World War I

Activities that help students think and work like historians

Students will use Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, Henri Barbusse's Under Fire, and letters written home by American soldiers to compare the experiences of different participants in World War I.

Individual capstone project for a unit on World War I. Students use primary sources to develop insight into the personal side of the Great War. Students will use archive based research to create a story about one particular soldier.

Working in cooperative learning groups, students will explicate selected poems. Written analysis will be completed on the attached teacher generated analysis guides.

Students as a group will present a persuasive argument for which of the 4 MAIN (militarism, alliances, imperialism, nationalism) causes was primarily responsible for leading to World War I.

Students will learn the reasons for the US entering WWI, as well as being exposed to WWI propaganda which can be related to wartime propaganda in general.

Choice of various writing assignments.

The students will produce a monthly magazine from WWI. The time frame (month) will be chosen to coincide with a particular battle of their choice.

Students will research through the use of primary source documents the lives of different segments of societies in WWI, and create a fictional narrative based on this study, to illustrate their understanding of the material.

Students will identify several underlying themes of war inspired music and analyze the effect the author is trying to create.