Lesson Plan Format: GULF WAR LESSON PLAN 9/15/2012 Subject Area: Social Studies Grade Level: 10-12:

Varying English and Academic levels. Title of Lesson: Understanding Sourcing From a Case Study of the Gulf War Rationale or Theoretical base for this activity: The Gulf War of 1991 is an ideal case study for students of history in helping them to understand the multiplicity of causal factors of military conflict. Given the existence of a large number of reasons as to why Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, and the concomitant range of explanations for the United Nations response in January 1991, the case study is fertile ground for demonstrating to students the depth required to satisfactorily and comprehensively analyze historical content. The second way in which Gulf War material will be used in this lesson will be to highlight to students the dangers of limited or sloppy research. In an age where Googling information often replaces the need to conduct more thorough research, students are in danger of sabotaging the clarity and legitimacy of their project content with inadequate information from ropey (particularly online) sources. All too often, students are asked by teachers to research a topic, concept or theme online without those teachers taking sufficient care to ensure that proper guidance is given as to where students will find the most relevant information. Carelessness, inexperience, or indeed laziness of certain students when surfing for online material often results in the discovery of incomplete or erroneous information. While teachers are usually willing to suggest a handful of reliable websites or other sources that can be used as research tools for projects, students all too frequently end up accessing disreputable sources that, when used, distort or undermine betterprocured research. Both teachers and students would thus benefit from an in-class comparative examination of materials that the teacher knows to be reliable with sources that he/she knows to be unsatisfactory. Identifying the differences between the two will likely motivate the student to more thoroughly research their topic, and, will discourage them from resting on their laurels with a singular source.

Goals and Objectives: 1) Students are to understand the causes of the Gulf War that broke out between Iraq and United Nations forces from 15 January 1991. 2) Students will be able to compare multiple sources of information on the same theme or topic in this case, the beginning of a documentary and an internet article. (SAME/DIFFERENT QUESTION: COMPARE THE SOURCES YOU HAVE FOUND ON THIS TOPIC. WHICH ARE THE MORE EFFECTIVE AND RELIABLE? 3) Awareness must be created of the fact that multiple factors are at play when international military conflict occurs. When engaged in reading on such subjects, students should be prepared for analysis on all such factors. 4) The article provided to students will omit several factors; the documentary will fill in these gaps. Students are to see that reading material they use for research activities should therefore be chosen carefully. 5) To make students aware, through multiple examples, that bias and inaccuracies do exist, and that falling into the trap of using and citing sources that harbor these can seriously damage the message relayed by a project. 6) For the teacher to witness that students are starting to identify the types of resources that are disallowed. ________________________________________________________________________ Materials Used: PC/Laptop Projector and Screen Youtube Video: Operation Desert Storm: The First Gulf War http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpERiw1R1bA A print out of the internet article The Gulf War, 1990-91. Notepads and pens (Note-taking during documentary will be essential) Individual PC or iPad access for students. A class printer and paper. A wall map A printed blank map of the Gulf region. ________________________________________________________________________ Explanation or Introduction of Topic: To ensure students develop an appreciation for the multifarious causes of warfare; The Gulf Theater will act as the arena of focus. Political and military tensions are always ongoing in this region of the world, exposing the Middle East as a flashpoint for military conflict. The Gulf War is a useful case study of this. (INDUCTION QUESTION: BASED ON YOUR OWN PRIOR KNOWLEDGE, WHAT GENERALIZATIONS CAN YOU MAKE ABOUT

THE POLITICS OF THE MIDDLE EAST?) Due to the multiple causes of conflict, studying the Gulf War enables the teacher to check that students are researching effectively, particularly online. If certain articles are lacking a comprehensive analysis of all the causes, for instance, students can consult further sources to paint a bigger picture of the conflict for themselves. This should reveal the inadequacy of many sources and encourage them to take care when researching. Students should also be aware that some articles may hone in on one dimension of the conflict (e.g. economic), and that for a holistic coverage they must widen their research net. (PREDICTION QUESTION: WHAT MIGHT THE CONSEQUENCES BE FOR ACADEMIC WORK WHEN POOR SOURCES ARE USED? TRY TO FIND AN EXAMPLE OF A POOR SOURCE. This lesson should take 3 to 4 one-hour periods to complete.

