New England
Writings about Civics

Civic Participation & Citizenship Collection

NELRC

 

Background to War
Kelly Martin, Holyoke Adult Learning Opportunities (HALO), Holyoke, MA

This unit came about through class brainstorming of community issues that they care about. Many students had questions about the approaching conflict with Iraq. The unit aims to help students understand the context in which a war in Iraq is developing. That context includes history, geography, and international politics. The unit also addresses learning about Muslim culture. Specifically, the unit objectives are:

• To help students express and build on their knowledge of current events/politics/geography of the Middle East.
• To develop language skills through reading, writing, and discussion of current events.
• To provide an opportunity for students to form and consider questions about the possibility of war in Iraq.
• To help students develop computer skills.
• To help students better understand different cultures and religions.
• To help students to talk about prejudice: why it exists and how it effects people.

February 11, 2003
The purpose of this lesson was to orient ourselves, geographically, to the areas being talked about in the news. We used a world map to locate countries (Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Kuwait, etc.) and to share what we knew about what was happening. The lesson worked well with all the students in class. The lower intermediate students liked the concrete map activity; and the higher intermediate students enjoyed helping everyone express their ideas about the Middle East and its current political situation. During the map activity and the discussion that followed, students were asked to express their knowledge first, before the teacher filled in any gaps. In this way, assessment was built directly into the lesson - what is the students' collective knowledge base?

The challenge in a lesson like this, where complex political systems need to be addressed, is for the teacher to know just how much information students can absorb. There is much information out there. Which of these sources to use? Which of these sources can be believed? These are weighty conversations, even in a first language. How can I help my students bridge the gap? Because it's not that they don't have political thoughts, it's just that they need the vocabulary to express those thoughts. So, which vocabulary, and how much?

February 12
For this lesson, lower level students were paired with a higher level partner and each pair of students received short summaries of one decade of information on U.S. and Iraqi relations (which I had gotten from the web). The students' task was to 1. Identify the key words. 2. Write a summary of the major events in their decade. To assist students, I did the first decade up at the board with the whole group participating. The students were hesitant, at first, but then they came to see that summarizing information is a good way to break English into manageable chunks. The best thing about a summary is that it doesn't need to be in complete sentences!

February 24
Today I brought in, from the internet, summaries of each UN Security Council member’s stance regarding the possibility of war in Iraq. Before looking at these, we identified (guessing first) the five permanent members of the Security Council and the 10 rotating members. Groups of students were each given a few of the summaries and worked together to understand each countries' position. Later, we came together as a group and shared what we learned. Students feel more comfortable in working on a project like this when a) they have peers to share the load, and b) they know that we'll be discussing it later as a group, so it's OK if they don't understand everything the first time. However, some students still struggled with difficult vocabulary and, in retrospect, I think I could have reviewed vocabulary first or rewritten the summaries in simpler terms.

February 25
In this lesson, we talked about, “Who/what is affected by a war in Iraq?” We came up with the following brainstorm:

For some students, it was easy to develop the categories of who/what might be affected by war; but more difficult to develop the "how" category. In this case, the higher level students carried the activity.

The brainstorm prompted a lot of discussion and questions. The students have clearly been thinking on the matter and absorbing the material we've discussed in class.

Student's Questions
1. If we go to war, what will happen to the people I love?
2. If we go to war, what will happen to U.S. soldiers?
3. If we go to war, will North Korea attack the U.S.? Iraq?
4. How can we find a solution for peace?
5. Is President Bush doing a good job?
6. Why didn't North Korea say they have weapons before now?
7. Is Saddam Hussein working with Osama Bin Laden?

Teacher’s Questions
Which countries want/don't want war in Iraq?
Will a war in Iraq create more/fewer terrorist attacks?
What are some possible reasons the U.S. wants war in Iraq?
What are the consequences of going to war without the support of the U.N.?

March 3
Today students practiced their reading by working with two letters to the editor that they first had to print from the computer. After some vocabulary review, they worked in pairs to complete a cloze activity with the letters and to identify how the author of each letter felt about the possibility of war in Iraq. This activity worked well with the lower level as well as the higher level students in class.

March 12
The focus of this lesson was the UN sanctions imposed on Iraq. I created a "scavenger hunt" game where the students gathered answers to questions by searching through information hung strategically throughout the room and then used the information to answer questions. Students usually love this game. Students at lower levels were helped along by higher level students. After the activity, we had a group discussion where we talked about vocabulary and the situation in Iraq in some depth, and students asked questions about the information.

Several students had a difficult time with the harsh reality of Iraqi life under the sanctions. In fact, when we did our regular evaluation of the week's activities, a large percentage of students put this "sanctions in Iraq" activity under the heading of “The Worst Part of Class” because, they said, it was too sad. I have to ask myself: Should I shield my students from knowing these things? Why did I choose to do this lesson? How did it reflect their own interests or questions?

March 20
Today's lesson focused on an article about the Muslim religion found in Easy English News. Students enjoy these articles because they are short and the language level is almost always a good fit for my intermediate level class. We read the article together, as a whole group, deciphering bits of information as we processed one paragraph at a time. The article included interesting specifics about Muslim practices and holidays and I thought the questions provided by the newspaper were great - some of them required students to define words, others asked for specific information found within the article, and still others asked students to provide their own opinion or conclusion based on what they had learned from the reading.

April 1
Lesson on reading political cartoons. Students shared what they know, or how they feel, about the situation in Iraq. They were especially engaged by the political cartoons and most students had little trouble in understanding them.

April 3
We watched a videotape of the evening news. Students were better able to understand the news stories because we watched the news clips first, then we reviewed the page of teacher questions, and finally we watched the tape again while listening for specific pieces of information. Many students watch the news at home (in their first language) and were able to translate this information, with some help, into English in the classroom.

April 10
Today we evaluated the unit. Students reported that the issue in Iraq is important to them because:
-they fear terrorism
-they think Saddam Hussein is a bad man
-they know that a war will impact the U.S. economy
-they have friends or relatives serving in the military

Their favorite part of the unit:
-map activity, because it helped them understand the geography of the Middle East
-U.N. Security Council, because they learned a lot about the U.N. and how it works.
-Easy English News article on Muslims, because it was interesting to learn about other cultures and religions

Things they didn't like about the unit:
-Activity about sanctions in Iraq because they said it was too sad to think about all the children in Iraq who suffer or die due to lack of food and medicine.

Skills students identified learning during the project:
-reading: a lot
-writing: a lot
-speaking: a lot
-listening: a lot
-communicating outside of class: a little (discussing the TV news with family)
-analyzing a problem or issue: a little (when we talked about the U .N. and which countries want war and why, when we talked about who or what might be affected by war and how)
-learning about available resources: a little (when we used the newspaper, the computer, the videotape)
-taking action: no

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