Lesson Reflections: WWI & Interdisciplinary Work

The week before last we covered World War I. I chose to focus on the causes of World War I, the concept of Total War, Women in the War, Weaponry and Warfare, Causalities and the Treaty of Versailles. I tried to organize each day as a different topic. Additionally, during professional development I was able to work with the ninth-grade English teacher that many of my students have about corroborating our lessons. I would try to give them an overview of the historical concepts, while she would explore texts from WWI like All Quiet on the Western Front.

During this unit, I think my lesson on trench warfare and causalities went the best. I began by asking them how many do they think died in WWI. I wrote each of their responses on their board and moved on to Cornell notes. I had the students copy down the definition of trench warfare and also listed some characteristics of life in the trenches. When I asked the students who had heard of trenches many proclaimed that they were learning about this in Ms. Swinehart’s class (the English teacher). Although some complained that they did not want to learn history in English, I was glad that they were taking note of what they were learning in each. Next, I projected a map that showed the arrangement of trenches it displayed primary and secondary  trenches, No Man’s Land and the barbed wire fences. While the students took notes, I set up the desk in a way that resembled the map and asked for three volunteers. I had the students sit on the ground (in the trenches) and pointed out the associations between the desk layout and the trench warfare layout. I told them that occasionally a soldier would be ordered to go out into “No Man’s Land,” (and asked a student to get up) but BOOM (I shook the student), they would meet enemy fire. All of the class seemed engaged with the simulation and I gave each of the volunteers candy for participating. Finally, to get at causalities, I had my students look at a primary source written by a nurse during the war who sits next to a soldier who has just discovered he has lost his legs, then examine a numerical chart with a breakdown of causalities per country. I asked them to compare and contrast the story each of these sources told about causalities. I think the lesson went well although it was a lot to get through, so in the future I might break these two days up. I would have also liked to go back to their initial hypothesis of how many people died and compare this with the numbers on their chart.