Introduction to World War I Activity

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So welcome to the new version of my blog! I plan to use this space to share the activities I've built for my freshman U.S. History classes as well as a few tutorials along the way. Our course started in August with Westward Expansion and Industrialization and based on our current pacing we will end with the Vietnam War. While our standards actually take us to present day, I just don't see us getting that far on our current schedule. And since this is our first year teaching with these standards, I am going to have to do some work this summer to make it further on what is (hopefully) a more normal schedule.

So let's get to it. In previous years, I have been able to rely on my students' prior knowledge of World War I to guide us as we start this section. However, because of the changes to the state standards, my school elected to swap the order of our courses. This means that my freshmen will not take World History until next year. And while they can understand the American role in the war without knowing the larger context, I wanted to give them a least a bit of background knowledge. So in this lesson, they will work their way through some of the key details, preparing them for our look at the reasons the U.S. goes to war in the next lesson. Next year, I will expand this section so that students have a deeper understanding of the material.

​Let me know what you think.