Blog Activities for the Classroom – WWII Blog

The World War II Blog

 This assignment will be for 9th grade. The subject is American Cultures and will be on the topic of World War II (WWII).  In preparing this activity, I found that this site (WordPress) may not be real user-friendly for the student and may not be as flexible in posting videos or audio as some other blog providers would be.   I found that in posting a video, I could only make it work if I used youtube or google video.  In trying to use teachertube, it did not work.  I would like students to be able to use sites and not be limited to two previous mentioned options. 

Students will need to: Have access to the internet, have their own blogs, follow their 2 partners’ blogs who will be in a geographically different location (European country), Make substantive comments to those partners on each assignment.

Objectives for this unit are:

• Explain what it was like to be in World War II by dramatizing and role-playing (Comprehension and Analsyis)
• Discuss major reasons for the US entering WWII. (Comprehension)
• Examine the consequences of WWII and its outcome. (Analysis)
• Compose an argument for or against the US entering WWII. Justify your argument. (Synthesis and Evaluation)
• Compare and contrast our world today with the WWII era. (Analysis)

WWII Blog Assignments

Assignment 1:
For the next five days this will be your WWII diary. You will make an entry about WWII each day as if you were a soldier, nurse, medic, aviator or journalist. Choose one of those roles to play. Explain what you experience, what you see, how you feel, your surroundings and your opinion on the war. If it helps, pretend you are writing to a family member or to someone who will read what you are writing.

You will be graded on the following for a maximum of 22 points:

1. Content of post
2. Quality and creativity – 5 points
3. believability/accuracy of the time period (don’t talk about Vietnam or cannons here) – 10 Points
4. Use of technology (video, links, audio, pictures) – 5 Points
5. Were comments to your partners substantive and appropriate? -2 points for each comment.

Each blog entry is worth 22 points so make sure you get them in. This is a large assignment. Missing one puts you down to a B.

Assignment 2:
In this assignment, you will be using your blog to explain and defend your opinion on one of the following topics:

• Why the U.S. entered the war. Give reasons, support them with evidence, explain the consequences of entering and not entering.
• Discuss how WWI was a contributor or set the framework for WWII. Embed video from that era or other media. Provide links where needed for evidence. Support your suppositions with evidence.
• Defend or criticize the US helping Japan rebuild after the war. Defend your position with evidence of examples we have discussed in class. If needed, use video footage you can find from that era discussing the matter.
• How are US Japanese internment camps during WWII like or unlike German death/labor camps? In other words, compare and contrast the US treatment of Japanese to the German treatment of Jews during World War II.

You will be graded on the following for a maximum of 27 points:

1. Content of each postDid you defend your position with at least 2 reasons/arguments? (10 points)
2. Did you use technology in presenting your argument? (video, links, audio, pictures) – 5 points
   This is an example of a video you could use
   
3. Was your thesis statement well-defined and did it get the reader’s interest? – 5 points
4. Did your conclusion clinch the reader’s attention and give him/her something to think about? – 5 points.
5. Were comments to your partners substantive and appropriate? -2 points for each comment.

Assignment 3:
Write a letter to a world leader from the WWII era telling them your opinion of WWII and persuade them to enter or not enter it. Remember, this is a persuasive letter. Use the resources from your first two assignments to help you with this. Though this blog technology did not exist in the 1940s, use this technology now to be as persuasive as you can. Use editing features (such as font), use imbedding, linking, etc to gain the reader’s attention.
You will be graded on the following for a maximum of 27 points:

1. Content of post  -  Did you defend your position with at least 2 reasons/arguments? (10 points)
2. Did you use technology in presenting your argument? (video, links, audio, pictures) – 5 points
3. Was your thesis statement well   -  defined and did it get the reader’s interest? – 5 points
4. Did your conclusion clinch the reader’s attention and give him/her something to think about? – 5 points.
5. Were comments to your partners substantive and appropriate? -2 points for each comment.

At the end of these assignments, please fill out the poll below by choosing one answer.

Blog Ideas for the Classroom

As I perused sites over the last week for ideas about using blogs in the classroom, I have found that many have great ideas. I saw one with 33 different blog uses in the classroom. The site was called Web 2.0 in the Classroom. I found them all very useful options. One that stuck out was:

“Create a blog where students describe a typical day at school. Invite other same aged students from different global locations to contribute the same type of information on the same blog. Let students ask questions and leave comments to gain cultural awareness. Students can then begin to share/compare thematic units being learned, novels being read, field trips being taken, etc.”

Having students from different global locations participate is a great idea. It gives students a culturally different educational perspective on life and education in different parts of the world. Even the teacher can learn from this. I think that I will try to use “global participation” sometime in my own classroom. I don’t know if I would use the same topic or not. It’s not a bad topic, but I think that since I co-teach a lot in social studies, I might use a topic like one of the World Wars or the Cold War so my students could see that history is not always coming from one perspective.