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I’m a World War II’aholic! Not only did I take a full year's sequence of WWII history as an undergraduate. but I continue to read WWII books, watch WWII documentaries and visit WWII web sites. I’m particularly fascinated by the greatest tank battle in the history of warfare—The Battle of Kursk on the Russian Front in July 1943.

The good news for me is World War II is taught in various grade levels which means students in fifth through twelth grade across the Upper Cumberland region of Middle Tennessee have had the pleasure of enjoying the lesson I will be sharing with you. In fact, I have also used it in my graduate elementary social studies course to demonstrate appropriate teaching strategies.

The Beginning

I like to start my lessons by asking questions, this tends to lower the stress and anxiety level of my students and grants permission for discussion. I begin by asking my students when they’ve seen the Tennessee state flag and what symbols are inside the white circle. As a group, we identify the stars as representing the three ‘grand divisions’ of East, Middle, and West Tennessee and then identify a special sub region of Middle Tennessee, the Upper Cumberland. We work through plotting the Upper Cumberland and the three grand divisions on a map of Tennessee, then on a world map we plot Cookeville and Tennessee. The final step of the introduction is to review what key ideas about World War II, ask them if they’ve ever seen an American Way real estate sign in front of a house or land for sale, show them an example (with the name Herb Baugh on the sign), and tell them that we’re going to learn how WW II touched the lives of people in the Upper Cumberland.

The Middle

The heart of the lesson proceeds to identifying newspapers as a primary source that can tell us a lot about the history we are studying. They are informed that we’re going to read articles from The Jackson County paper in nearby Gainesboro. First, however, we need to go over a vocabulary sheet with key vocabulary such as apprehension, furlough and Protestant Faith. We work on word attack, meaning, and relating terms through concrete actions such as underlining, drawing graphics, circling related terms and creating small concept maps. The graphic organizer of Christianity is particularly important since many students don’t always realize where their religious experience fits in the ‘big picture.’

The End

Students then read the front page WWII news from the Jackson County Sentinel. One front page story relates the concern, the apprehension, that William Herbert Baugh has been reported missing at sea in a hurricane. After reading the article, the class engages in analysis of specific elements of the article using a variety of concrete actions designed to focus their attention on key factual and higher order thinking tasks. Students identify that William Baugh was well educated and perhaps very intelligent, the family is apprehensive about the outcome of his being missing, and determine the item that could be the saddest if William Baugh is indeed deceased. The class also plots on the world map where William Baugh probably was lost. At the end of the analysis students are once again shown the American Way real estate sign and asked for its significance. We then identify things that little two year old Herbie Baugh missed without having his father. I even taught this lesson one time with Herb Baugh present in the classroom!! He was so touched he couldn’t talk to the 5th grade class.

The lesson includes additional front page announcements of WWII deaths for Gainesboro soldiers. Students quickly learn that WWII had a major impact on the lives of everyday families in rural Middle Tennessee. There are many variations for this great material including analyzing photographs of the headstones in the Gainesboro cemetery, listening to Elton Britt’s number one WWII country hit “There’s A Star Spangled Banner Waving Somewhere” and graphing the age of death of the soldiers from Gainesboro killed in WWII. Throughout this lesson, and its variations, students are engaged in a wide variety of factual and higher order thinking, on-task and are able to make use of concrete actions including graphic organizations, and are constantly on task. What more can you ask for?

I would like to hear from you! What techniques have you used for teaching about WWII? Have you used primary source materials? Have you been able to make WWII be closely connected to the lives and experiences of your students? Soldier in the name of great social studies!!!

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