Wednesday, April 10, 2019

Historical Investigation/Cold War, Day 6 - Class Recap


The Oregon Korean War Memorial, in Wilsonville. Photo taken in 2018.

Dear class,

I enjoyed our quick day together, understanding a bit more about what was happening in the United States in the 1950s, during the Cold War! Here's what happened in class today:

Learning Targets Addressed:
Critical Thinking LT 4: I can evaluate information and explanations within a given context and develop a relevant conclusion.
Critical Thinking LT 5: I can justify and support arguments or interpretation with appropriate evidence.
Communication LT 1: I can communicate effectively, both verbally and in writing.
Research LT 1: I can effectively conduct and apply research.

Soundtrack: "Bomb the World" by Michael Franti and Spearhead. Selected for today because of the connection to the atomic bomb and the lyrics: We can bomb the world to pieces / But we can't bomb it into peace.

AGENDA 4/10/19:
News Brief - Arturo
Duck and Cover
Korean War
H.I. Work Time

Homework: Read the blog! Continue working on your Historical Investigation! Bring your Chromebook, charged, for class on Friday! Next news brief: George.

News Brief: Arturo had the news brief today and selected an article about this story to talk about: CNN.com - This is the first photo of a black hole. After discussing the story, we also checked in to see if anyone was up to anything interesting or fun outside of class.

George was assigned to do the next news brief.

As part of the news brief, we also watched the one minute BBC World News update. Here's the link to see the latest one minute update, at any time of day (it will probably be different from what we watched in class):


Duck and Cover: To start this next part of class, I asked students to guess how many atomic/nuclear bombs have been detonated in the history of the world. We then watched a time lapse video of the (well over a thousand!) atomic bombs that have been detonated in history:


It's clear that there were a lot of bombs going off, and that, in the 1950s, there was quite a race between the United States and the Soviet Union to see who could build the bigger, better, badder, bomb. Obviously, this made many Americans quite anxious. One of the most famous short films to come out of this time was called "Duck and Cover" - here's the video, made in 1951:


And here are the questions I asked students to think about in responding to the video:


What an interesting time in United States history! Here's the nuclear bomb mapper that I showed in class, if you are wanting to know more:


The Korean War: At the same as Duck and Cover and the Cold War beginning with the Soviet Union, the Korean War (1950-1953) was happening. We went through some of this PowerPoint as a class, as I tried to explain what happened in the Korean War and the lasting impact to today:


A helpful video that shows what happened in terms of geography in the Korean War can be viewed here:


I hope all of this was interesting and engaging, especially with our short day together!

Historical Investigation Work Time: This will be the major assignment of the semester, which will involve quite a lot of research time inside and outside of class. Here's the assignment overview:


Last class, I showed the class what the biggest section of the Historical Investigation is: the actual research! Here's what we went over in class as an example from Mrs. Ferris:


Here's the calendar for the next month and what we will be doing - be aware that this is subject to change and revision!


The rest of the class was devoted to work time on the Historical Investigation (especially with the actual research portion as I checked in with students about their Part A submissions), as we will also have Friday after some research lessons from Ms. Schulz. See you then!

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