Preparation Phase 1) The teacher will inform the students that the object of study in this class will be the Gulf War of 1991. The teacher is to assume that most students know little or nothing about this conflict and as such must ease students into the minefield! 2) Students will be asked to gather around a political or physical wall-map of the world. They will be pointed to the greater Middle East region and to Iraq and Kuwait in particular. 3) After reseating the students, the teacher will hand out a blank map of the Gulf (sample 3 below) and a list of words (see sample 1). This list will contain words that relate to the Middle East and words that dont. 4) Students will be instructed to place words that relate to the Gulf inside the map, and those that dont outside. They will do this exercise based on any prior knowledge they may have, or by anything they may have gleaned from viewing the map of the world/region. (ACTION QUESTION: DESIGN A POLITICAL MAP OF THE MIDDLE EAST USING THE KEY WORDS PROVIDED. 5) Maps will then require peer review. Students will spend around 2 minutes to share their reasoning (orally) to the rest of the class. Students could also at this point question their peers about why they chose to put certain terms inside or outside the map. This will help to focus students minds about the region and the tasks ahead. 6) The teacher will then tell the students that they will be shown a short documentary and that it is imperative they take detailed notes about this. 6) The teacher will NOT stop the documentary at any point. 7) Students will be shown the opening 15 minutes of the documentary Operation

Desert Storm: The First Gulf War. This will give them a very comprehensive introduction about the causes of the conflict. 8) During the documentary, not only will students be taking notes, but they will also be provided with a handout titled The 5 Ws and Why: The Gulf War This is a graphic organizer adapted from a website. See sample 2 for details. (SUMMARY QUESTION: WHAT DO YOU THINK HAVE BEEN THE MAIN IDEAS THAT THE DOCUMENTARY HAS SO FAR BROUGHT UP? Assistance Phase 1) Students will be presented with a print out of the internet article referred to above. (See source: Dugdale and Pointon (2002) The Gulf War) They will take between 5 and 7 minutes to read it. 2) Students will be asked to give oral feedback about what they felt about both the documentary and the internet article. They will be asked as to whether they think the two were the same or different. The students will be gently coaxed to see the differences between the two resources. This should all take around 3-4 minutes) 3) Once the students have come to the conclusion that their internet resource contained a number of omissions, they will pair up with the person sitting next to them in order to ascertain what they both found in the documentary and what they did not find in the article. They will take a look at each others note taking to judge how closely they were watching the documentary. (INSIGHT QUESTION: WHAT OVERLAPPING PATTERNS CAN YOU DISCERN FROM YOUR OWN AND THE OTHER GROUPS NOTES? WHAT DOES THIS SAY ABOUT THE POINTS YOU HAVE BOTH WRITTEN, THAT ONE OF YOU HAS WRITTEN, OR THAT NEITHER OF YOU HAVE WRITTEN?) 4) Students in the same groups of two are to record on posters what the text missed. They are to compare their results with the information on the posters of the other groups. TWIST: Any groups who failed to find all of the factors missed will have to come up to the front and explain why they missed it/them. This will not be done to embarrass the student; this will be done as a way to emphasize how important it is to consult carefully multiple sources to yield high standards of material for successful research. 5) Students will then go online and search for websites (on any subject) that might or might not contain inaccuracies or bias. The teacher can also recommend some of these. Staying in their groups of two, the students will compile a chart in which information from their research can be collated. (See sample 4, below) 6) Following completion of step 5, students will now consider the extent to which the sources they placed into their tables have, in their opinions, any research value.

