Year 5 show their feelings about fights

Our Take One Picture painting inspired a lot of debate in Year 5 History. In a previous lesson we had been looking at murals of Maya warfare and noticed similarities with the Battle of San Romano. Both artists seem to exaggerate the qualities of the winners - placing them in the middle of the painting - showing them as larger than their opponents, and dressed in a more extravagant style.

We wondered how modern day battles could be represented artistically. Year 5 had lots of interesting ideas about the kinds of battles which were happening now. They talked about the fight against HS2, the battle for gender equality, the fight to establish truth versus fake news, as well as the war against coronavirus and the situation in Syria. They are a very well-informed bunch! The challenge was then to try to show these battles in a picture, in such a way as to make clear who was winning, what weapons they were fighting with, and which side was really the most important.

The results are brilliant. Some of the pictures are shown here, but all of them can be seen in the Exhibition today. Year 5’s strong feelings about their subject matter are clear. As a group they do not seem to be fans of Donald Trump or politicians as a whole…!