Seton Hall UniversityCollege of Education & Human Services

Interactive Lesson Plan

Name: Joseph Perna Date: 18 April 2012

Setting/Grade Level: 9 University Linked Course: World History

School: West Orange High School Lesson Theme or Topic: Conceptual Continuum Timeline of Early Cold War

Learning Objectives and Standards

Objectives:

Through an in class inquiry, students will be able to define all terms on the conceptual continuum that characterize U.S. – Soviet diplomatic relations.

Through a cooperative learning activity, students will be able to summarize and place six events of the early Cold War along a conceptual continuum timeline.

Through a class presentation, students will be able to assess the conceptual continuum timelines of other groups.

Through a culminating class discussion, students will be able to find trends in their conceptual continuum timeline.

Through an independent homework assignment, students will be able to intelligently place the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis on their conceptual continuum timeline.

Procedure for Teaching

Time Allocated: 45 minutes: Students will come into the class with some background knowledge about the Cold War. They will already have created their conceptual continuum and define all the terms in it. They will also have completed a world map that highlights the “hot spots” of the Cold War.

Procedure:

Step 1: Introduction to the students: (about 10 minutes)

The class will begin the lesson by listening to an excerpt of Winston Churchill’s famous Iron Curtain speech (1946) as an introduction into the Cold War. After a class discussion about the speech, I will then distribute worksheets to students on which they will complete their conceptual continuum timeline.

Step 2: Activities: (about 25 minutes)

The six students in the group will be given six different events of the Cold War to read and summarize for their group. The students in the group will place all of their events along their conceptual continuum timeline. Students will then be called upon to complete a conceptual continuum timeline in front of the class on the board. Other students and groups will have the opportunity to challenge them in order for the class to reach some consensus.

Step 3: Closing: (about 10 minutes)

The class will conclude with a discussion and analysis of this conceptual continuum timeline. The class will conclude after the homework assignment is introduced to the students.

Assessment:

Oral or written quiz/test Observation Self evaluation Drawing Worksheet Learning log/Quick write/Journal

Peer editing/evaluation Interview/Conference Other: Homework assignment

Name _____________ Period ____________

U.S. – Soviet Diplomatic Relations(ca. 1940-1964)

War

Cold War

Peaceful Coexistence

Alliance

1940-1944 1945-1949 1950-1954 1955-1959 1960-1964

Focus Questions

1. What event did you read and summarize? Where did your group place it along the conceptual continuum timeline? Why? ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

2. Which event was the easiest for your group to place along the conceptual continuum? Which was the most difficult? Explain. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Event #1:Stalingrad

Event #2Berlin Airlift

Event #3Korean War

By the summer of 1942, the German armies had driven deep into Russia and targeted Stalingrad on the Volga. The Soviets resisted fiercely. As fall and then the bitter winter set in, the Germans inched into Stalingrad, fighting house to house. The suffering and bravery of Stalingrad’s defenders in that terrible winter became a new myth of an enduring Soviet Union. The Red Army, under Georgi Zhukov, managed to encircle the 200,000 Germans at Stalingrad and batter them into submission. The German surrender of February 2, 1943, was a turning point of the war.

It was an urgent time of shared suffering and purpose for the U.S. and USSR. America delivered $11 billion in arms, grain, and other supplies to keep the Soviets going. Allied convoys that brought supplies into the Soviet Union sometimes lost as many as three-quarters of their ships to German dive-bombers. Toward the end of the war, the Americans rolled into Germany from the West and the Soviets from the East. The Americans and the Russians met at the Elbe River in Germany in April 1945 where they at last embraced one another for their

By 1948 it was clear that joint government in Germany by the four former Allies was impossible. The three Western powers had taken steps to reunite their zones economically and to revive democracy in Germany. It became clear that they were moving toward a unified German state. The Soviets, however, bitterly opposed German reunification. In June 1948 they blockaded the East German border to all land and water traffic into Berlin from the west. The people of West Berlin soon faced starvation. Western nations reacted swiftly. The U.S. and Great Britain organized an airlift to supply West Berlin. The Berlin Airlift provided food and supplies daily to the inhabitants of the western part of the city.

The airlift was successful and the Soviets made to real efforts to stop it and by May 1949 lifted the blockade. This event directly led to the division of Germany between West Germany, a republic created with the support of the Western Allies, and East Germany, a communist nation established by the Soviet Union. The Berlin blockade might be

After WWII Korea had been divided at the 38th parallel. The U.S. and USSR agreed that a government should be formed to rule the entire country. That never happened as a communist government took power in the north and a republic was created in the south. In June 1950 North Korea invaded South Korea. The United States and its allies along with South Korea launched a counterattack. By September the U.S. and its allies drove the North Koreans back across the 38th parallel and pursued them into North Korea.

