Lesson:  U.S. and the Cold War

Course: History of the Americas II,

 IB 12^th grade 20^th Century Topics

Standards:

American History: Post-War United States, 1945-1972

-The student will understand the Cold War, it causes, consequences and its military conflicts.

# of Days: 5 days (this completely depends on many things, this lesson could take more days depending on the class, there are quite a few documents to work with).

Content and Habits of Thinking: Critical analysis of primary and secondary source documents, comparing/contrasting, synthesis of information and drawing conclusions about the causes and courses of the Cold War.

Guiding Questions:

1. What role did each of the U.S. presidents play in the Cold War?  What actions did each of the presidents take (or not take) in response to the Soviet Union?
2. What was the effect of their presidency on U.S/Soviet relations during the Cold War?

Lesson Sequence and Instructional Strategies:

Day 1: This lesson will be the introduction (and survey of sorts) to the Cold War.  Students will be sitting at tables (and already in groups) as they usually are during class.  The Cold War is one of the topics that is required in the IB curriculum in preparation for the exams in May. 

Warm-up/Question of the Day:  Every lesson, every class period begins with a question.  Students know that they should copy the question and the answer (hopefully!) into their notebooks.  In this case, students will begin the unit by analyzing the photo.  For the majority of all analysis done in class, students use:

O:

P:

V:

L:

This is an IB analysis strategy that is used on the exams in May.  Students will be expected to use this for all the work that is done in class, unless another strategy is provided.  Students should give the Origin, Purpose, Value and Limitation of all documents that are being studied.

After the students have completed the photo analysis for the question of the day, each table will be given a stack of documents.  All of the documents deal with the Cold War and U.S. presidents in some way.  The documents are not in order in anyway, the students will work as a group (2-3 students) to complete the following assignments:

1. Students will analyze each individual document using P, O, L, V.  This should be done with the documents while they are still “out of order”.  Students should not be reading for any particular meaning, but analyzing what the documents actually say.
2. Students should then begin to find the documents that deal with a certain president and begin to put the documents in order chronologically, the best they can.  At this point, students can also use textbooks in class to help them (students should not use the Internet to help with any part of this assignment).
3. Students should begin to look at each document and how it relates to each president involved.  The students should begin to work on the following synthesis questions:

-What was the role of the president in the Cold War?

-What actions were taken in response to the Soviet Union/Cold War?

-What was the president’s effect on US/Soviet relations?

These questions are the guiding questions for the lesson.  Students should very briefly state the answer—2-3 sentences at the most.  Students do not have a strong background with the subject yet; keep in mind that this is the introduction/overview to the Cold War unit.  Students should answer all three of the above questions for each of the following presidents:

Truman:

Eisenhower:

Kennedy:

Johnson:

Nixon:

Ford:

Carter:

Regan:

Days 2-4: Each class will start with the question of the day—either of photos or political cartoons.  Students will answer the question individually and then discuss as a large group.  Students will need quite a bit of class time to finish the analysis of the documents and the questions as the Cold War relates to each U.S. president.  Allow for plenty of time for groups to work through the documents and to organize them.

Day 5 (or later)/Assessment:

Since this lesson takes place at the beginning of the unit, there will be no exam given quite yet.  In a few weeks, students will be expected to write an IB style essay exam.  For this lesson, students will be asked to turn in all the P, O, L, V analysis and the responses to the three guiding questions about each president.  That work will be for an individual grade—depending on the class, students may turn in one paper per group or one per person.

Whenever the class has been given enough time to complete the work, the question of the day should be about the documents.  Students can work with their groups and actually give a number to each document to put them in chronological order.  Then the document order should be discussed as a large group.  This could take quite a bit of time if groups disagree about the order.

Students should be given a bit of time to prepare a very brief presentation of their responses to the guiding questions.  Each group should be given a large piece of poster type paper.  They should go through each president and in one sentence discuss each president in terms of role/actions and effect.  Each group should then present their results to the group.  If time is running short, another effective way to have all groups present is to do a gallery walk.  Students should hang their posters and walk around to all groups work.  After all the results have been given (in whatever way is chosen), the large group should then discuss what was the same and what was different between the groups.

