"Inter-War Years" Diary Entry (Socials Studies 11)
Assignment Overview and Rubric
I covered the following events in a series of lectures on the "Inter-War Years":
While these lectures don't encompass all of what I covered in this unit, these are examples of lectures that I feel could have been enriched by an assignment that asked students to put a "human face" to these events. This would help students understand how the lives of Canadians changed as a result of these events, especially if they looked at how different demographics of people were impacted by these events based on their race and/or socioeconomic status.
Since this was an optional assignment, I tried to leave it as open and flexible as possible. I gave students the option of writing a diary entry from the point of view of a person who was present during one of the events that we discussed in our lectures on the "Inter-War Years." Students would be expected to use what they knew about these events to describe how their created character thought and felt about these events, and how their lives changed.
- Challenges faced by soldiers and their families after World War I;
- Causes and the events leading up to the Winnipeg General Strike;
- "The Roaring Twenties" (including the associated economic/social changes and prohibition);
- Causes and events leading up to the Great Depression.
While these lectures don't encompass all of what I covered in this unit, these are examples of lectures that I feel could have been enriched by an assignment that asked students to put a "human face" to these events. This would help students understand how the lives of Canadians changed as a result of these events, especially if they looked at how different demographics of people were impacted by these events based on their race and/or socioeconomic status.
Since this was an optional assignment, I tried to leave it as open and flexible as possible. I gave students the option of writing a diary entry from the point of view of a person who was present during one of the events that we discussed in our lectures on the "Inter-War Years." Students would be expected to use what they knew about these events to describe how their created character thought and felt about these events, and how their lives changed.
Reflection
Unexpectedly, most students who chose to complete this assignment chose to write about prohibition. When we were discussing this topic during my lecture, the students were particularly interested in why people (specifically women) would be so strongly in favour of prohibition, why the Canadian government would approve prohibition, and why it wouldn't work (specifically in a social climate full of young men who were returning from the war and expecting to live their lives as young men, which for many included drinking).
The assignments I received mostly focused on how prohibition both influenced and was impacted by prohibition. They were often from either the point of view of a wife who was in favour of prohibition, or a husband who was not in favour of prohibition and would frequent speakeasies (either with or without his wife's knowledge) for a variety of reasons, some of them including alcoholism that was an effect of the trauma that he may have experienced in the trenches during the war.
Since I presented this assignment near the beginning of the unit, there were few events for them to choose from that I had covered in the lectures. I think this may have been one of the reasons why students chose to address a similar topic in their diary entries. If I had introduced this assignment at a later point in the unit, students may have approached a wider variety of topics because they would have a broader base of information to draw from my lectures when they chose a topic. This will be something that I will consider when I use this assignment in the future.
The assignments I received mostly focused on how prohibition both influenced and was impacted by prohibition. They were often from either the point of view of a wife who was in favour of prohibition, or a husband who was not in favour of prohibition and would frequent speakeasies (either with or without his wife's knowledge) for a variety of reasons, some of them including alcoholism that was an effect of the trauma that he may have experienced in the trenches during the war.
Since I presented this assignment near the beginning of the unit, there were few events for them to choose from that I had covered in the lectures. I think this may have been one of the reasons why students chose to address a similar topic in their diary entries. If I had introduced this assignment at a later point in the unit, students may have approached a wider variety of topics because they would have a broader base of information to draw from my lectures when they chose a topic. This will be something that I will consider when I use this assignment in the future.