The Dunkirk Evacuation: Accuracy of film portrayal

This KS3 unit of work should take around 2-3 hours to complete. The Power Point leads students through all activities with accompanying resources included.

Aims and Objectives:

• To know the key events surrounding the evacuation.
• To understand how and why the event has been portrayed in different ways through studying sources.
• To reach a judgement on the accuracy of one portrayal (the film “Atonement”).

Activities include a quick recap on the key events through questioning and information slides (at this stage in our course we have done an overview of the key events of WW2), an image based starter which considers similarities and differences in portrayal and why? We then move onto the main focus, which is to evaluate how accurately the Dunkirk evacuation is portrayed in the film Atonement when compared to actual source material. I used the beach scene from Atonement (please mute the first minute as there are f-bombs but apart from this it is fine for KS3). However, the lesson could easily be adapted to assess any film clip, such as the new Dunkirk film. Having noted down their summary of the portrayal in the film clip, students then analyse a series of sources, considering what they each show them about the evacuation and whether this agrees or disagrees with the film. A worked example is included. There is an SEN version with fewer/simplified sources- you’d just need to remove some source numbers from the research table if using this version. Students then move on to the assessment stage, where they produce an extended written answer to the following question “How accurately does the film “Atonement” portray the events of the Dunkirk evacuation?”. A writing structure and mark scheme is included. The pack also includes a quick quiz starter for lesson 2 and a model conclusion that I used during “red to react”/“level up”/review time.