U.S. History - World War I: Lesson Plans

In this lesson, students view archival photographs, combine their efforts to comb through a database of more than 2,000 archival newspaper accounts about race relations in the United States, and read newspaper articles written from different points of view about post-war riots in Chicago.

Late in 1917, the War Department created two all-black infantry divisions. The 93rd Infantry Division received unanimous praise for its performance in combat, fighting as part of France’s 4th Army. In this lesson, students combine their research in a variety of sources, including firsthand accounts, to develop a hypothesis evaluating contradictory statements about the performance of the 92nd Infantry Division in World War I.

Through reading chapters of Edith Wharton's book, Fighting France, From Dunkerque to Belfort, students will see how an American correspondent recounted World War I for American readers.

Curriculum Unit overview. Modernist poetry often is difficult for students to analyze and understand. A primary reason students feel a bit disoriented when reading a modernist poem is that the speaker himself is uncertain about his or her own ontological bearings. The rise of cities; profound technological changes in transportation, architecture, and engineering; a rising population that engendered crowds and chaos in public spaces; and a growing sense of mass markets often made individuals feel less individual and more alienated, fragmented, and at a loss in their daily worlds.

Lesson 1: Understanding the Context of Modernist Poetry
Lesson 2: Thirteen Ways of Reading a Modernist Poem
Lesson 3: Navigating Modernism with J. Alfred Prufrock

The historian and literary critic Paul Fussell has noted in The Great War and Modern Memory that, "Dawn has never recovered from what the Great War did to it." With dawn as a common symbol in poetry, it is no wonder that, like a new understanding of dawn itself, a comprehensive body of "World War I Poetry" emerged from the trenches as well.

Curriculum Unit overview. American foreign policy continues to resonate with the issues surrounding the debate over U.S. entry into the League of Nations-collective security versus national sovereignty, idealism versus pragmatism, the responsibilities of powerful nations, the use of force to accomplish idealistic goals, the idea of America. Understanding the debate over the League and the consequences of its ultimate failure provides insight into international affairs in the years since the end of the Great War and beyond. In this lesson, students read the words and listen to the voices of some central participants in the debate over the League of Nations.

Lesson 1: The Debate in the United States over the League of Nations: League of Nations Basics
Lesson 2: The Debate in the United States over the League of Nations: Disagreement Over the League
Lesson 3: The Debate in the United States over the League of Nations: Five Camps: From Voices of Consent to Voices of Dissent

Was the Treaty of Versailles, which formally concluded World War I, a legitimate attempt by the victorious powers to prevent further conflict, or did it place an unfair burden on Germany? This lesson helps students respond to the question in an informed manner. Activities involve primary sources, maps, and other supporting documents related to the peace process and its reception by the German public and German politicians.

Curiculum unit overview. Over the two decades between World War I and World War II, Americans pursued strategies aimed at preventing another war. In this four lesson unit, students use primary sources and an interactive map to examine the rise of antiwar sentiment and legislation in the United States and the main arguments used by both sides as to whether the United States should enter the war or remain neutral.

Lesson 1: Postwar Disillusionment and the Quest for Peace, 1921-1929
Lesson 2: Legislating Neutrality, 1934-1939
Lesson 3: U.S. Neutrality and the War in Europe, 1939-1940
Lesson 4: The Great Debate: Internationalists vs. Isolationists

In this curriculum unit, students reconsider the events leading to U.S. entry into World War I through the lens of archival documents.

Lesson 1: United States Entry into World War I: Two Diametrically Opposed Views
Lesson 2: United States Entry into World War I: Some Hypotheses About U.S. Entry
Lesson 3: United States Entry into World War I: A Documentary Chronology of World War I

Curriculum Unit. The influence of President Woodrow Wilson on American foreign policy has been profound and lasting. Using a variety of primary sources, students analyze the origins of the ambitious foreign policy that came to be known as Wilsonianism and compare it with important alternative traditions in American foreign policy.

Lesson 1: The Origins of “Wilsonianism”
Lesson 2: “To Elect Good Men”: Woodrow Wilson and Latin America
Lesson 3: Wilson and American Entry into World War I
Lesson 4: Fighting for Peace: The Fate of Wilson's Fourteen Points