TRENCHES IN THE FIRST WORLD WAR

Follow up activity 1

Apart from the initial upsetting impact, what was the trench reality? Can students guess some other aspects of trench life in the First world war?

To help the debate going on, the teacher writes on the blackboard some key words pronounced by students, and/or some words of his own, e.g.:

Attack, Barbed wire, Cadaver, Cold/Hot, Danger, Dirt, Disease, Dullness, Dysentery, Fear, Letters, Meal, Mice, Monotony, No man’s land, Rations, Shelter, Sleep, Worms

It is not necessary founding all these words. Some of them could be enough to improve students understanding of what the life in the trenches was like. 

The teacher shows on the IWB the transcript of the soldier’s narration and stresses that some time connectives such as “and then” are repeated many times.

Then he writes on the board a list of time expressions, e.g.:

first, last, next, then, finally, eventually, that evening/ week, after that, after a while, soon afterwards, meanwhile

and picks some students asking them to rephrase the sentences pronounced by the soldier with other sentences in which occurr some of the time connectives that he has suggested.