Annotated+Text+Set



**__Text Sets__ **

Text sets are a group of media that has a common goal or theme. Text sets can include textbooks, books of both fiction and non-fiction, movie clips, videos, music games...the list is endless. The point of a text set is for students to engage with the subject with more adventure and real life connections. Text sets do not have to be necessarily primary sources, but I think in my classroom I would try to use as many as I could. Text sets are designed to spark an interest in the student. While reading about an area of interest, perhaps a student has their eyes opened about an event and follows it deeper by investigating it through the artifacts that are in the text sets.

For this particular project I have decided to use World War II as my specific content area. Students are usually juniors in high school when they are enrolled in a United States history class so I will make sure that everything suits them and that nothing is too easy but really get them to think about the entire world at a time of conflict. I have tried to collect enough engaging artifacts that will spark some interest in a 17 year old student while they are studying World War II for a few weeks.

It will be my intention that most of the artifacts and material that I use for my text sets will be information that students have never seen or heard of prior to entering my classroom. It will contain important information that I might not be able to get to during the course of the lesson. It will however, be my hope that once students are engaged in my lectures, that they will examine every single piece of material that is contained within the text set.


 * __Text #1__ **

// [|Stories and Images of Japanese-American Internment] //

This is a marvelous website that I found with regards to the travesty that involved the U.S. government and Japanese-American citizens during World War II. I like this website because there are many other offshoot sites that students would be able to navigate through and discover things they may never have known existed. Links to primary sources include letters, pictures and real court cases. Some students may have never known that our government held its own citizens in camps. I can parallel that with Germany and its use of concentration camps for the Jews. This site will help students understand that there were many things that this county has done poorly in the past and that we must grow from those experiences.

**__Text #2__**

[|Band of Brothers]

This is an excellent primary source book. The book is written by Steven Ambrose and it documents first hand accounts of the 101 Airborne that jumped into France on D-Day. The book is written through the memoirs of Major Richard Winters. The time frame of this book is from the conceptualization of the airborne to the fall of Germany as America liberated Europe. I think students will find this book fascinating because it is dealing with real soldiers that went through the landing of Normandy. It is a compelling story that follows E-Company through the European theatre. Students will be able to use this book to go more in-depth with D-Day, Operation Market Garden, The Battle of the Bulge and Hitler's Eagle's Nest. As I teach the lesson for World War II, it would be impossible to get through all the nuances revolving around the war in Europe. This book will be a great aid for students to understand what it was like to be on the front lines during some of the largest battles during World War II.

**__Text #3__**

[|FDR's Day of Infamy Speech]

As everyone knows, Japan bombed Peal Harbor on December 7th, 1941. The artifact that I chose to include here is the speech that was given on December 8th, 1941 by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It is the famous "Day of Infamy" speech that FDR gave to congress to ask for a declaration of war against the Empire of Japan. I think that students may have heard this speech or some semblance of it or perhaps have seen actor Jon Voight give it in the movie Peal Harbor, but it is doubtful that any student has ever seen the actually footage from the Capital on that day. Students will perhaps use this speech or parts of it to construct a final project or maybe this speech will get them interested in politics and speech writing. I think that too many great speeches are not heard any more; and this one may be the greatest one ever given. Students need to understand that.

**__Text #4__**

[|U-505 Submarine]

This is a fantastic website that allows the student to navigate, explore and destroy a German U-Boat. U-Boats were the terror of the Atlantic, they sank thousands of ships and cost the lives of tens of thousands sailors and merchant seamen. This website is very interactive; it tells the story of how the U-Boat was captured, the top secret hiding location, how they transported it to America and so many other interesting informative tidbits. Students can take a virtual tour of the U-Boat...but the awesome thing is and it would be my hope that students would take advantage of this fact, that the U-Boat is in Chicago at the Museum of Science and Industry. Perhaps this could involve an actual field trip as well. Personally I have been to the museum several times and this exhibit never fails to be anything short of fascinating. I think students will find this website very interesting and react to it very well. My lectures will only briefly touch on the war in the Atlantic, but it is my hope that enough students would be curious to investigate the Wolfpack and the men and machines that made it. What a great resource to have only 100 miles away.

