Remembrance Day · Wednesday 11 November 2026

Remembrance.

On Wednesday at 11am, the whole country will be quiet for two minutes. This week, we’re going to learn what we’re remembering — so when our two minutes comes, every one of you will know exactly what they’re for.

Let’s begin
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Part 01

Why We Wear a Poppy

In a place called Flanders, after the First World War ended, soldiers returned to fields full of mud and craters. One flower grew through the ruined earth. The poppy.

In Flanders Fields · John McCrae · 1915
"In Flanders fields the poppies blow / Between the crosses, row on row..."
A doctor called John McCrae looked at those fields and wrote a poem. The flower that grew where everything else couldn’t. That’s why — every November — we wear a paper poppy on our coats. Hope, growing through hard ground.
Part 02

The Day the Country Goes Quiet

The eleventh day, of the eleventh month, at the eleventh hour. The exact moment the First World War ended. So that’s the moment we stop — every year, since 1919.

11
The day — 11 November — the day the guns fell silent in 1918
2
Two minutes of silence at 11am, kept across the whole country
100+
Years — we’ve kept this silence every year since 1919
🧐 Big idea

Two minutes is a long time. In that silence, we’re thinking about people who never came home.

Part 03 • Story 1

At Home in the Blitz

Britain · 1939–1945
Imagine your bedroom. The lights go out at 7pm. You sleep with your shoes by your bed.
Every night for years, the lights went off because if a German bomber saw a light, your house was the target. The air-raid siren might wake you at 3 in the morning. Your dad had dug a shelter into the back garden. Your sweets were rationed — one bar of chocolate every two weeks. That was childhood for kids your age. They went to school the next day anyway.
2oz
of sweets a week per person — Britain’s wartime ration
3.5m
children evacuated from cities to the countryside
1.5m
Anderson shelters issued to British families
🧐 Lesson from the home front

Courage isn’t just on the battlefield. It’s also going to school the next day.

Part 04 • Story 2

Voices We Don’t Always Hear

The story of the war isn’t one story — it’s thousands. Here are four people who almost never make the textbook.

Walter Tull
Footballer · Officer
One of the British Army’s first Black officers. Died on the Western Front, 1918.
Lilian Bader
RAF
Daughter of a Barbadian father, she was one of the first Black women in the RAF.
Indian Army
2.5 million volunteers
The largest volunteer army the world has ever seen. Fought in every theatre.
The Land Girls
Women’s Land Army
Tens of thousands of women grew the food that kept Britain fed through the war.
🧐 Lesson from these voices

Every part of our country, every part of the Commonwealth, every kind of person, was in this together.

Part 05 • Story 3

The Codebreakers

Bletchley Park · Buckinghamshire · 1939–1945
Here’s the part you almost never hear about. Britain won the war partly with maths.
The Germans had a machine called Enigma that wrote messages in code. People said it was unbreakable. The British government found a quiet country house called Bletchley Park, and put 10,000 of the brightest mathematicians in the country to work in absolute secret. They built a machine to crack the code. And they did. Historians say it shortened the war by two whole years.
10,000
codebreakers worked at Bletchley — mostly women
2 yrs
historians say the codebreakers shortened the war by
millions
of lives saved — by mathematicians in a country house
🧐 Lesson from Bletchley

Quiet, clever, careful work matters as much as anything loud.

⚡ Real Story

A Maths Teacher on the £50 Note

Alan Turing · Codebreaker · 1912–1954
The leader of the codebreakers was a young man called Alan Turing.
He was a maths teacher. He was clever in the way some children at this school are clever — he saw things other people couldn’t. Alan designed a machine that broke a code people thought couldn’t be broken. After the war, our country didn’t treat him kindly. But years later, the country said sorry. The Queen pardoned him. Today, if you take a £50 note out of your pocket, you’ll see Alan’s face on it. The boy who liked maths, who saved millions of lives, on our money.
1939
aged 27, Alan begins work at Bletchley Park
2013
posthumous royal pardon — the country apologised
2021
Alan’s face appears on the new Bank of England £50 note
🧐 Lesson from Alan

A clever, kind person can save millions of lives — and a country can say sorry, even years later.

Part 07 • Why Now

Why We Still Remember

The war ended a long time ago. Why do we still remember? Two reasons.

Promises kept
First — the people who fought for us made us a promise. We made one back: that we wouldn’t forget.
Keeping a promise matters. Especially one made between people who never met.

Second — there are still people in our country today who lived through it. There are still soldiers and sailors who fought. There are still children who sheltered from bombs — they’re grandparents now. When we wear a poppy, we’re looking after them too.
Part 08 • Your Mission This Week

5 Days. 5 Things.

Each day this week we’ll learn one thing. By Friday, every one of you writes a quiet promise on a paper poppy.

Mon
The Poppy
Why we wear it
Tue
At Home
Blitz, evacuation, ration
Wed
Codebreakers
Maths that won the war
Thu
Voices
The names that get missed
Fri
Our two minutes
Our school remembers
🌿 Your poppy promise
"This week, I will look after ____."
🌿 Mission Complete

The Silence Will Be Yours

On Wednesday at 11 o’clock, when the silence falls in this hall, you’ll know what it’s for. You’ll know about Flanders. About the Blitz. About Walter Tull and the Land Girls and the codebreakers. About Alan Turing on the £50 note. The silence won’t feel empty — it’ll feel full.

⚡ Take this with you

Right now, before you go back to class, think of one quiet, kind thing you’ll do for someone this week. That’s your poppy promise. That’s how Remembrance starts.

Want to walk through the Blitz in VR?
Our “World War 2” workshop brings VR headsets to your school. Every class shelters in the Blitz, walks onto the D-Day beach, and stands in Trafalgar Square on VE Day.
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