 wrote lots of war literature about conflicts she never experienced first hand.

She did argue though that people struggle to truly understand facts and figures relating to war.

We often hear about war through facts and figures, don't we? We hear about the numbers of people who have died, the numbers of people displaced, the numbers of day, the number of days that it's been going on.

However, she argued instead, it was more important to focus on the profound understanding of the pain and casualties of war.

Only, and that only happens when a story is specific.

So I just want you here just to note down what motivated Dunmore to write about war and what do you think Dunmore means when she says that we need to be specific? Pause the video again and when you're ready, hit play after you noted those two questions.

I'm really glad that so many of you are picking up on that word specific.

We said earlier that to be specific means to be really precise about something.

The reason why it's very difficult to be universal about war is because we need to recognise every individual's pain.

We need to recognise that individual effects on people and that war will affect people in very different ways.

So even though they may have had seemingly very similar experiences, if we are to treat, I don't know, a the English Civil War in the 1600s the same way as the Second World War, as the same way as the Cold War, we'd be doing a disservice to all three conflicts.

We wouldn't be able to properly understand the really difficult nature of each of those.

So we need to be really specific and really knowledgeable to be able to make those comments effectively.

Andy Owen, a writer and former Captain in the Intelligence Corps, explores a slightly different idea to Dunmore.

He considers war literature a bridge between those who have experienced war and those who have not.

What do you think he means though when he talks about it being a bridge? Pause the video here, talk to your partner maybe.

Jot some ideas down.

Why would it be a bridge between those two groups? Some lovely inferences there.

Absolutely that idea of it being a bridge means that actually it's linking two groups, isn't it? And it's actually understanding or crossing that bridge that we can understand a different point of view, understand a different culture, have a different perspective.

So just to check our understanding here.

Dunmore believed facts and figures about war are inaccurate and that is why literature is so important.

Is that true or is that false? I want you to tell me in five, four, three, two, and one.

Well done to all those of you that said false, but can we justify our answer now? I want you to show me one finger or two fingers for A or B.

So one finger for A, two for B.

Is it false because Dunmore wrote lots of war literature because she knew her specific experiences would help people empathise with the realities of war? Or do we think Dunmore recognise that people struggle to empathise with facts and figures and war literature present stories about particular individuals or circumstances which are more easily understandable? Selecting your choice in five, four, three, two, and one.

Well done to all of you who went for B.

It's not that Dunmore thought that her experiences of war should be most significant.

She never actually experienced war herself.

So she was writing about it having done a huge amount of research.

But she recognised that actually people really struggle to understand and emphasise with those facts and figures.

So she needed to try and translate those into more specific stories that actually meant that people had really precise understandings about individual's feelings or circumstances which made difficult experiences like war more easily understandable later.

So, we're just going to have a practise task now.

I want you to read the summaries of different writers' perspectives and the additional materials.

The writers explained why they think reading and writing war literature is important and I want you to create a spider diagram a little bit like the one I have below.

What about why do people write and read about war? And I want you to detail the different reasons why the reading and writing of war literature might be considered important.

I've done an example for you.

So I've said that actually it helps us understand specific stories and experiences over general facts and figures.

So that's clearly influenced by Dunmore's work.

Pause the video now and start looking through those additional materials and creating that mind map.

You may want to create why do people write and read about war as two different things, but I would think it would be easier to do it.

Start when you're ready, hit play.

Excellent ideas, some really hard work there from a lot of you.

Let's take some feedback.

So Jacob added some additional ideas to his spider diagram, including he thought it was important to feel a personal connection with history rather than think of it as impersonal facts.

And it was important to honour those who died by sharing their stories.

If there's anything that you would want to add to your own diagram, make sure to add it now in a different colour pattern.

When you've done that, hit play.

Well done for being so diligent in adding those ideas, let's keep moving.

What ideas could you share with him so he could develop into the spider diagram? What things do you think he missed out? Pause the video now, talk to the person next to you and see if you can swap any ideas, maybe answer that and when you're ready, hit play.

Well done everyone, some really good feedback there.

I think you actually were really carefully about how we can help the people next to us that's really making us better I would say over time because we're collaborating with others.

Well done.

So we're now going to start annotating the opening of "Propping Up The Line.

Here's some of the reasons we have considered that someone might write a piece of war literature, potentially it's to warn people about the horrors of war, to inform people about the realities of war, to help empathise with those who experienced war, and to honour those who have fought and died in wars.

It could also be to make connections with personal stories or to generate deep understanding of the experience of war or to tell the experience of those who can't tell their stories themselves.

And finally, we may also read or write a piece of war literature or someone may choose to write a piece of war literature to explore and express the psychological damage inflicted by war.

Arguably, Ian Beck does many of these things in his short story "Propping Up The Line." It's a short story inspired by his grandfather's experiences in World War One.