**__Text #5__**

[|//Hiroshima// by John Hersey]

This is a first hand account about the bombing of the Japanese city of Hiroshima. It contains interviews from survivors who later died in the days and weeks that followed as well as follow up interviews with individuals that have lived through the decades of horror and scarring. This was an actual book that I had to read in one of my undergraduate classes and it really opened my eyes when I read about the devastation from people who were actually there. The book also goes through and explains some theories that Japanese citizens have about the day the bomb was dropped as well as the morals and ethics about a nation that would release such a weapon onto another country. It would be my hope that students would become interested in this book after learning about the end of the war and how America finally was able to win through the means that it did.

**__Text #6__**

[|Navajo Code Talkers]

This is a tremendous part of America's involvement in the second war that is vastly under-appreciated and often times goes overlooked. To ensure that the Japanese would not break the code of the U.S., the military decided to recruit Native Americans and their language to help the cause in the Pacific theatre. The code talkers would set up bases on ships and on islands strategically placed in the Pacific and secretly transmit communications back and forth. It never broke. I would hope that students would investigate this particular artifact further when we go over secret codes that were used throughout the war, whether it was the German enigma machines or British "Dress Code". Since there most likely will not be enough time in class to extensively go through code talkers, I hope someone in class would pick up and look into this amazing story.

**__Text #7__**

[|Night and Fog]

This is a documentary film that was made after the war, but it shows real footage of Auschwitz and Majdanek while describing the lives of the prisoners who lived there. This is a extraordinary piece of archival film that pulls no punches and is designed to make the viewer realize the travesties and abomination that happened to 6 million Jewish people. This would be a relevant artifact to view during the lectures on Nazism and the war in Europe. This would also be a good way to explain to students what genocide is and how people who are viewed as being different might be subjected to atrocities like this. Perhaps this would be a lesson to those students who think that bullying, harassment or hate are fun. It may put things into perspective for them.

__**Text #8**__

[|World War II Propaganda Posters]

I think these posters, although funny now, truly struck fear into the people of America. These posters were created to make sure that the citizens of this country followed very strict orders, without ever really being told to. The fear factor in America at this time was very high and the threat level was extraordinary so these posters worked very well. Everything from building your freedom garden to keeping your mouth shut to joining a car pooling program to buying bonds. The fear that the government put into the American psyche was absolutely amazing. I would hope that students would look at these artifacts and realize that these propaganda posters were used to motivate and control the American public. I would challenge them to see if America still uses propaganda today and if so, how has it changed over the last 75 years.


 * __ Text #9 __**

[|Normandy invasion (1944): D-Day German footage]

I have been and will always be a huge believer in "those who win the war, write the history"; that is why I am such a big fan of [|Howard Zinn] and [|James Loewen]. This footage from Normandy is real evidence from the German perspective on the allied invasion; it shows the landing crafts, German artillery exploding on the beaches and German tanks rolling across the French countryside. I think it is important for students to see things from a different light and not always through red, white and blue tinted glasses. I think students will use this footage to see how Germans were just as young, just as scared and just as dedicated to their country as the Americans and British were to theirs. I think that sometimes we are so wrapped up with America, that we lose sight that other individuals in other countries are human beings as well.

**__Text #10__**

[|Battle of Stalingrad]

This a short, fun little video that I found on YouTube that explains the essence of the Battle of Stalingrad. Stalingrad is the city that Germany tried to take in the east. It was an extremely long and bloody battle that lasted more than 6 months during the Russian winter. Even though the Germans outnumbered the Russians, the Germans quickly realized they had bitten off more than they could chew. Soldiers were freezing to death and they were running out of supplies, the Germans were letting the battle slip away from them. The failure of the German Army was nothing short of a disaster. A complete army group was lost at Stalingrad and almost 100,000 Germans were taken prisoner. With such a massive loss of manpower and equipment, the Germans simply did not have enough manpower to cope with the Russian advance to Germany when it came. This is a part of the war that will be quite hard to incorporate into a lesson plan, even I did not fully engage this knowledge until I was an undergrad. That being said, I hope that with students learning so much about what is going on, on the western side of the war in Europe, perhaps they will be encouraged to see what is happening on the eastern side of the European theatre.