LESSON PLAN AND RESOURCES
th
Grade Level: 10
Date: January 19, 2011
The World War One Experience
Objectives:
 SWBAT explain why trench warfare occurred during WWI
 SWBAT describe what WWI trench warfare was like
 SWBAT answer questions about primary sources using their knowledge of WWI trench
warfare
Standard: NYS Core Curriculum points 6.A.3,4, and 7
Materials: Guided note handout, PowerPoint presentation, “Children’s Crusade” video with
lyrics, clip from Legends of the Fall, primary source readings (attached)
Introduction: Students will answer the question “what is a “stalemate,” and how does the term
relate to what happened on the Western Front during WWI?” on their handouts
Teaching Strategies and Accommodations:
 Discuss the warm-up question
 Lecture – using a Socratic approach where appropriate. Notes, illustrations, and video
clips will be displayed on the board.
 Primary source reading activity. Each student will be given one of the three primary
sources attached below to read. To help weaker readers, students with the same primary
source may work together in groups.
Conclusion: When three minutes remain, reconvene the class and play “Children’s Crusade for
them,” explain the point the song is making – that young generation bore the brunt of the
suffering caused by WWI.
Homework: June 2005 DBQ due next class.
Assessment: Students’ responses during the lecture, students’ answers from the primary source
activity.
Reflection:
The DBQ assignment is still not structured enough. Most of the students had either no outline, or
a very rough outline, and were not ready to start their essays. I need to provide more support and
modeling. Allocating time in this for questions about the DBQ would have helped too.
3rd Period
The lecture part took too long. I need to work faster. In the context of this unit the group activity
time is critical, because that is when I work one-on-one with students who are struggling to
complete the essay.
DULCE ET DECORUM EST1
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares2 we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest3 began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots4
Of tired, outstripped5 Five-Nines6 that dropped behind.
Gas!7 Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets8 just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime9 . . .
Dim, through the misty panes10 and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering,11 choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud12
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest13
To children ardent14 for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.15
Wilfred Owen16
8 October 1917 - March, 1918
Source: http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/owen1.html
Notes:
1. DULCE ET DECORUM EST - the first words of a Latin saying (taken from an ode by
Horace). The words were widely understood and often quoted at the start of the First World War.
They mean "It is sweet and right." The full saying ends the poem: Dulce et decorum est pro
patria mori - it is sweet and right to die for your country. In other words, it is a wonderful and
great honour to fight and die for your country.
2. Flares - rockets which were sent up to burn with a brilliant glare to light up men and other
targets in the area between the front lines
3. Distant rest - a camp away from the front line where exhausted soldiers might rest for a few
days, or longer
4. Hoots - the noise made by the shells rushing through the air
5. Outstripped - outpaced, the soldiers have struggled beyond the reach of these shells which are
now falling behind them as they struggle away from the scene of battle
6. Five-Nines - 5.9 calibre explosive shells
7. Gas! - poison gas. From the symptoms it would appear to be chlorine or phosgene gas. The
filling of the lungs with fluid had the same effects as when a person drowned
8. Helmets - the early name for gas masks
9. Lime - a white chalky substance which can burn live tissue
10. Panes - the glass in the eyepieces of the gas masks
11. Guttering - Owen probably meant flickering out like a candle or gurgling like water draining
down a gutter, referring to the sounds in the throat of the choking man, or it might be a sound
partly like stuttering and partly like gurgling
12. Cud - normally the regurgitated grass that cows chew usually green and bubbling. Here a
similar looking material was issuing from the soldier's mouth
13. High zest - idealistic enthusiasm, keenly believing in the rightness of the idea
14. ardent - keen
15. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori - see note 1 above.
16. Wilfred Owen was killed in action on November 4, 1918, one week before Armistice Day.
Introduction: Private Harold Saunders enlisted in the 14th London (London Scottish) in
November 1915, and went to France with the 2nd Battalion in June 1916
TRENCHES AT VIMY RIDGE
As the War had to be, I shall always be glad I was able to play even a negligible part in it, or I
should never have known with such certainty the madness of it.
During training I was aware only of the glamour of War. I prepared myself for it with
enthusiasm, and bayoneted and clubbed the stuffed sacks representing the enemy with a sort of
exalted ferocity. I was as [proud] of my regiment as I used to be of my school. […]
When I made my debut in the line I had a cheerful conviction that nothing would hit me. And I
remember standing on the fire-step for the first time and saying to myself exultantly: "You're in
it at last! You're in it! The greatest thing that's ever happened!"
Lice and wind-up came into my life about the same time. At stand-to one morning a flight of
whizz-bangs [artillery shells] skimmed the top of the trench. The man next to me went down
with a scream and half his face gone. The sand-bag in front of me was ripped open and I was
blinded and half-choked with its contents.
This was in the summer of 1916. In the plain on our right the flash and rumble of guns was
unceasing. It was the beginning of the Somme offensive we learnt afterwards, but even if we
had known one of the big battles of the War was in progress at our elbows I doubt if we should
have been deeply stirred. To every private in the line the War was confined to his own
immediate front.
My first spell in the line lasted three weeks. Water was scarce, and even the tea ration was so
short there was none left over for shaving. I had a nine days' growth of beard when we went
down to rest. […] My socks were embedded in my feet with caked mud and filth and had to be
removed with a knife.
