Learning to research: P J Devereaux

Room 21 started to research a World War 1 hero called Patrick John Devereaux (we call him P J). Our teacher showed us how to find his name and information on the Auckland War Memorial Museum's website. She helped us to read the information there. We found out that P J was only 20 years old when he went to the war. He was originally from Ireland but moved to New Zealand before the war and lived in Pukekoe.

We learnt that all soldiers have a military number. P J's military number is 12/2272. We also learnt that each child at school has a special student number which Vanita uses in the office. 

Here is the roll which showed that P J registered to go to the war. We thought it is interesting that soldiers have a roll just like us at school!

P J left for the war on 13 June 1915 on a troopship. Three children in our class have their birthday on 13 June so they were very excited by that information! P J was part of the 5th reinforcements of the Auckland Infantry Battalion. He went to Gallipoli, Turkey, but died of wounds. 

We did a role play that helped us understand what 'reinforcements' mean and why they were needed. 

On the left of the picture are students pretending to be Turkish snipers. They are shooting down the ANZACs so, a new lot of reinforcements have to come to take over.

After we finished researching our ANZAC hero, we laid a poppy for him on the Auckland Museum's online cenotaph. We noticed that another class has left a comment at the bottom of the cenotaph notes and it was dated 1 April 2015. We were shocked and couldn't understand how it could be dated today! Our teacher had to explain that you can instantly upload information onto the internet.

We will make a wreath to lay at our Anzac commemoration next term. To help us know how to make it, we watched a video that showed us the process.  

Some of us had a turn to paint some of our 'poppies' red. We learnt that red poppies are used to remember dead soldiers.