War, Terrible War: Supporting Common Core with A History of US offers classroom lessons adapted from curriculum developed by the Johns Hopkins University Talent Development Secondary (TDS) program to accompany Joy Hakim's award-winning 10- volume series, A History of US. These lessons accompany volume 3 of that series, War, Terrible War.
The lessons provide opportunities for students to closely examine challenging nonfiction text (including primary source documents), engage in collaborative discussion and team learning activities, and create a variety of written products. They align with CCSS ELA Reading Standards for Informational Text 6-12 and Reading Standards for Literacy in History/Social Studies for grades 6-12. Several lessons feature close analysis of documents listed as exemplars in CCSS (O Captain! My Captain is a 6th-8th grade exemplar; Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address and Gettysburg Address are cited as 9th-10th grade exemplars.) The informational text overviews for lessons in this volume are written on approximately an 8th-9th grade reading level. Primary source documents often present challenging vocabulary, so the lessons provide additional scaffolding suggestions for these readings. All materials needed for the lesson are included in the Teacher's Manual and Student Discussion Guide.
Teachers can select lessons from this volume of War, Terrible War: Supporting Common Core with A History of US based on the time period being studied in students' history/social studies classes or on themes in the fiction they are studying. For example, the study of The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara (a 9th-10th grade exemplar) may be followed by Lesson 7, The Gettysburg Address. Students reading accounts of children in war such as Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl would benefit from analyzing primary source documents about children in the Civil War by studying The Children's War (Lesson 4) or A Girl's Memoir of War (Lesson 5). Novels dealing with enslavement or civil rights could be paired with nonfiction readings in the lesson Black Soldiers or Personal Accounts of Slavery. This curriculum provides multiple opportunities for English Language Arts or history/social studies teachers to fulfill CCSS mandates with challenging, engaging lesson plans.
