My Resume
My Teaching Philosophy
Demographics and other background
Sample Assignment
Grading Rubric
Examples of Student Work
Unit Plan
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My Resume
My Teaching Philosophy
Demographics and other background
Sample Assignment
Grading Rubric
Examples of Student Work
Unit Plan
Demographics and other background
Belmont High School serves approximately 1200 students in largely affluent suburb of Boston. The student population is relatively homogenous. African-American and Hispanic students are underrepresented as compared with the state as a whole, while Asian-American students are slightly over-represented. In other ways the school seems even less diverse, as the “Special Education” and “Low Income” populations are both noticeably smaller than the statewide average.1 In spite of these statistics, the town does have a less affluent section, with triple-deckers, duplexes, and single-family homes on small lots, close to major streets and heavier traffic.
The unit plan presented here was taught to a Sophomore Honors class in Modern World History. There are only two levels taught of this course--”Honors” and “College Prep” or “CP.”
My Honors class was 39% female, 61% male. Approximately 9% were African-American, 17% Asian-American, and the remainder were white. The classroom is rather unusual, as it is an interior, windowless room with three tiers of built-in seats around three sides of the room. The fourth side has bulletin boards and two sections of chalk-board, but the chalkboard is generally obscured by the projection screen. There is a multi-media projector installed on the ceiling and connected to the computer on the teacher’s desk, which is directly in front of the screen.
1 Massachusetts Department of Education Web Site, http://profiles.doe.mass.edu/hom.asp?mode=so&so=133-6&ot=5&o=127&view=all, accessed July 11, 2007
Modern World History World War 1
Mr. Fisher
Note Check
(Open Note)
(5 points)
27.5 Making the Peace
The treaty that ultimately “ended” the war.
Payments made to compensate a victim. Germany has to pay a lot of this sort.
This organization was established to secure peace for the future.
4/5. Name tw(o of the three new republics established in place of the Austria-Hungary (the book calls this area the Hapsburg empire). (1 point each)
Lesson Plan
Abe Fisher Unit Topic: World War 1 Course: Modern World History
Topic, class/grade, level: The Treaty of Versailles, sophomore honors (assume a triple mod)
Objectives:
Students will be able to....
1. explain the important concepts contained in the treaty
identify major inconsistencies in the treaty
make predictions regarding the treaty’s success
Instructional Approach: (list and briefly describe activities & allotted time)
Review World War I briefly (10 minutes, lecture/discussion) Emphasis on causes & nature of the war
nationalism
militarism
long stalemate, cost in human and economic terms is grotesque
Introduce major players (5 minutes, slide, lecture)
show slide of the signing in the Hall of Mirrors
Identify Lloyd George, Clemenceau, Wilson, and Orlando
What seems odd about my introduction? (germans aren’t identified)
Work out negotiating positions
Divide students into 5 groups (5 minutes)
Assign each group a country (U.S., Germany, UK, France, Italy)
Distribute list (see attached) of issues to be negotiated
Give each country a “stance.” (secretly--don’t tell other groups)
U.S.: philosophy underlying 14 pts (nat’l self determination, league of nations, etc.)
Germany: return to pre-war borders
Italy: Territory
France: Punish Germany
UK: Punish Germany
Each country-group now establishes a starting position for negotiation, briefly determines their response to the list (10 mins)
Spokesperson for each group explains their position (15 mins)--teacher records positions on pre-prepared overhead (see attached). Note that no space is provided for German positions (don’t point this out--see if anyone notices)
Discussion: (15 mins).
Questions:
What do you think will happen?
Is the process fair?
Is the process realistic? (i.e. will it produce a rational result)
does anybody want to revise their position?
show them the actual outcome on the map. Explain the non-geographical terms of the treaty. (10 minutes)
national self-determination
reparations
disarmament
league of nations
“peace of justice” vs. “peace of vengeance”
Evaluation/assessment:
Assessment of discussion/negotiation.
See attached.
Modern World History - Honors
Mr. Fisher
Treaty of Versailles
Issues to be negotiated
Border between France & Germany (Alsace-Lorraine, other positions)
Border between Austria and Italy
What should happen to German and Austrian colonies?
What should happen to the ethnic groups formerly included in the Austro-Hungarian empire? (Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians, Poles, etc.)
Should Germany compensate the allies for the war?
What should happen to the German Army?
Whose fault was the war?
How can that fault be prevented in the future.
