WWI Alliance Simulation

I had a share a win from last week - I tried this simulation illustrating the role of alliances in the outbreak of WWI and decided it's a keeper!

We've had four snow days since the start of the new semester on January 21, so it feels like building classroom community has gotten off to a slow start. While this activity was great for content, it was also a huge win for getting students up and interacting with each other.

We'll be bookending our study of WWI with another simulation: the OER Project World War I Peace Talks.

Does anyone have other favorite activities for WWI?

Marcella Sykucki 3 months ago

Thanks for sharing Anne Koschmider ! I've done the OER Peace Talks Assignment before and it got pretty heated last year. It made it much easier going forward whenever I made a connection back to the Treaty, I think everyone would roll their eyes and be like well yeah of course. I really like the simulation you have that starts the war off and definitely want to try this out. How long did you have this run for? I have 40 minute periods so I'm thinking about my timing. One of my favorite activities on WWI is the WWI Poster Analysis. Students enjoy looking at the posters and we often make connections to modern propaganda which they're all over especially when we talk about the media today.
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Will Nash 3 months ago

It might be a bit late for you, Anne Koschmider , but I tried WWI- Our Interconnected World last year and it was a raucous good time. I used yarn with a few of my classes and party streamers with the others, and both worked well. It's one of those activities where I can get the wallflowers involved and almost everyone will write about it after it's over.

I'm about 4 weeks out from Global Conflict, jealous!
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Anne Koschmider 3 months ago in reply to Will Nash

Our Interconnected World is on deck for later this week! I agree - it's a good one!
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Anne Koschmider 3 months ago in reply to Marcella Sykucki

Marcella Sykucki the simulation takes about 30 minutes, which you can scale up or down based on how much students are negotiating and how frequently you hand out the strips of paper with new information.

And I agree on the poster analysis - we did that on Friday. Having the posters groups by theme add something unique.
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Lisa Meyers 3 months ago

I think someone may have shared this podcast here in the group last year but I tried to focus my students on post WWI and Britain/India relationship. I was impressed with their thinking on this.
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Marcella Sykucki 3 months ago in reply to Lisa Meyers

Thanks for sharing this Lisa Meyers , it looks like a great podcast and activity for students! I'm definitely going to try this out.
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Julianne Horowitz 3 months ago

I banked this one for next year - it looks great! So helpful that it's about 30 minutes too. That's just right. WWI has so many great activities and the articles line up with them perfectly!
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Kristin Rimal 3 months ago in reply to Will Nash

At the end of the school year, I ask my students for feedback on their favorite activities from the year. This one always comes back on the top of the list.
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Kristin Rimal 3 months ago

I like the look of these two activities together. Thank you for posting! I am going to try them this year.
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Ashley Hartman 1 month ago in reply to Will Nash

Please share more details about using party streamers.... this sounds so fun! I typically use yarn
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