Stalag XI – B

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General Steps:

The goal of this project is to determine what life was like for Canadians in the Stalag XI-B Prisoner of War Camp during World War II. To do so, students engage in a historical investigation. The investigation is modeled after the TC2 Historic Docs series, and provides students with explicit instruction on how to source, contextualize, and corroborate sources. As a summative task students create a textbook special feature describing and showing life in Stalag XI-B through words and images.

Step 1 | Introduction: During your study of World War II the subject of internment, concentration, and prisoner-of-war camps will emerge. Inform students that you recently came across some primary source evidence from a Canadian who was captured by enemy forces during World War II. You hope that the evidence will help you better understand the experience of a prisoner-of-war during this time. Inform students that they will be using the primary source evidence to answer the following inquiry question: “What was life like in Stalag XI-B Prisoner of War Camp”.

Distribute sources 1a and 2a and encourage students to use the two sources to make tentative inferences about what life might have been like in Stalag XI-B camp. At this time, do not explicitly encourage students to source or contextualize the sources. You may wish to give more explicit instructions to students when encouraging them interpret historical photographs. Encourage them to respond to the prompt: “what can you see” or invite them to list everything they can see. This is an open-ended question that all students can respond to, and helps students collect as much evidence as possible before making inferences. You may also wish to teach students to observe photographs carefully by scanning the image up and down, left to right, and corner to corner. Once students have had time to examine Source 1a and 2a, invite students to share their preliminary answers to the inquiry question “What was life like in Stalag XI-B Camp?” You may wish to invite students to write down their preliminary answers, or simply have a discussion in pairs or small groups.

Step 2 | Sourcing & Contextualizing: After allowing time for students to reach a preliminary conclusion about what life was like in Stalag XI-B Camp, introduce students to the practice of sourcing and contextualizing sources. You may wish to use resources provided by the SHEG Institute, or any of the excellent introductions provided in The Big Six or Teaching About Historical Thinking. Distribute Source 1b and 2b to students. Guide the students in using the following questions to source the document:

• Who made this source?
• What kind of source is this?
• How was it made?
• When/Where was it created?

You may wish to use the “Reading Around The Document” Blackline Master as found on The Governor’s Letters website as a scaffolding support for students. Once students have completed this process, engage the class in a brief discussion of the following questions:

•  Has the author provided a full and faithful report of what was seen, heard, said, or felt?
• Was he/she present at the time?
• What social and contextual factors might influence what is presented in the source?
• Based upon the contextual information that you have just gathered, would you change your preliminary answer to the inquiry question? (“What was life like in Stalag XI-B camp?”

Step 3 |Corroborating Sources: After sourcing, contextualizing, and analyzing the credibility of Source 1 and 2, introduce Sources 3-5. Choose one of the sources and model out loud the thinking process of corroboration. Before demonstrating the think aloud, you may wish to post the following questions to support students (and your!) thinking:

• How is this source similar to those that I have already encountered? How do they differ?
•  Why are they similar / different?
• Does this source confirm what I have already learned?
• Does it extend what I know about the topic?
• Does it challenge what I have already examined?
• Why is this source important?
• What makes this source an important piece of evidence?
• Do I have enough evidence to make a conclusion?

You may also wish to provide the following sentence stems to support students thinking and writing about corroboration:

• Source ___ supports what I have learned so far because it…
• Source ___ contradicts the evidence of Source ___ by suggesting that…
• Source ___ goes even further than Source ___ in showing that…

(The above questions taken from Seixas & Morton, The Big Six)

Step 4 | Summative Task: Before inviting students to finalize their conclusions about what life was like in Stalag XI-B Prisoner of War camp, students should understand that we do cannot always find definitive answers in our historical investigation. Because of this, historians, or any other profession that deals with interpreting evidence are adept at expressing appropriate degrees of certainty. For example, a historian may use adverbs such as probably, likely, and possibly, or use verbs such as ‘suggests’ or ‘implies’ in the face of some uncertainty or lack of evidence.

The following sentence stems for thinking aloud or writing about degrees of certainty should be provided for students before they begin writing.

• These sources lead me to believe
• These sources clearly show
• These sources imply that…
• It is highly likely that…
• Based upon the sources examined, life in Stalag XI-B was…
• These sources clearly show…but we are still uncertain about…

To demonstrate their understanding of what life was like in Stalag XI-B as well as their understanding of sourcing, contextualizing, and corroborating sources, present students with the following scenario:

• Pearson Education-Canada is soliciting submissions for writers to contribute to their upcoming History 12 textbook. They have divided the book into chapters, topics, and special features. One of the special features that will be included is a feature on the Stalag XI-B Prisoner of War Camp. They are asking writers to contribute at detailed paragraph describing life in the camp, and provide an accompanying photo for the feature. Using the research you have completed craft a detailing what life was like in Stalag XI-B and select a photograph to accompany your text in the special feature.

Lesson Resources:

Source 1: “Bob Sanderson to his parents, Nellie and Stanley Sanderson, In Ontario” in Gray, Charlotte, ed. Canada: A Portrait in Letters, 1800-2000. Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2003, pg 401-402.

Source 2

Source 3: Gray, Charlotte, ed. Canada: A Portrait in Letters, 1800-2000. Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2003.

Source 4

Source 5

Source 6

Rubric