BBC School Report

Click on the BBC log below to open the school report:

Please note this video needs to be viewed via a Windows Media Player.

When we started in late November 2009 a small group of year 7, 8, 9 and 10's got together in the school library to put the project in action. We had many different ideas on what our topic should be such as 'Do soldiers deserve footballer’s wages?’ After some discussion we came up with the idea of 'War - What is it good for?’ We chose this topic because it was something that we all felt passionate about. After choosing this subject we followed the lesson plans that the BBC gave us such as telling fact from opinion, What makes a good headline and learning the meanings of the 3 C'S and the 5W's. We then went to the Royal Naval & Marine club in Northampton and heard several truly amazing stories, from Burma Star War veterans, of real life events that happened many years ago. We also hoped that with this interview with the Burma Star War veterans we could re-open a chapter of World War Two that has never really been told as much as other stories in World War Two. We then managed to get an interview with Mr. Guy Voice a member of the Northampton Branch of the British Legion, and former soldier. This was once again a truly eye-opening experience this was because we learnt some truly interesting facts such as since the end of World War Two there was only one year when our Army has not suffered loss of life due to combat.

After recording these interviews we went back to the library and started the task of editing all the video. To put things in perspective we had an original time of over 40 minutes worth of material and we have had to cut the video down to five minutes, this being probably the hardest thing to do since everyone we interviewed had a different story to tell.

Since we are now at the big day we have to say that this experience was a real eye-opener, mainly being because we have learnt so much both historically and journalistically.

If you would like to view the video, there is a link on this website. We will also be on BBC Radio Northampton (104.2 FM) on the John Griff show at 2:40 p.m today discussing the project, In addition we hope to have a clip of us and our video shown on BBC Look East tonight (BBC 1, 6:30 p.m.)

However the most important thing to do is to thank everybody who took part in this project. Even though everybody who was interviewed is not in the video we were very grateful for their input and stories.

We would like to give special thanks to the Royal British Legion and everybody in the Royal Naval & Marines club in Northampton for their time and even more importantly their amazing stories.

We hope you enjoy watching the video as much as we did making it.

From:

The BBC School News Report team here at Kingsthorpe College, who were:

- Project Leader: Alessandro (Yr.10)

- Camera man and Interviewer: Nathaniel (Yr. 10)

- Interviewing and research: Jasmine (Yr. 10), Kathy (Yr. 10), Stefan (Yr. 9), Kiren (Yr. 7)

- Presenters and research: Karolina (Yr. 10), Daniel (Yr.10), Shannon (Yr. 9), Nicola (Yr. 8)

- Staff Coordinator: Mrs. H Bell. (Library manager)