8S Social Studies students have been working on a World War I project. For the past several days, they have been representing different countries (including Great Britain, Russia, Serbia, Austria-Hungary, Germany, Ottoman Empire, Italy, and France).
As a group, they read primary documents from the 1880's-1914 to determine the background of their country and long and short-term reasons why their country felt it had to fight in 1914. Some of the documents that they had to read were the Willy-Nikki telegrams (telegrams between Wilhelm II of Germany and Nicholas II of Russia), the Triple Alliance, a letter from Prince Lichenowski of Germany to Sir Edward Gray of Great Britain, the ultimatum Austria-Hungary issued to Serbia, and Serbia's response.
These documents are extremely difficult for 8th graders to understand, but with the help of several teachers, Dr. Nelson, and dictionaries, the students were able to gain an understanding of how the country they represented felt about the possibility of war breaking out. On Jan 16th and 17th, each group presented their discoveries to the other groups as part of a fictional peace conference held in Brussels, Belgium on July 31, 1914. It was very interesting to see how countries might view an event very differently because of their point of view. Here are some pictures of the presentations.
Over the next few days, the students will identify their country's demands and will try to reach compromises with other countries to prevent WWI from breaking out. Can 8S prevent the Great War?
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