Good morning everyone! This past term, my class has been looking into the interwar years. We learned about the, specific topics, made essays about them, and then taught the class in any way we liked. It involved a lot of Food, Kahoot,  and Laughter.

What are the Interwar years.

Good Question, the interwar years were a lot of things, the roaring 20’s, the Great Depression, the League of Nations, and everything in between. Technically, the Interwar Years was the time in between WW1 and WW2 (1919-1938).

We learned about the Significance of the Interwar years because #1 it’s in the curriculum, and #2 So that we could choose our topics.

Topics

I got to choose from Mussolini, to Stalin, to Hitler, to the Stock Market Crash, or ANYTHING from the interwar period. When our name was randomly selected from the wheel of names, we chose a topic. We were asked to provide a top 3 for ourselves, but I couldn’t pick, and figured that since my name would likely be picked close to last then my top 3 would be taken by the time I was picked. I created a list of all available topics, researched, and wrote a synopsis about each one so that I could chose on the spot.

Topic Options list  

I ended up choosing to write about a man named John Maynard Keynes, as he was the man who came up with a way to end the Great Depression.

Project

“What makes an event Significant”

– Our Driving Question

Our Project was all about finding the Significance of a Person, Event, Thing, Concept… in the 1920-30’s. The key about Significance that I have found, is how it affects us today. Specifically, how it affects our LIVES, WORLDVIEW, and IDENTITY.

The project itself was to write an essay about your topic, and share it with the class in some way to be determined later.

My Findings on the Significance of

John Maynard Keynes

After hours, and HOURS of researching him, his theory, and the definition of the words in the definition of the words, in the definition of The Keynesian Theory, I wrote an Essay (My first Essay EVER) on the Significance of it all.

The Keynesian Theory introduced the idea of short term economics, and found a relationship that would give a solution to economic decline. Without that knowledge, when the economy nexts drops (which it does constantly), we wouldn’t be able to fix it, and we would possibly get stuck in another depression.

 

Sharing my Knowledge

We got 10 minutes to teach the Significance of our topic to the class, in any way that we deemed fit (that the teacher approved). My challenge was to teach a strenuous and seemingly boring topic to a whole bunch of kids in 10 minutes and have them remember it. I thought of all the really impactful lessons that I’ve ever had, and picked two out in my mind.

  1. “Things” – drama game I learned in grade 6
  2. A still image activity we did to learn about tableaus, and New France where we froze in scenes about the time.

I picked to play things since those two activities are very similar.

“Ok we’re going to play a game that my old teacher called THINGS. I’m going to split you into groups, and I will yell out an object. Whatever I yell, you are going to make as a group with your bodies. Let’s try an easy one for practice. In your groups, take thirty seconds to make a car… freeze. Nice, you can un-freeze now!“

– an excerpt from my Script explaining things.

My students were very involved, and engaged in the activity which I hope means they had fun! I also think that it would have been fun for Miss.Maxwell, my teacher, to be a part of one of the groups as a student. I had a really good time teaching them (which makes me think twice about ruling out teaching as a possible profession), and could have done it all day.