One of the things that I always try to include when
developing lesson plans is an interactive element. This can be achieved many different ways:
students can interact with the teacher, with each other, with the content, or
even be physically active as an experiential aspect of the lesson. Whenever possible, I try to incorporate
multiple forms of interactivity. Including these elements in a lesson helps to better engage students in the material, addresses multiple learning styles, and promotes improved retention of content. This
week I did this as I developed a lesson idea to study World War I.
My U.S. History class has studied the causes and the
beginning of World War I and was ready to begin looking at the actual fighting
that took place. Before developing this
lesson idea, I determined the outcomes that I want my students to know about
the fighting in World War I; primarily that trench warfare was the chief battle
tactic, that new technologies affected the course and conduct of battles, and
that conditions greatly contributed to the number of deaths in World War I. As I pondered various lesson ideas to achieve
these objectives, I kept coming back to the fact that students needed to
recognize what it was like for soldiers involved in trench warfare. To help students recognize various aspects of
trench warfare while incorporating interactive elements, I determined that
students needed to get into the trenches.
Creating trenches within my classroom allowed for an experiential aspect of my lesson, but students also needed to interact with information
related to life in the trenches. This
conclusion led me to develop a lesson idea where students would analyze various
documents related to trench warfare while they were in the trenches.
I began the lesson by having students read The
Trenches-What They Were Really Like by Paul Fussell
on PBS’s The Great War site. After this
initial exposure to trench warfare, I clarified key aspects of this battle
tactic for students. My explanation included
a description of the layout of the battlefield and some of the military technologies that played
an important role in World War I (most notably poisonous gas and the machine
gun). This inevitably leads students to
question the wisdom of such a style of warfare, which we follow up with a
discussion of the benefits of a defensive battle strategy. This creates an opportunity to briefly
discuss what it takes to win a war where both sides are playing defense. It is within this discussion that I introduce
the concept of a war of attrition and the significance of the U.S. entry in
these terms.
After ensuring that students
have a basic understanding of trench warfare, I ask them what they think it
would be like to be a soldier in the trenches.
I then explain to students that they will get a chance to experience
life in the trenches. At this point I
divide the class into two teams and create trenches out of desks on opposite
sides of the room. Soldiers who entered
“no man’s land” or raised up above the top of the trenches risked being shot,
so students are advised that they may not engage in this risky behavior. For our purposes, I explain that the top of
the desks represents the top of the trenches and that students must remain below trench level throughout this activity. This can be incentivized by
offering candy or some other reward to the side that best meets this
expectation.
Getting students onto the floor to simulate the trenches met
my requirement for physical activity, but I still wanted students to interact
with the content. To this end, I created
three activities that students would complete in each trench. The first activity requires students to
analyze various photographs of trench warfare (there are many pictures
available by conducting a simple image search).
Students were to choose the three pictures that they found the most
interesting and then write a brief explanation of what they see and what that
particular photo can tell us about trench warfare. The second activity involves analysis of a
firsthand account of a gas attack.
Students are instructed to read Gas Attack, 1916 from Eyewitness to History.com. After skimming through this account, students
are to write a 2 paragraph diary entry as if they have just survived a gas
attack. For the third station, I give
each student an index card with which they are to create a postcard. One side of the postcard must include an
illustration depicting the trench system (I found several diagrams of the
trench system for students to reference by conducting an image search). The other side of the postcard is to be a
message from a soldier explaining life in the trenches to their family back
home.
There are also a number of videos on YouTube and other online sources that can be
played as students are experiencing trench life. Many of these videos offer historical footage
of trench warfare that can help students to understand the experience of life
in the trenches.
Students are allowed 10-15 minutes to complete their
assigned activity before they are instructed to rotate to the next
station. I stress to students that they
must remain below trench level at all times, even during the rotation. We
continue this process until students have been to each of the three stations.
After students have complete the third activity, I instruct
them to take out a new piece of paper and write a 1-2 sentence description of
trench warfare. After allowing a couple
of minutes for students to complete this explanation, I tell them to ball their
paper up and throw it at the opposing trench.
Each student must now collect a ball of paper thrown by one of their
classmates and read the description on it to their group. Groups must determine which description best
explains trench warfare and share this description with the class. As groups share their explanations of trench
warfare we can debrief the activity and compare student experiences to a
soldier’s life in the trenches during World War I.
This lesson idea allows students to experience life in the
trenches by crawling through a space created in class while interacting with
primary source documents that demonstrate the realities of trench warfare. This allows for student interactivity with
their classmates and with primary source materials while being physically
active in the simulation of life in the trenches. Students have now gained a better
understanding of what soldiers experienced during World War I while practicing
the skill of interpreting primary sources.
