Perspectives of WWII

We have just finished a huge unit in PLP. In this unit we learned about WWII which was a very significant event in Canada’s history. Our curriculum only says that we have to learn about Canada’s perspective of WWII but that doesn’t allow us to see how other countries felt about the war. Our teacher decided that we would learn about the perspectives of many countries during WWII so we could be more educated on how the war affected everyone.

As you may know the war started on September 1, 1939 and ended on September 2, 1945 which is almost exactly 6 years. Because the war was so long there were a ton of events we had to learn about. Many of us had prior knowledge about the war so to narrow it down we started off by coming up with questions about information we wanted to know. This allowed us to focus on the stuff we were interned in learning. Here are some of the questions my class came up with.

Concentration Camps:
How were concentration camps viewed by those uninvolved in the war, as well as those involved?
How were they discovered?
Were Germans oblivious to what was truly happening at these concentration camps?
Hitler:
Why was Hitler and the Nazi army specifically targeting the Jewish population?
What different resistances worked with the allies, and which worked against nazis and allies?
What were some of the future plans of Hitler and the Nazis?
What would the world have looked like if the Nazis Won?
How were Italy and Japan persuaded to join forces with Germany?
Technology & Strategies:
How could the strategies of paratroopers been changed to better affect the battlefield
How was the Enigma code developed, produced, and solved?
What were the strategies of war used and how have they changed over time?
How did the Nazis come up with technology that took other countries forever to develop?
How was the advancement of war technology a good thing or a bad thing?
How do you think War technology has advanced and how will it advance in the future?
Did the advancements in technology make war more accessible and able to be started easily? What examples are there that prove this point?
What type of war strategies worked on Germany to allow them to advance? Why did these strategies work?
Could something have been done to shorten the war?
Was technical innovation one of the most important factors for military superiority?
How was the war disrupted by having new technology?
Why would the Germans target London knowing they would kill more civilians than soldiers?

Right at the beginning of this unit we were assigned a book to read about WWII. Throughout reading the book we had to take notes because when we finished the book we had to write a review on it. I chose to read All The Light We Cannot See. I wrote a post explaining more about the assignment and my review. If you are interested you can read my post and review Here.

We started off this unit by learning about how the war started. We watched some clips from an amazing documentary show called World War II in Colour which you can watch on Netflix. We learned about how Hitler got into power and why he started a war. After that we learned about the main project for this unit. For the project the class was divided into small groups and each group was given a country that was involved in WWII. We got to fill out a google form picking out our top three countries we wanted to research or putting if we wanted to do a smaller country independently. Each groups task was to make a page on a website explaining their countries perspective on the war. Each country had to have details on before, during, and after the war. I was put in a group with Lucas and Will and our country was Japan.

The design requirements for the website were that it had to have a theme throughout it, it had to have pictures. It had to be visually appealing, and it had to have lots of information. To start preparing to make our website we had a lot of research to do. We had to learn everything about Japan from a few years before the war to a few years after it. We had to research the soldiers, military, technology, battles, and much more. My group divided up the different topics and we each researched a couple. The difference from this research and our normal research was that this wasn’t just taking notes. Instead we wrote a small paragraph or two for each topic so we could put it directly on the website. This made things a lot easier later on. Here is all of our research.

Japan-WWII Research-19f56ab

Although each group was only assigned one country we still had to learn about WWII in its entirety. We learned about many different aspects and battles in the war but one of my favourite things we learned about was the evacuation of Dunkirk. Hundreds of thousands of British and French soldiers were trapped on a beach in France surrounded by the German army. Their only way to escape was by boat but they didn’t have enough boats to get them all to safety so many civilians from nearby came in any boat they had to help save the soldiers on the beach. If you would like to read more about it you can go to the Great Britain page on our website.

Although the evacuation of Dunkirk was a significant event it wasn’t exactly a battle. My favourite battle that we learned about was The Battle of Britain. This was a very horrific battle that resulted in the death of many civilians. Germany wanted to conquer Great Britain and started off by bombing their harbours and shipping facilities. They then turned their aim towards cities and civilians and they bombed Britain for 57 consecutive nights. If you would like to read more about this battle you can go to the German page of our website.

Throughout this unit we had to learn about citations so we could properly cite where we got our information for our website. We learned how to cite a book, a video, and a website. To practice our citation skills we would write small paragraphs with a quote or fact from a specific book, video, or website then cite it at the bottom. This was very helpful practice and made citing our website so much easier. Here is a good website about how to do citations.

One of the aspects of our website was to have audio. This could be in the form of a podcast, interview, or whatever else we wanted. To help us with this we had a veteran from WWII come into our class to tell us about the war and answer our questions. As I mentioned before the goal of this unit was to learn all the perspectives of the war so we were lucky enough to have a soldier with a not often discussed about perspective of the war. His name is Helmut Lemke and he was a German soldier.

He was an amazing speaker and told us so much about his perspective of the war. It really opened my eyes as to how a German might have felt during the war. Each person in the class had to make a podcast from his interview and they turned out very good. I did a couple of drafts, got some critique, then did a final draft. Here is my final podcast.

If you would like to listen to the rest of my group’s podcast you can go to our Podcast Page on our website.

Once all of the research and preparation for the website was done we were ready to start putting it together. To make our website we used a program called Weebly. Weebly allows you to make websites in a very easy way. My teacher set up the website so all my group had to do was make our page. We already had all of our information and pictures done so we just had to import it to the website. We started off with using our iPads to do it but because the whole class was editing it at the same time nothing was saving. We then had to edit it on laptops and that was much more successful. I found putting the website together very fun because I love making my work look good. Weebly is a very good tool to use if you are a beginner and want to make a website. It is very easy and fun to use.

Once all the countries had finished their websites it was time for my favourite part of a PLP project. The Critique. Each country set up a station in the classroom with a laptop and we all went around and gave kind, helpful, and specific critique to each other. My country didn’t get very much critique of things we had to fix which made me really happy because I worked very hard on our page. My group changed the few things we had to and then our website was ready to present.

We were very lucky to get the opportunity to present to Kathleen Barter who is a District Administrator at North Vancouver School District and is also a historian. She came into our classroom and each country had 5 mins to present the highlights of their page on the website. My group was second to last to go which wasn’t very good because a few groups went over their 5 mins so we didn’t have very much time. We had to rush through our presentation but I feel that it went pretty well. Ms Barter gave everyone some critique or things to add to their website but because we were so rushed she didn’t have time to give us any. We then spent the next few days doing a little more editing and then our website was done. You can visit our website Here.

I loved this unit so much. I’m very interested in learning about wars and I loved how much we learned about each country. Thanks to Helmut I learned so much about Germany’s perspective and it was probably my favourite thing I learned this unit. The only thing I would change about this unit was to focus a little more on the perspective. We got so into learning about the war that we kinda forgot about the perspective and had to add more to our website at the end. I loved making the website and I found that it was a very unique way to present a project. I hope we do more unique projects like this in the future.

One Comment on “Perspectives of WWII

  1. This was a very well written and descriptive blog post. There was a lot of detail in this post, which made me understand what the project was and what it was like learning about the unit. The pictures and links make the post pop and makes it even more appealing, and the description of the war was excellent. I would maybe add a few screenshots of the website on the post, which will show the viewer what the website actually looks like.

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