Lack of rest became a torment. Undisturbed sleep seemed more desirable than heaven and much
more remote. […]
I have slept on the march like a somnambulist and I have slept standing up like a horse. Sleeping
at the post was a court-martial affair, with death or field punishment and a long term of
imprisonment as the penalty. But, try as I would not to fall asleep, I often woke from a
delectable dream with a start to find myself confronted with No Man's Land.
Once I was caught. It happened soon after dawn near the end of my spell. I had been watching a
spot in No Man's Land where we suspected a sniper was operating. Suddenly I became aware of
a voice saying, "The man's asleep," and knew it referred to me. Giving myself up for lost I
sniffed loudly and changed my position as a sort of despairing protest.
Out of the tail of my eye I saw a Staff officer talking to the corporal. To my inexpressible relief,
the corporal answered with one of the most ingenious lies I ever heard.
"He can't be, sir," he said. "He lent me this pencil only a second before you came." The officer
was rather disinclined to accept the pencil as proof of my wakefulness, but, as I was then
manifestly quite alert, he presently went his way.
Harold Saunders
Source: http://www.firstworldwar.com/diaries/trenchesatvimyridge.htm
Introduction: Between them Fred Albright and Evelyn (Kelly) Albright wrote over 550 letters.
They were married in June 1914, with no hint of the war to come. Fred enlisted in June 1916. He
was sent to France in September 1917, and killed at the Battle of Passchendaele on October 26,
1917.
Two weeks after Evelyn Albright received the telegram from the War Office telling her that Fred
had been killed, she began to write down her thoughts and feelings in a notebook.
Evelyn expresses her overwhelming grief in the form of actual letters to Fred, letters which can
never be received. The poignancy of these ‘post death’ letters to Fred displays the total loss,
loneliness and complete devastation felt by Evelyn in the early months of widowhood.
Taber, Alta
Nov. 23, 1917
Dearest:It is not yet two weeks since I wrote my last letter to you, not two weeks since I read that awful
telegram that told me you were gone from me.
I suppose it seems silly for me to write to you, but if you know, you’ll understand, and nobody else need
know. But it has come to me that time might dim your image and the knowledge of your dear
companionship, and I cannot bear to think of that. Then too, my darling, oh my darling, I sometimes
cannot believe that you are gone, and I go on pretending as I have ever since you went away last March,
that you were coming home again. And if you should - why then you’d be glad of a link between the
times. It is so easy, sweetheart, to lose myself in dreaming, for whenever hard unpleasant things have
come, I have always made believe things were as I would have them. But in this case, the coming back to
Earth is hard. […]
Oh darling, I shall try to live on cheerfully and well, but it seems that I am like a tree, half killed my [sic]
lightning. Such a tree, I suppose is not expected to give the shade of a whole one - but the question
always comes, why should it have been marred and blighted? Do you know now?
Your wife, for wherever you are, my darling, I shall always be that.
Nov. 25/17
My Own Ferd:I was re-reading to-day your letters of the 17th & 18th of last month. When I read your letters, they
seem to bring you very, very near to me. I cannot realize that you are gone, and I have been thinking
that there is no reason why I should not consider that you are “Just Away.” But oh, the loneliness when I
realize that there is no “Coming Back.” In that letter you asked what you would do without me. I am so
glad sweetheart, that you had me for I know that it made your hard way easier, though in a way it made
it harder, for you always knew I loved you. […]
Your kiddie.
Nov. 26/17
My darling, my darling, my darling I have been reading a story and at the end comes the overwhelming
thought that you will never speak to me again. And yet in the back of my head, something says that you
will yet come back. My heart feels as if made of stone. Oh sweetheart, how can I, how can I live without
you. Everything seems so vain and empty. So often I have told you you were the light of my life.
Nov. 27 [1917]
Ah my dearie, I wonder if all people feel the same as I do. I sometimes forget that you are not
somewhere, and go about my work; then into my head beat the deadly words “killed in action, killed in
action, killed in action” and then I realize that my lovely one, as I call you to myself, gone, gone, gone. I
suppose having you away for a time has dulled the blow to some extent, and yet in another way it has
made it harder. If you could have been held in my arms. Oh darling I can’t, I can’t think that I’ll never
again feel your kiss or have your arms about me.
Last night I wept and called for you, it seemed a long long time and you did not come to me even in my
dreams.
Oct. 26, 1925
So many years have gone, long years they’ve been and hard. I wanted to be alone tonight to think, but
Phyllis came in for a while and the time was gone. I feel the need on once more deciding what my
standards are; I have been going along on acquired momentum for a long time and now it seems
exhausted.
It is eight years since what? If I only knew. You said once before we were married that you had come to
feel life was not worthwhile but that I had taught you it was. Come to me and show me the fulness and
realness that it ought to have.
Source: http://sites.google.com/site/echoinmyheartsite/the-letters/part-four
STUDENTS’ NOTE SHEET
WWI: The Human Experience
Warm-up: What is a “stalemate,” and how does the term relate to what happened on the
Western Front during WWI?
Trench Warfare:
Explain it:
Draw it:
Describe the conditions soldiers endured in the trenches.
How did technology impact WWI?
New Invention
What it did
Machine guns
Long-range artillery
Barbed wire
Poison gas
Submarines
Tanks
Airplanes
How did tactics evolve in response to new technology?
Gallipoli – ____________________ casualties
Verdun – _____________________ casualties
The Somme – _________________ casualties
Primary Source Reading:
1. What primary source did you read?
2. Underline phrases in the primary source that describe what being involved in WWI was
like. (Focus on imagery).
3. After reading this account, how do you feel about WWI?
POWERPOINT PRESENTATION