rationale

Rationale We chose to formulate a lesson around 20th century conflict because we thought this was the best way to connect the Holocaust to Vietnam. These major 20th century events have many effects on our society today. We wanted the student to learn how history has affected the present. We wanted to show how major events build upon each other. We used the Cold War to link the Holocaust to Vietnam. We find that many times students just learn about specific events in a vacuum and this is a way to learn about cause and effect of major historical events. We can look throughout the past to see how these conflicts have been justified. We wanted our students to look at the complexity of specific events, to see the multiple implications and perspectives of 20th century conflicts. This is why we included the dialogue poem teaching it to show students to look at the complexity of an event and how people can have an effect. We want our students to be critical of events in history and current events, this is why one of our main guiding questions is “how is war justified.” This is tied together with current sociopolitical events with regards to the war in Iraq and 9/11. We compared how Vietnam and the war in Iraq are justified. This is another important way to make connections from the present to the past. One of our goals for our students is having them us the past as a template for how they want to act in the present. It is important to make students thoughtful and productive by getting them to think of modern history and see the implications both at the time and now. Explore the idea of learning from the past and of learning from past mistakes to do the "right thing" now. What are the “right things” to do in conflict? This formulated our other guiding unit question “is it possible to be human in war?” We wanted to give the student the ability to think and reflect upon this question in the podcast and free writes throughout the unit. We also used a Socratic seminar to allow the student to voice their opinions on what they believe the “right thing” to do. This is a productive way to voice your own opinion and listen to opposing viewpoints in a civil and respectful way. These activities encourage critical, deep thinking with multiple answers to the essential questions. Another important instructional strategy we used was the Google lit trip. This allows students to visualize how events in Europe are connected to events in Asia and also events throughout the decades are connected to one another. We believe it is important to utilize geography when teaching about history because it gives the history a context. We went about our unit through an intermediate perspective. We thought about the Holocaust in mainly a particularistic view because we wanted to give specific information about the Holocaust through lecture but we also did encourage students to formulate and voice their opinions through the Socratic seminar and allowing them to make connections to their own events. We also thought the Cold War and Vietnam in the same way. We used the Google lit trip in a universalistic view because we gave information about important events of the throughout those 35 years. Through the movie we used contrasting quotes and images to show these events can be connected and their significant similarities. We want students to be introduced to specific details of these events, but to also think about them broadly in terms of their themes and connections between them.