Tracing Their Stories

Listen to a podcast with Jason: 



General Steps:

Students will take their knowledge of key events from World War Two and interpret their consequences and significance through the lives Canadians who participated in the war by creating a time capsule and interview. Students are challenged to take their learning beyond a big picture understanding of the Second World War and interpret how the major events of the war impacted the lives of Canadian men and women serving at home and abroad through the creation of a time capsule. In this project, students are asked to take their knowledge of key events from World War Two and interpret their consequences and significance through the lives Canadians who participated in the war by creating a time capsule and interview. Using the historical evidence of first hand accounts found on thememoryproject.com, students are challenged to take their learning beyond a big picture understanding of the Second World War and interpret how the major events of the war impacted the lives of Canadian men and women serving at home and abroad through the creation of a time capsule. This approach will enable students to more intimately appreciate the full range of experiences of those who dedicated their lives to this life-altering event. By asking students to also complete a fictional interview with one of the people studied they have the opportunity to develop a greater sense of how lives were changed during and after the war.

To complete this activity, students will need to have access to thememoryproject.com and speakers to hear the interviews with the Canadian service men and women. They must also have a strong working knowledge of the major events and Canada’s involvement during World War Two as this is a WWII unit culminating activity. Using online or print materials to research key events is very important to the overall project so access to a library and the internet is important.

To create the time capsule students will need some basic art supplies to create the capsule itself along with the materials necessary to write the letters written by the men and women who they have selected. Additionally, students are asked to create historical artifacts (made by them) to help make tangible the key events in the lives of the veterans selected. Historical Thinking Historical Evidence Through this assignment students will be sifting through a great deal of historical evidence that is both primary and secondary in nature. They will work with the accounts of Canadians who experienced the war first hand and then analyze those events through printed text and other media produced after the event. Using these sources students will have to come to conclusions about how the war might have impacted the lives of these Canadians after the war through the fictional interview.

Determining Historical Significance: When looking at key events in the stories of Canadians, students will conduct supportive research into these pivotal moments during the war and decide on their significance to both the present and the past. By looking at three Canadian stories students will gain a greater appreciation for how events were significant in different ways for different people. Historical Perspective, Cause & Consequence For many students today, the idea of volunteering for war is difficult one to imagine. Growing up in a media saturated age where images of conflict are common place the thought of willingly entering a war seems beyond understanding. Learning the stories of everyday Canadians holds the key to unlocking this mystery for today’s students. Having them listen to those who decided to join the war will help our young people recognize the many causes that brought Canadians willingly into harm’s way. Understanding how these events shaped both the war and individuals’ lives will reveal the short and long term consequences of people’s decisions. Having students understand the impetus behind someone joining the war and articulate the consequence for such an action is one of the primary goals of this assignment.

Process - How Will You Complete The Task: Your time capsule entries should look and feel as if they were created by the people who inspired them. Each individual entry (3 in total) must include the following elements:

• 1. Journal Entry - written from the perspective of the individual, must be between 150 - 250 words
• 2. At least one relevant, annotated photo - all profiles found on thememoryproject.com have at least one photo (if not more)
• 3. Related Artifact - any object, image, map or in other ways tangible object that represents the story as told by the individual (must be an original construction by you i.e. cannot be bought though a digital reconstruction is acceptable)
• 4. Historical Abstract - a brief, 100-200 word overview of the historical events and/or time frame related to the journal entry i.e. a sailor’s story may warrant an overview of the Battle of the Atlantic.
• 5. Interview -  create a 1-2 page (700 word max.) fictional interview with one of the veterans. The interview can be set at whatever time period you wish and you are free to invent realistic events that could have happened after the war to the individual. The purpose of the interview is to demonstrate your understanding of the causes and long/short term consequences of decisions made during the war. 

Suggested Resources:

"Veteran Stories - The Memory Project." Veteran Stories - The Memory Project. Historica Canada, n.d. Web. 15 Apr. 2015.

Rubric