First Meeting

A. and I had our first meeting at Panera Bread tonight. I think it was really productive. She sent me the content area standards ahead of time as well as some ideas of what she has done with this unit in the past. It was helpful to hear from her what her priorities for this unit are and how what she teaches differs from what students learn about World War II in American History.

I showed A. Dr. Loertscher's books (she had looked at them before) and we discussed some of the think models she might like to try. We also discussed which content area standards we'd focus on and how we could make this unit relevant to student, building on what they had already learned. I took notes on our ideas; some of them are pretty exciting.

First, we want to focus on significant battles of World War II. Content standards require students to identify major theaters on a map and ask students to consider the role geography played in the war. One standard mentions the "long-lasting" effects of war. This got us thinking about how, for our students (and us), war is something that happens somewhere else. Other than the attack on Pearl Harbor, there has not been a war in the United States since the Civil War. How, then, can students understand the long-lasting effects of war?

We decided to help students make that connection by finding geographic areas within the U.S. that are similar to the areas where major WWII battles were fought. A. is very interested in having students make infographics, so I am going to research ways they could do this with their original and "new" battle areas.

We also discussed how students could study political, military, and diplomatic WWII leaders. We don't want to have students do reports or research papers, and we'd like to avoid PowerPoint if possible since they already use it for so many other things. Eventually we decided to have students work in "Ad Agencies" to create advertising campaigns for a leader. We will have them use Glogster to create a campaign poster and post "commercials" for their leaders on YouTube.

We need to work on some connecting materials and I need to look at the think models and see which ones, if any, these ideas follow.