Instructional Considerations:

Students should be placed into working groups prior to this assignment.  Depending on the class, these groups may need to be assigned or students could choose their own groups.  This lesson is designed for IB 12^th graders, so the reading level is quite high.  This lesson could easily be modified with fewer documents, pictures or quotes to accommodate all levels of readers in the class.

Materials/Resources:

Students are allowed to use their textbooks for additional information; students should not use the Internet in class (they probably will go home and research, but class time should not be given for computer research). 

The texts: America, Russia and the Cold War, 1945-1996 and History of the Modern World.

The only other materials needed for class will be large poster type paper that is needed for the group presentations.

The teacher has prep work to do with the documents.  The following list is a suggested list—there are tons of documents on the Cold War.  Two documents per president is suggested, but more or less can be used.  This lesson can also be done with any other primary documents available.  This lesson suggests using pictures and/or political cartoons for the question of the day and documents for the presidential work. 

Question of the Day:

These can be found in hard copy at the end of the lesson.  Again, the following documents are just a suggestion—so many more resources are available on the Internet.

Day 1: Political Cartoon, Soviet Takeover

http://www.johndclare.net/images/Soviet_takeover.GIF

Day 2: Nixon/Khrushchev photo

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/eames/images/vc9636.jpg

Day 3:  Newsreel—Crusade for Freedom

http://history.sandiego.edu/GEN/qt/coldwar/1951reagan480.html

Day 4: Nixon/Mao photo

http://www.china-profile.com/images/hist_indepth/nixon-china-visit_0.jpg

Day 5: Reagan political cartoon

http://www.lindsayfincher.com/news/reagan_gorbachev_wall.gif

President Documents:

These documents will be given through the website address only because of all the copies that would need to be made.  Many original documents can be found on the Internet, but there are also sites that have easier reading and/or printing copies available.  Many of the presidential libraries are an excellent source for documents.  Again, the following is only a suggested list, there are so many more resources available on the Internet.

Truman: Long Telegram, The Russian Problem and the Truman Doctrine

All documents are available at: www.trumanlibrary.org

http://www.gwu.edu/nsarchiv/coldwar/documents/episode-1/kennan.htm (Long Telegram printer friendly version)

Eisenhower: Kitchen Debates    www.teachingamericanhistory.org

2^nd Inaugural Address    http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres55.html

Kennedy:  Fidel Castro Speech, JFK Quarantine Speech, Che Guevara Speech and Castro’s letter to Khrushchev.

All documents are available at: http://www.mtholyoake.edu/acad/intrel/cuba.htm

Johnson: Signing of the Treaty of Outer Space, Address to Nation Upon Announcing his Decision to Halt the Bombing of North Vietnam, Announcing Steps to Limit War in Vietnam and Reporting Decision Not to Seek Reelection.

All documents available at: http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/speeaches.hom

Nixon: Letter from Nixon to President Nguyen Van Thieu, Peace with Honor Speech

All documents available at:  www.teachingamericanhistory.org

Historical documents library---modern era---nixon  

Ford: Vietnam Assessment Report by General Fred C. Weyand, Address at Tulan University Convocation, Remarks Upon Taking Oath of Office

All documents available at: http://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/exhibits/vietnam

Carter: Human Rights and Foreign Policy Speech, First Inaugural Address

All documents available at: www.teachingamericanhistory.org

Historical documents library---modern era---carter

Reagan: Speech at Westminster, Remarks on a Ceremony Commemorating the 40^th Anniversary of the Normandy Invasion.

www.teachingamericanhistory.org

Historical documents---modern era---reagan

Remarks at the Brandenburg Gate, West Berlin, Germany

http://www.reaganfoundation.org/reagan/speeches/wall.asp

Comments:

This lesson on the Cold War will immediately follow the unit on WWII—this lesson should be after the discussion and document work on the Atom Bomb.  The continuing lessons will be much more topic specific within the unit of the Cold War.  Topics to be covered will be Korean War, Vietnam War, the Cuban Missile Crisis and the fall of the Berlin Wall.  The remainder of the standard for the Cold War will be covered with the remaining lessons.  The teacher should continue to write appropriate guiding questions for the new lessons and/or topics.