How and Why Should We Celebrate VE Day?

This resource could be used as an assembly to commemorate VE Day (8 May 1945) or as a starting point of a wider study of the Second World War.

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Teaching idea

How and why should we celebrate VE Day?

This PowerPoint is designed to help your pupils learn more about what VE Day was and why people celebrate it. Pupils will develop their historical enquiry skills and use photographs as a source of primary evidence to discover more about this fascinating event. By learning about local, national and international events pupils will gain a broader and more balanced picture about the events at the end of the Second World War. They will also be given time to reflect on the wider themes of remembrance and commemoration.

Learning aims and outcomes

  • To develop historical enquiry skills by using photographs as primary sources
  • To understand how and why people celebrated and commemorated VE Day and the end of the Second World War, locally, nationally and in the wider world
  • To develop a sense of place by using maps to locate the photographs and identify the countries involved in the Second World War
  • To consider how global events might be remembered and commemorated in the past and how they might be in the future

Prior knowledge

  • An understanding of what a war is

Extended learning and useful links