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bird_81 | 18:08 Tue 17th Oct 2006 | History
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When and why did WWII end? I have to teach this to my year 6 class. Thanks.
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Do you ask your year six students to look for information on the web and [whisper] in the library? I'm surprised you haven't had a little look yourself as to teach this you will need more than two sentences from answerbank.
The goodies beat the baddies (in nineteen forty something).
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I thought that some kind person may know of any decent, websites that they might want to tell me about as a starting point, so I wouldn't have to trawl over the internet.
Maybe my answer was a little unkind but to be an inspiring teacher you have to have some interest in your subject.I'm assuming you don't need the full facts this week so you've got half term for a bit of research.I recommend the 'Horrible Histories' series especially 'The Blitzed Brits'. If you fancy a day out try Bletchley Park , Spooks meets WW2.
How can a teacher of year 6 not know when world war 2 ended? If you had been my year 6 teacher I could have told you as i knew from the age of 8. I have asked my son, who is 25, if he knew and he only did History to year 8 and he knew straight away. He was born in 1981 and left school at 16. Come on you have got to be kidding.
oh it's ok my son just explained it to me, he said you don't have to know it these days to teach it you just learn it from a book the night before, not sure if he can be right though he is an unemployed labourer so what does he know, except when WW2 ended of course.
Thank you Dot. my first reply was a knee jerk reaction but I'm glad you are as shocked. I have been teaching for 28 years now and have learned that you can't get out what you haven't put in.
teddy you are so right, i shall look into this matter myself, my grandson is 7 and he better be having a teacher that knows their onions or else i shall be round there wanting to know why. At 7 we did pre-historic history in school and knew all about sabre toothed tigers and mammoths, mind, it did help that there was a heard of them in the next field ; )
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Well unlike you teddy, I have not been teaching for 28 years. Sorry if my question offends you but I only wanted a starting point. As for saying that you only get out what you put in, why do you think I asked these questions? Obviously I am going to research this but as I have said I wanted a starting point for my research and usually if you ask a question on here you get much more than a simple answer so I could pinpoint certain events that I could research in depth.
The 5-minutes answer:

The war in Europe ended with the unconditional surrender of all German troops to the allies at Luneberg Heath in early May 1945. Berlin had been surrounded by the Soviet troops, Hitler had committed suicide and there was no hope of a breakout. The Western allies were also rapidly marching through Germany towards Berlin. Germany was basically alone, Italy having switched to the allies, Japan retreating in the East. VE day was celebrated in the West on May 8th and 9th. It was a sort-of-sop to the Soviets, who had wanted to wait until the 9th, whereas Churchill was insistent on the 8th.

The war in Japan ended with the signing of the instrument of surrender by the Japanese High Command on board an American warship (forgot its name) in early September 1945 (the 2nd???) The Japanese had initially refused to surrender, it being against their code of honour. The Americans had baulked at a full-scale invasion of the Japanese mainland, fearing many millions of casualties, which helps to explain the decision by President Truman to drop the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Japanese had even refused to surrender after the first bomb was dropped, on August 6th, but they capitulated on August 15th subsequent to the detonation of the bomb over Nagasaki on the 9th.
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Thankyou shammydodger, much appreciated.
It was the USS Missouri shammy.
Yes, it was in the back of my mind but I didn't want to post it just in case my memory was faulty!
WW2 ended, basically, because the Germans had lost: no money, no food, no morale, and their once-mighty army pushed back from all the territory they had conquered during the 1930s. Before the war, Hitler signed a non-aggression pact with Russia, but then tried to invade Russia. Like Napoleon before him, he failed, and that was I suppose the single biggest factor in Germany's loss. (That and America's entry into the war once the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.) The failure to conquer Britain was an irritant, and Britain served as a vital departure point when the allies fought their way back into Europe, but I don't think from a German point of view it was nearly as big a disaster as the Russian venture.
Well I appreciate everyone has to start somewhere with regards to teaching (I home educate my children as I wasn't keen on the standard in schools), and true enough people can perhaps point you in the right direction, but I'm sorry should you honestly need it? I feel well and truly vindicated that I chose to home educate.
My eight year old daughter would like you to know that the Japanese surrendered precisely at 09.04 hrs on the 2nd September 1945 and that as their part in the war was largely about resourse acquisition they actually also surrendered as a form of damage limitation with regards to what they would lose, not just because of the bombs which were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.they had already lost over 3million people as it was.
She covered this in depth last year as part of her "Modern World History" topic and found the following web sites very helpful according to her sources sheet in her folder.
http://www.worldwar-2.net/
http://www.tankbhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/history/w orldwars/wwtwo/japan_no_surrender_01.shtmlooks .com/

