_____ World War II was a large chunk of our History 12 agenda that we learned about through the month of March. While History 12 is a journey through time, our World War II section was a journey within its self, taking the class through the worlds greatest conflict. Over two weeks we learned about where the war originated from, what it consisted of and what it ended with.

_____To begin, we started off with the 1920’s and what built off of this time. With the repercussions of World War I lingering, our supporting evidence was building and a knowledge base of the past would help us properly evaluate what was to come.  Classes started with a lecture given by Ms Willemse and notes to part with it. This assignment was “Notes 5” and the final chapter in our notes saga. The four main branches that the lecture focused on were Germany, Russia, Spain and Italy. We learned about what these four countries did between World War I and the start of World War II. The mind-map below is my creative take on notes inspired/required by our notes assignment.

_____ Following this introduction to World War II, we moved onto a writing assignment. The decision making graphic organizer. I remember this baseline activity to be relatively enjoyable and provide inspiration for deeper thinking.  We were given a problem and tasked to create solutions that we think may have a possibility of success. The problem we were tasked with was one the world had been tasked with as well. Communist and Fascist dictators rising to power in Germany, Italy, Russia and Spain and the possibility of another world war. From here we were to create four alternative actions the world could have taken from what they had actually done back then. In response to creating four alternatives, we wrote out their individual pros and cons with a final personal decision and reasoning.

_____ Stage two of the World War II experience is now upon us following this. Appeasement. The world powers were trying to avoid a world war with at all costs. To satisfy and calm aggressive world powers the British and French would hear out the demands of these countries. Depending on how reasonable the demands were they would either give way to their demands or not. This may not seem smart to someone looking back now, at what happened and it’s not, we can see as Hitler took appeasement to its limit. By 1937 Neville Chamberlain had to reason with Hitler because of the warlike steps he was taking. Negotiation was tried and pursued but it didn’t end up succeeding. In class we were given documents to read, that would teach us about how the world saw appeasement and why people supported it, and didn’t.  Document A was a speech given by Neville Chamberlain in front of the UK’s  House of Commons and it teaches us about why appeasement will work, from his perspective. Documents B and C teach us about the failures and holes within appeasement from critics such as Winston Churchill. Documents D and E give us the perspective from after Hitler had invaded Prague and Czechoslovakia ceased to exist. After reading these five documents our responses were recorded in the document below.

_____ So as we progress along our timeline, the war has started, and we learned all about it. This section of the learning was done in a sort of, kids teach kids way. The 22 of us were broken into 10 groups and assigned a different aspect of the war, and tasked with creating a graphic that describes it to the class. My partner (Cashel Findler) and I had ‘Italy and the Second Front’ while other groups had: ‘The Phony War’, ‘The Western Front and Operation Overlord’, ‘Fall of France’, ‘Battle of Britain’, ‘Operation Barbarossa and the Eastern Front’, ‘Northern Africa’, US in WWII’, Battle of the Atlantic’ and ‘The Pacific Theater’. Cashel and I prepared a document that I am proud of for the amount of time we were given to complete it in (20 minutes).

_____ To follow this we were asked to reflect on what we had learned. The “3, 2, 1 Bridge” assignment got us to look make notes before we observed the lesson, on what our previous knowledge was, then finish with a broadened understanding, creating a bridge between what we had known, and what we now know. My thoughts and ideas grew from short facts not fleshed out concepts that were key to World War II.

_____ To follow this up, and end the World War II portion of our History 12 adventure we were asked to determine which event out of the ten presented to us, was the most significant. While the nine other topics were presented to us we were filling out significance documents that got us to rate how important everyone’s event in time was. After filling out ten sheets, I came to the a decision between D-Day and Operation Barbarossa. D-Day has a special place in History and I decided to write about it. The ultimate change of tides for the war persuaded me and to me, made it the most significant part of World War II.

_____ The World War II portion of our PLP History 12 course was a fleshed out and well put together learning experience. This piece of learning felt like a course within its self and I enjoyed what learning and work I did do. The process of learning about history and its facts chronologically meshes well with my learning personality and makes the information permeate deeper and with less effort. The building of knowledge and desire to know more about the process of events created drive and interest within me.  I am glad I learned more about World War II as it is one of the largest events to impact the human race and it improves

Challenge

_____ I reviewed the movie Fury,  in response challenge #2. This movie is one of my favourite war movies and I enjoyed watching it again and raving about it. While writing this I felt my self, slipping into basic movie critic lingo and I had to stop my self. I tried to balance my own writing style with a formal descriptive writing style that comes with critiquing work.