Modern World History - Honors World War One
Mr. Fisher
Note Check
Chapter 27.4 “Winning the War” (8 points)
When war requires the commitment of an entire society, we call it ________________.
This method of spreading ideas, usually by the government, to motivate the people or in some other way advance the cause, was used extensively by all parties in the war. What is it?
This treaty, named for the city in which it was signed, ended the war between Russia and Germany. What is it?
Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States, issued a list of ideas about how to resolve the war and avoid future ones. What is this list known as?
Modern World History World War One
Mr. Fisher
Note Check
Chapter 27.3 (8 points)
I am the portion of land between the two opposing lines of trenches. I get my name from the fact that neither side controls me. What am I?
I am the section of war most people think about when they talk about World War One. I am distinguished by the long lines of trenches both sides dug when the war bogged down. I get my name because of where I am relative to Germany. What am I?
I am a region of Turkey which the British and others tried to invade, to disastrous effect, trying to open up access to the Black Sea for the allies. What am I?
4. Although people have tried to invent me for centuries, World War One marks the first successful use of me in naval warfare, outside of experiments. I am a kind of vessel that can sneak up on other vessels very effectively and sink them. What am I? (For 2 extra credit points, what is my name in German?)
Modern World History-Honors
Mr. Fisher
World War 1 reading:
(From Rites of Spring, Modris Eksteins, Houghton Mifflin, 1989, pp. 139-142).
IV Rites of War
Battle Ballet:
The artillery barrage is deafening. When the air is still, the din can be heard faintly in London and Paris. Sometimes the pounding lasts for days. In June 1916 at the Somme it continues for seven days and nights. Field artillery, medium artillery, and heavy howitzers. The fifeen-inch-caliber gun of the British can fire a shell of fourteen hundred pounds. “Big Bertha” of the Germans, with a caliber of seventeen inches, can project a missle weighing over a ton. At Verdun in 1916 the Germans bring in several of those twenty-ton monsters. Each is moved into position by nine tractors; a crne is required to insert the shell. The impact of this shell annhiilates buildings; it shatters windows ina a two-mile radius. In August 1914 these huge machines of war had demolished the purportedly impregnable forts of Liége. As the Krupp guns “walked” their shlls toward the final target, Belgian defenders inside the forts went mad.
For concentrated attack there is usually one field gun for every ten yards under fire, and one heavy -- six-inch caliber and up -- for every twenty yards. When the huge shells burst, they ravage the earth with their violence, hurling trees, rock, mud, torsos, and other debris hundreds of feet into the air. Craters the size of swimming pools remain. When a lull comes and the rains return, men bathe in these cavernous holes. The small and medium shells, which make up most of the barrage, are less sensational in their effect. But to the soldier they too can mean annililation with trace. “A signaller had just stepped out,” wrote a medical officer of the 2nd Royal Welsch Fusiliers, “when a shell burst on him, leaving not a vestige that could be seen anywhere near.” The same officer described another image of shellfire:
Two men suddenly rose into the air vertically, fifteen feet perhaps, amid a spout of soil 150 yards ahead. They rose and fell with the easy, graceful poise of acrobats. A rifle, revolving slowly, rose high above them, still revolving, it fell.
Defenders huddle either in “funk holes” burrowed out of the forward side of the trench, or in dugouts, often fifteen to twenty feet underground, perhaps five paces square and about six feet high. The heavier shells not only demolish trenches; they can bring the wooden support beams, currugated iron, and wire netting of the dugout tumbling down and at the very least rearrange the earth above so as to obstruct exists. Acetylene lights and candles flicker. Larger concussions extinguish them altogether. A respite, wil it come? Yes. Finally. But then the muted voice of a sentry, who has survived in a forward sap, is heard to shout “Gas!” There is a wild scramble to find masks, to tug and pull to get them on; and the ordeal mounts as gas fumes begin slowly to mix with darkness and smoke. At last there is stillness, apart from muffled breathing, some rasping, coughing, and traces of weeping.
Will the cycle begin again? Is the attack on its way? Have the sentries survived? Are the periscopes manned? For when the attack comes, there will be a “race for the parapet,” up the dugout steps, should that still be possible, into the trenches, if they are still there, to fix bayonets, to assemble machine guns, to locate grenades, and if time permits, to man mortars, flame throwers, and other sundry weapons of this war of “troglodytes.” One must reach the parapet before the enemy arrives!