They will, in twos, be asked to grade their sources from 1 to 10 (10 being the most useful). The chart to be devised will look something like the one in sample 4, below) 7) Students will then be asked to find one media source (it could be a documentary, video clip, or T.V. show from a REPUTABLE source (The History Channel could be used here, for example), and to find another that is clearly disreputable. These must be about the SAME topic or event. Students will be told that websites containing a lot of advertising, sites containing public comment sections at the bottom of the page, and pages viewed by very few people are likely to contain little of use for a serious researcher. 8) The source selected by the student will be printed off and copies of that source will be handed to his/her peers. The student will give his/her own verdict about the source (1-10), but will cover his number up. The other groups, having also read the text, will proffer their own verdicts. The teacher will be able to see if their students are on the right tracks in eliciting authenticity from a text if all groups numbers are the same as or closely match the original students. 9) Having already been given considerable opportunity to test out their judgment skills in analyzing comparatively, students should now have developed some levels of confidence to find reputable sites for their history projects. Even if they have few ideas about where to search online in the first instance, they will have become aware about the sites that should be avoided, maybe with even a cursory look at that sites content. (IDEA QUESTION: WHAT SHOULD YOUR MAIN GOAL BE WHEN FINDING A SOURCE FOR A PROJECT?) Reflection Phase To fully internalize the importance of finding complete and reliable sources, students will be asked to design their own web pages (no more than two) that give general readers and researchers access to readily available and accurate information on the Gulf War. Students are to use the documentary they watched as well as other websites and textbook materials that they now know to be authentic. Students are to work in groups of two for this project, and these small groups must cite their sources at the bottom of the second web page. They will be reminded that in so doing they will be reinforcing the authenticity of their sources, the very authenticity for which they have been exposed to this module to learn. (EVALUATION QUESTION: IN YOUR OPINION, WHAT DID THE DOCUMENTARY UNCOVER ABOUT THE GULF WAR THAT YOU CONSIDERED TO BE CRITICAL INFORMATION AS TO HOW THE WAR BEGAN?) Once completed, the pages are to be accessed by peers who will act as reviewers. Reviewers will check with their class notes to ensure the site they are witnessing

features all relevant key points and concepts. In addition, for students to actually SEE an audience researching from their own site will further awaken them to understand that accuracy and solid research matter when compiling project-work. Resources Sample 1: List of Words Related and Unrelated to the Gulf Desert Oil Ocean Mountains Ice Equator Wealth Africa Arab Iran-Iraq War Red Sea Europe Saddam Hussein United States Thailand Missile Attacks Naval Warfare Sample 2: The 5 Ws and Why: To be adapted for note-taking on the documentary of the Gulf War (ANALYSIS QUESTION: ORGANIZE YOUR NOTES FROM THE DOCUMENTARY IN THE MIND MAP BELOW.)

Who:

Who:

How:
How:

What:
What:

Event

Why:

When:
When:

Event or Situation
!

Where:

11 12 1 2 10 9 3 8 4 7 6 5

2006 Education Oasis http://www.educationoas is.com

Sample 3: Blank Map of Persian Gulf (PERCEPTION QUESTION: VIEW THE MAP BELOW, AND, AFTER FILLING OUT THE COUNTRY NAMES, TRY TO PICTURE THE DIFFERENT COUNTRIES AS FORMING A REGION. THINK ABOUT HOW EACH COUNTRYS SECURITY NEEDS MIGHT AFFECT SURROUNDING COUNTRIES, IN TURN INCREASING TENSION AND PERHAPS LEADING TO WAR.

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Sample 4: Bias and Inaccuracies in Online Text

Example of source: Inaccuracy or Bias; Accuracy or non-bias

Source

Author

Web Address (If applicable)

Sample 5: Grading Chart for Students Views About the Utility of Their Sources (Graded from 1-10 10 being the most useful, 1 the least. (APPRAISAL: HOW USEFUL WERE YOUR SOURCES? RANK IN ORDER OF UTILITY (1 BEING THE LOWEST). Source Web Address Author Rating (1 10)

Sources: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpERiw1R1bA http://www.educationoasis.com/curriculum/GO/GO_pdf/5Ws.pdf Dugdale-Pointon, TDP. (2 June 2002), The Gulf War 1990/1991, http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/wars_gulf1990.html

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