Tag Archives: History

Nature of War

In year nine history this unit, we have been looking at 20th century warfare and conflict. Rather than focus on people, places, or dates, I have chosen to first examine the very nature of warfare. The standards we have been working on for this unit are as follows:

  • Select relevant information from a source to group and sequence
  • Select and combine information from sources on the basis of content

Firstly, I asked the students to find ten images of twentieth-century warfare. I tried to have them find Creative Common images, but finding historical Creative Common images proved difficult, so we decided that we would use any images we could find. Working in groups, the students sorted the images, devising their own criteria for sorting.

We lead a class discussion to clarify the criteria the different groups used in sorting. Students, in groups, then sorted against specific criteria, looking at common threads, eg naval warfare, civilian experiences. They came up with a variety of categories, then narrowed them down to about ten:

  • Urban
  • Naval
  • Air
  • Bombs
  • Civilian
  • Etc…

As a class, we discussed a ‘concept map’, eg ’cause’, ‘nature’, ‘impact’, ‘effect’ of war. We then used a selection of the images from the sorting activity as a basis for an overview of the “Nature” of warfare. Each student picked one photograph from one of the categories and free wrote a piece of sensory writing, which was then crafted into a poem.

Because Windows Movie Makers does not allow multi-track narration, we had to use Audacity to record a three-track soundtrack including sound effects found online, music, and narration. Most students had little to no experience with the sound recording software, but were quickly able to align their audio tracks with the WMM file. This process would have been much more simple on Mac, but it was a good experience for the kids finding ways to use a variety of software.

After our spring break we will begin to look at the Causes and Impacts of the major 20th century conflicts. Moving on to these standards:

  • Identify similar factors leading to the outbreak of major world conflicts
  • Describe and make links between relevant reasons for, and results of, events and changes

I hope our video work will help students achieve the following standards:

  • Explain the reasons why attitudes to events differ
  • Use knowledge and understanding to analyse and interpret information
  • Describe characteristic features of twentieth-century conflicts
  • Research and summarise information for use in group discussion

As the projects are completed, I will post them on our wiki for review and comments. In the meantime, here is the first one:

Any comments, suggestions, or further ideas would be appreciated.