Over on the other side of no man’s land men wait. Faces assembled at scaling ladders are drawn and ashen. The tot of navy rum or Schnaps or pinard, which has been distributed a few minutes earlier, can dull the senses but not reverse the flow of blood. Equipment has been checked. Picks and shovels, bags for sand, Verey lights, wire. A load of over sixty pounds rests on each man’s back. Along with personal kit there is a water bottle, rations, a gas mask, field dressings, mess tins, ammunition. Some men carry hand grenades and trench mortar bombs. “Carrying your house on your back is no joke,” wrote Peter McGregor, a choirmaster from Edinburgh. Officers travel more lightly, the British with swagger sticks to indicate commands, for a voice is unlikely to be heard above the tumult, with a pistol in lieu of a rifle, and without most of the other more cumbersome gear. Conversation at this point is almost insignificant. A few men chatter nervously. Some exchange final wishes. Some whisper prayers. Watches of platoon leaders are now synchronized.
Zero. A shrill whistle. The wave of a cap. Men clamber up ladders. Many are clumsy--because of the load, from fear, or by nature. Over the top! Physical nakedness is the first sensation. The body is now exposed, tense, expectant, awaiting direct violence upon it. Even if one is to follow the “creeping barrage”--the practice by 1917--of one’s own artillery toward the enemy trenches, that first moment of exposure reduces him to innocence. “A man who stepped out of the trenches at that moment and lived through has never in all the ensuing years faced such a climax,” wrote a survivor.
Then the advance. Slow and faltering, because of the load, because of the terrain, and because of the tactics of the attack. The Germans and French are more innovative, often rushing forward in groups. The British are more systematic. A man every two or three yards, platoons abreast, a second wave twenty yards back. Heads are bowed, byt he weight of the pack and by the instinctual effort to shrink the target presented to the enemy.
The cratered honeycomb of no man’s land quickly breaks down any planned order. Men slip and fall. The line becomes straggly. Some get up and continue. Others cannot. In the mud of Passchendale in 1917 some men drown in the huge, sewerlike craters filled with slime that comes of rain, earth, and decomposition. Some now begin to hear the bullets. Some note the stench, an overpowering odor, emanating from the corpses the barrage has churned up. Some are hit. The race for the parapet has been lost. The field is now being swept by machien guns, pocketed by mortar fire, and scoured by rifle bullets.
More men fall. Some cry out. Most are silent. The wounded rarely feel pain initially. Officers try to keep the line together. But these men in the limbo of no man’s land, these “wanderers between two worlds,” need little encouragement., for isolation in this situation means fear. Only in the group is there any emotional safety, any comfort. Indeed, the attackers are inclined to bunch, to herd together for mutual protection.
Has the artillery managed to cut the wire, as promised? Rarely, with any kind of consistency. Breathless, on the brink of exhaustion, men look for gaps in the wire. The disappointment is overwhelming. The gaps are few, if any. The enemy fire has become withering. Only a handful of men reach the wire. They pitch their grenades. They fire their rifles. A few get through to the enemy trench, but bayonet combat is uncommon. Most of the officers leading the attack have been hit. Communication has ceased. The second wave experiences the same fate as the first. The thrid wave then decides that the attack has failed. Another whistle, this time a faltering one, signals retreat. Survivors stumble back. Some are disoriented and head in a lateral direction. Wounded men crawl. Some huddle in shell holes. The enemy artillery opens up, wreaking havoc on the retreat, but at least this time there is no counterattack. A remnant of the attacking unit returns.
The wounded in no man’s land are left to their fate until nightfall. Then an attempt will be made to bring them in. They try to stifle their rising agony. Moans bring down a torrent of bullets. And at last, a tortured stillness falls on the battlefield.
Modern World History - Honors
Mr. Fisher
Reading for World War 1.
The Hero
'Jack fell as he'd have wished,' the mother said,
And folded up the letter that she'd read.
'The Colonel writes so nicely.' Something broke
In the tired voice that quivered to a choke.
She half looked up. 'We mothers are so proud
Of our dead soldiers.' Then her face was bowed.
Quietly the Brother Officer went out.
He'd told the poor old dear some gallant lies
That she would nourish all her days, no doubt
For while he coughed and mumbled, her weak eyes
Had shone with gentle triumph, brimmed with joy,
Because he'd been so brave, her glorious boy.
He thought how 'Jack', cold-footed, useless swine,
Had panicked down the trench that night the mine
Went up at Wicked Corner; how he'd tried
To get sent home, and how, at last, he died,
Blown to small bits. And no one seemed to care
Except that lonely woman with white hair.
Siegfried Sassoon, 1917
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