For example, the short story begins, "Alfred felt something move.

It came out of the mud in the dark behind his back where he sat cold and drowsily slumped against the trench wall." It's a really interesting opening to a story, isn't it? But let's see why.

Jacob was annotating these lines to consider how and why Beck starts the story in this way.

And he thought it was the fact that Beck immediately gives us a name to make the story personal, creating a protagonist that we can immediately connect to.

I think Jacob's actually made a really subtle point there.

It's so much more, or sort of, it's so much easier for us to have an understanding of this individual by having them named than just having them referred to as the soldier.

What further annotations though might Jacob can make? You may want to think about when the story starts.

So actually why does Beck choose to begin at this moment? We may want to think about actually the sort of use of the adjectives or adverbs at this point.

Why do you think those are so important? When you are ready, hit play.

Yeah, some lovely work there from everyone.

Let's go through some ideas.

I really like the fact that people were talking about the fact that it was dark and cold so we get a really clear sense of actually the horrible conditions these men having to live in.

And actually the fact that he's drowsily slumped that I felt this idea that actually he's so poorly, sort of like he's unable to look after himself.

It's so tiring being at war not only physically but psychologically.

That's what creates an issue as well.

We're just going to have a quick check for understanding here.

Which is the most convincing annotation to comment on the line from "Propping Up The Line?" So the line we're looking at is, "Alfred felt something move.

It came out of the mud, the trench behind his back where he sat cold and drowsily slumped against the trench wall." Is it option one on the left, that Beck tries to warn us not to fall asleep in a trench as something bad could happen to you.

The word it shows Alfred doesn't know what it is.

Was it option two on the right.

That Beck tries to convey the realities of the trench through his description the mud, the dark, the cold, and the wall.

Pause your video now and select option one on the left or option two on the right.

When you've chosen, hit play.

Well done everyone.

Option two is the stronger one because there's clear adjectives.

That clear adjective focus is really interesting.

The issue with option one, even though it picks up that pronoun, it is a really interesting element to think about is that it's just a bit of repetitive.

It doesn't really make an inference on the significance of that use of the pronoun it.

It doesn't talk about maybe the mystery, the unease, the uncertainty that soldiers have to deal with.

So we're just going to practise the skill now of annotating.

I want you to read lines one to 27 of Ian Beck's "Propping Up The Line", it's on your worksheet for today's lesson.

And I want you to annotate the text explaining why you think Beck wrote the opening in this way.

I want you to use the use, I want you to use the ideas below to support your annotations so you can see that you've got those eight ideas that you can use to help you.

Pause the video now and see if you can spot those within the text.

Make sure to try and be as specific as possible, as possible, sorry, in terms of your selection of language detail.

So your evidence from the text and maybe if you want to challenge yourself, you can think about the methods being used by the author.

Pause the video now and when you are ready, hit play.

Sensational work there everyone.

We're really pleased to see all of you getting so carefully into the knowledge, sorry, into the annotation of this text.

It's a really promising start.

And it shows that actually you are really deeply thinking already about the nature of why people choose to write about war.

Jacob has offered us some of his annotations to have a look at.

He looked at the line, "It touched for an instant, the small exposed area of his pale, dirty skin just where his jacket and vest were folded and rucked up together." He noted that the small intimate detail gives a very real impression of Alfred's physical bodily experience.

We might not understand the trench, but we can understand this detail so we begin to emphasise with Alfred.

I think that's a really interesting idea from Jacob.

That idea of the dirty skin actually is really important.

I always think about by sort of thinking about when I used to play football in really muddy pitches and actually like coming back covered in mud crusted between my socks and actually it was quite difficult, obviously not as difficult as war, but quite an uncomfortable experience.

If you are living like that though consistently, that's going to be a very different setting.

What we'll notice here that Jacob's got a really clear exploration of the text and he's also thinking about the effect of it.

I want you to self-assess your own annotations and I want you to check, have you got that really clear exploration of the text and have you explored the effect of it? Pause the video now and maybe box off where you've explored the text and then underline where you've explored the effect.

When you've done that, hit play.

Well done, everyone really careful annotation there and it's really going to put some good stead moving forward with this unit.

So we've come towards the end of today's lesson on understanding why people write about war.

So let's just have a look at our summary notes.

All literature can be impactful because as a powerful story to tell, sorry, it has a power to tell individual stories.

War literature is impactful because it attempts to explain the experiences of war to those who have not experienced it.

War literature can also be used to expose the reality of war and serves an important warning to future generations.

Arguably, war literature helps humans empathise with the pain of others.

You've all been fantastic today and I've been really impressed with the maturity that you've shown in this really quite difficult topic.

I'm really looking forward to working with you again very soon and I hope you're well until then.

Bye for now.