"The Guns of Easter" by Gerard Whelan

Our novel "The Guns of Easter" by Gerard Whelan created so much scope for learning about the Easter Rising 1916 across a range of subjects throughout the curriculum. In history we thoroughly enjoyed researching facts and information about The Easter Rising and in drama we engaged in role play and reconstructed scenes from various heated chapters throughout the novel. This in turn helped to bring the novel to life for us and allowed us to relate to the feelings experienced by the main character Jimmy Conway, a boy of similar age to us. In English we carried out a number of activities based on the novel including character profiles, chapter summaries, predictions, reviews and reports.

Last but not least a number of children really enjoyed drawing portraits of the seven signatories, weapons used during the war, uniforms and reconstructions of eye witness accounts.Each child played a tremendous role in compiling this class project and indeed it was well worth it!