If you want the perspective of an 8 year old learning about this I'm sure she'd be delighted to explain exactly what she found helpful and what she didn't.
Good luck.


noxlumos and others, I would guess that teachers of maths or science would pass on to pupils pretty much what they learnt at school themselves, plus (probably at A level or beyond) any new discoveries or theories that had come to light since then. Much the same for language teachers, probably.

It isn't necessarily so for teachers of much broader topics such as English or history, however. The last history paper I wrote (quite some time ago now) was on the English civil war. If I were to start teaching history tomorrow, however, and found that WW2 was on the curriculum, I would be in exactly the same postition as bird_81: not knowing much about it and having to find out where to start. Similarly if I found all my detailed essays on Jane Austen weren't much help in teaching Trainspotting.

AB seems like a reasonable place to try for suggestions. We do indeed all have to start somewhere.
Oh come on Jno, this is a TEACHER. I'm frankly shocked and appalled. Did you not do history chronologically, covering EVERYTHING then, because I would expect anyone to know this.A quick sweep of the pub last night found that everyone did. If the local football team and the mangy tramp in the corner of the pub can manage to know enough interesting (and accurate) facts about WWII to stick together a lesson about it then why is a teacher so deficient? I really am struggling to believe it, and I can't find an excuse for it either. I mean has she never wanted to know on her own account then?Why is a teacher of all things ignorant of this?This is a pretty basic question, and for the record my little girl DID trawl the net and find her own sources, it's not really hard is it? I'm still really shocked about this and obviously teddy and dot are as well. I'm sorry but this is really not what you should have to put up with from someone given the responsibility of teaching children. If people teaching do not have a VERY thorough, broad education of the highest standards and a mighty enthusiasm then is it any wonder that society and not just education is in such a mess?
no, I didn't learn all history chronologically - did anyone? In my day, I should say, WW2 was current events (recent past, anyway) rather than history, and so wasn't taught at all. (Also, I'm not British.) There is, quite literally, too much going on in the world for anyone to know more than the tiniest fraction of it. (I've been told a single copy of The Times will contain more words, and more information, than the average well-to-do man in the middle ages would have encountered in his whole life.)

As far as I'm concerned, the important things are to know what you don't know, and know how to find out about it. bird_81 seems to be doing this. She didn't know where to start - unlike your daughter, she didn't have you to turn to - so she asked.

WW2 may be basic to me, because I'm old; but I'm not going to be horrified because other people, even teachers, don't know what I know. It's possible that they can do plenty of equally basic stuff - explaining the second law of thermodynamics or getting the right amount of air into their tyres - that's beyond me. That's why AB is here, to ask for help.

We grow up assuming that teachers, like parents (simultaneously, in your case), know everything; but they don't. They have to start somewhere like everyone else. The test for them, surely, is how well they pass on information once they've learnt it themselves?
Well yeah actually I did cover history chronologically from the Roman invasion of Britain through to the present day, as well as Ancient Greece, Rome,The Middle East, the Vikings and Modern (post 1485) European history and the Americas, up until and including Vietnam.
"She didn't know where to to start and unlike your daughter didn't have you to turn to, so she asked".
I said to my seven year old who was covering the war itself and the events leading up to it, precisely nothing about sources, because to use books or the net is common sense even to a seven year old, and she did herself credit by tracing the initial reasons for Japan entering the war all the way back to the 1860s. Can this woman not manage to do the same?
Far from reassuring me, each time you post, you make me more and more terrified about what other people obviously think is normal for a teacher.If you are happy with that then all well and good but I really am not.
This makes a change from people wanting the homework done, anyway.

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