As the U.S. troops approached the border between Korea and China, felt threatened. It sent hundreds of thousands of soldiers to help North Korea and drove the US troops back south of the 38th parallel. Bitter fighting continued for two more years. The two sides finally signed a ceasefire agreement in July 1953. The dividing line was almost exactly where it had been before the war. Throughout the conflict the Soviets supported the North Korean Army with weapons, ammunition, and advisors.

victory over Nazi Germany. seen as the “official” beginning of the Cold War.

Event #4The Rosenberg Trial

Event #5Sputnik

Event #6The U-2

The U.S. monopoly on atomic weapons ended in 1949 when Americans learned, to their dismay, that the Soviets had cracked the secret and built their own atomic weapons. The Cold War now featured two superpowers dangerously armed with nuclear weapons. They suspected that spies were to blame. In April of 1951, Federal Judge Irving Kaufman looked down at the defendants. “Plain, deliberate, contemplated murder is dwarfed in magnitude by comparison with the crime you have committed,” he told Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. “I believe your conduct in putting into the hands of the Russians the A-bomb…has already caused the Communist aggression in Korea…and who knows but that millions more innocent people may pay the price of your treason.”

The trial, falling in the midst of the Korean War and Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy’s “witch-hunt” against communists, embodied the American fear of communists living within its borders. The Rosenbergs were executed at Sing Sing two years later.

It was the Earth’s only other satellite except the moon, a polished metal sphere the size of a beach ball, hurtling around the planet at 18,000 m.p.h. An NBC radio announcer that October in 1957 told his audience: “Listen now, for the sound which forever separates the old from the new.” And over thousands of radios, somewhere in space, came an eerie beep…beep…beep.

The Soviet Union astonished the world with the sophistication of its Sputnik. The technological surprise plunged the U.S. into a frenzy to catch up. The legendary “Space Race” between the U.S. and USSR was put in full swing. It became a competition between the two nations over which had the more advanced space technology. It prompted the National Defense Education Act to provide $1 billion for more science teaching and student loans. The satellite gave the impetus to John Kennedy’s promise four years later to put a man on the moon by the end of the 60s.

On May 1, 1960, American pilot, Francis Gary Powers climbed aboard his black Lockheed U-2 high-altitude spy plane in Peshawar, Pakistan. As he flew across the Soviet Union at about 65,000 feet in the air, supposedly beyond the range of Soviet interception and missiles, his infrared cameras photographed potential targets below. But above Sverdlovsk, according to the Soviets, a ground-to-air rocket brought down the U2; Powers parachuted to the ground unharmed. At first the U.S. claimed that the plane was ona weather reconnaissance flight andhad strayed over the USSR. But Soviet Premier (or leader) Krushchev had captured Powers, the wrecked plane and the film, which he mockingly displayed before the Supreme Soviet (court).

President Eisenhower and his administration suffered the acute embarrassment of being caught lying. Two weeks later, Khrushchev demanded an apology. Eisenhower refused it, though he assured the Soviets that the overflights had been suspended.

Homework Assessment Name ___________Period __________

-The Cuban Missile Crisis-

In 1959 Fidel Castro, the leader of the Cuban revolution, successfully took control of the island nation from a Cuban army officer, Fulgencio Batista. Unfortunately for the United States, the new Cuban government under Castro became openly communist, dictatorial, and an ally of the Soviet Union. Cuba’s growing relationship with the Soviet Union troubled the U.S. government. By January of 1961 President Eisenhower broke off U.S. diplomatic relations with Cuba.

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) began to provide support for Cuban exiles in Guatemala and to train them for an uprising against Castro. A rebel invasion landed at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961. However, the U.S. military support that was key to the invasion never came. Nor did the expected anti-Castro uprising among Cubans. The invasion failed miserably. The failed invasion only pushed Castro even closer to the Soviets.

After the Bay of Pigs invasion, Castro was concerned that the U.S. would attempt another attack on Cuba. He therefore allowed the Soviets to build nuclear missile sites on the island. The turbulence that followed, known as the Cuban Missile Crisis, brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. In October of 1962, U.S. intelligence discovered Soviet strategic nuclear missile bases under construction in Cuba. President John F. Kennedy demanded that the missiles be withdrawn and imposed a naval blockade on shipments of “offensive” weapons to Cuba. Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev was furious at the blockade and considered it a violation of freedom of navigation. However, Khrushchev ordered Soviets ships not to challenge the blockade. After days of tension, the two superpowers eventually agreed the missile sites would be removed if the United States promised not to invade Cuba.

Where does the Cuban Missile Crisis fall along the conceptual continuum of U.S. – Soviet diplomatic relations? Explain. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________