November 11, 2009
Veterans Day Resources
By Jessica Pritchard
In honor of this year’s Veterans Day, we bring you a number of educational resources for in and out of the classroom.
Resources
- Experiencing War: Stories from the Veteran’s History Project
Read veteran stories from the Coast Guard and from Merchant Marine ships as a part of the Library of Congress’ Veterans History Project. - The Price of Freedom: Americans at War
This online exhibit from the Smithsonian National Museum of American History “examines how wars have shaped the nation’s history and transformed American society.”
Teaching Aids
- VA Kids
This site offers learning resources on veterans geared for students in grades 6–12, along with educational games. Teachers can access a separate site for students in grades K–5.
Read-Write-Think
ReadWriteThink is a collaboration of the International Reading Association (IRA), the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and the Verizon Foundation, providing students and educators with lesson plans, standards, web resources, and materials.
- Love of War in Tim O’Brien’s “How to Tell a True War Story” (Grades 9-12)
This lesson plan encourages students to think about love and war through texts that exemplify camaraderie between soldiers. - Building Vietnam War Scavenger Hunts through Web-Based Inquiry (Grades 9-12)
This lesson encourages students to take on the mindset of a character in a Vietnam-era book, fiction or nonfiction, and research this mindset using online resources. - Wartime Poetry: Working With Similes (Grades 3-5)
This lesson encourages students to analyze a photograph and create a poem based around a character’s perspective, experience, emotions, etc.
Comment:
The VHP from Library of Congress is great, but I also recommend University of North Carolina – Greensboro’s Women Vets Collection. Many wonderful online materials in that collection: http://library.uncg.edu/dp/wv/
— Tanya Roth Nov 11, 01:22 PM
Comment:
Here’s another site with two great kid-friendly episodes for Veteran’s Day. MEET ME AT THE CORNER, Virtual Field Trips for Kids (www.meetmeatthecorner.org) posted two kid-friendly shows from the USS MIdway Museum in san Diego.
One was an interview with a Viet Nam Veteran who was aboard the USS MIDWAY during the evacuation of Saigon. The other was about the history of air craft carriers and what life was like aboard a floating city.
Please put this website with so many kid-friendly history episodes on our list of resources.
— Donna W. Guthrie Dec 13, 01:29 PM