Modern World History Lesson Plan

Teacher: Robert Russell Weeks Topic: Cold War Policies

GOAL: The goal of this weeks lesson is to explain the Cold War Policies of the United States and Allies and Soviet Union and Allies to my 11th grade history class. We will have a basic lecture and a few activities to further explain how these policies were used and to have the students fully understand what the objective of the policies. The lesson will take two whole class periods (50 minutes) and will hit on a few different objectives and then test the retention skills of the students and evaluate them.

Objectives:
To explain what Containment and the Warsaw Pact was. The Students to engage in activities and discussions. Test the knowledge and retention of the subject.

Materials:
PowerPoint Book

Procedures:
First a PowerPoint lecture to describe and give basic information to the students about the policies. Second, the students work together in groups to distinguish the members of NATO and the Warsaw Pact using their books and notes as main resources. Then as groups write a paragraph describing in detail what each political group stood for and have two groups write positively for each side. Next, we will have one person from each group come up and read what their group came up with and have a discussion on why their groups policy is better than the others in debate form. Then I will decide which group(s) wins and those will earn extra credit for debating their point the best.

Assessment:
After the quiz, we will have a short discussion on what the class learned not only from me, but from the book and from their fellow classmates. This should probably take place on day two as the lecture and debate will happen on the first day along with the quiz. In the discussion the talking points will be: What was Containment? Was it successful? Why wasnt the Warsaw Pact successful? What was the outcome of the Cold War? What this means for todays foreign policies.

Evaluation:
The quiz will tell me how much the students learned and on the second day we will see how much of the knowledge they retained. After the discussion on day 2, I will give some feedback on the groups and what they came up with and how closely it relates to what actually happened and how events unfolded to the end of the Cold War. Any student with particularly good insights and well-formed answers may receive extra credit on the next test. Lastly, the last part of this lesson will be a peer-review of each member in the groups which will take into account how each member contributed and how they think the other groups did as well. This peer-review will count towards participation points and in the case of the losing groups extra credit as well so that the entire class earns some. This will also give me an idea of how well this lesson went and how receptive the students were or if I should use the same methods in other topics or if I should try something completely different next time.