Class creates WWI exhibition

Lily Bissell and Millie Allen stand in the tunnel by a model of the town of Le Quesnoy.

Levin North School teacher Manu Bennett and his Year 5/6 class have created a unique World War I exhibition in their classroom, and the students are all set to take tours.

For the past several weeks, Room 3 students have been gathering a wide range of information on various topics regarding World War I to present at the exhibition in order to inform their peers and teachers about what they've been learning.

The exhibition is called WW1E: World War One exhibition - celebrating those who served in the war.

Key exhibits include: women at war, animals at war, periscopes and trenches and diaries that the students have written from a soldier's perspective.

The students have also been helping to construct a trench-like tunnel that forms the entrance to the exhibits. This exhibition is a culmination of the projects that Room 3 students have been working on throughout the year.

Lazarus and Kita said that they, with other children, dressed up in war uniforms, but Kita and Lazarus wore the same uniform. They said this was the private war uniform, the other children dressed up in other uniforms like those of a general and major.

Lazarus Tunui in a WW1 war uniform.

"We wrote diaries to go with it, with dates and names making our own characters. Using the photo lookalike, the character we made up, our stories' dates were from throughout the first part of the war."

The exhibition is "really cool" so far, said Millie. "It's not finished yet, but it will be really cool! There is a big tunnel going into the main area with all the stories."

According to Lily there are real facts about what happened in the war for New Zealand. "There are facts about animals at war and facts about a little town in France called Le Quesnoy."

One significant project relates to Le Quesnoy, a small town in Northern France that New Zealand soldiers liberated at the end of WWI.

Earlier in the year, Mr Bennett and Room 3 made contact with a school there, and have exchanged postcards and emails with the principal and students.

Kita Kanavatoa dressed in a private war uniform.

The exhibition features information and a model of the town, showing where the New Zealand soldiers scaled the ramparts.

The community is welcome to view the exhibition, which is open during school hours, and the opening is on Monday, November 12 at 4pm. The exhibition runs until December 4.

The knowledgeable tour guides of Room 3 are standing by.