1

Questions to answer prior to examining the articles

Write down, individually, your answers and hand them in to your teacher.

a. What started World War One?
b. Please describe different perspectives on what caused World War One.

Warm up questions that are supposed to start student thinking that there might be more than one perspective on the causes of First World War. Also a chance for you as teacher to find out a bit more about their previous knowledge and understanding of the topic. At a later stage you can ask the same questions to find out if the have learned to see multiple perspectives.

2

Comparison of synopsis in Spanish & English articles

This small individual task is designed to make students aware that articles can hold different content and perspectives. It need not take more than some 10 minutes. The task can be considered as a starter for further, more in depth, analysis of the outbreak of World War I in popular history magazines.

3

Comparing articles from Poland, Germany, Sweden and Spain: A true account?

Students work in small groups; each group will be given a different article to read closely.

Divide the class into four groups (or eight if you prefer to have smaller groups). Members of each group should have a copy of one of the four articles from Poland, Germany, Sweden and Spain. Also make sure that they have (colour) pencils and notice the list of causes: nationalism, alliances, economic/social, coincidence and military are reasons they can use which are evident in at least some of the articles. The richness of perspectives differs in the articles and that is what the students are supposed to see by doing this exercise. Identifying, debating and comparing will hopefully help students to see multiple perspectives on the causes of the First World War.

a. Close reading

Read the one article given to your group. Identify and highlight key causes of World War I.

Preferably you can use colour code to identify different types of causes (same colour for same cause e.g. nationalism=blue, alliances=pink, economic/social=green, coincidence=orange, military=yellow etc.). If you do not have highlighters you can underline and write characters or symbols in the margin (e.g. n=nationalism, a=alliance etc.)

List and rank the causes–what causes are emphasized in your article and which are most important?

b. Debate

As a group you should explain to the other groups what causes you have found in your article – explain and defend the arguments of your article. Try to convince the other groups that you have the best and most trustworthy historical account.

c. Compare

In new small groups, with members from each previous group, compare the four articles. Discuss why and how the articles differ? What is positive and negative in the way the articles present the causes of First World War? Which article do you consider most trustworthy?

Divide the students into new groups with at least one copy of the four articles with colouring/notes. It will be evident to the students how different articles emphasize different explanations. Scrutinizing the use of sources, the writer’s academic credibility and balances in the accounts can help students to think historically. As teacher you can monitor the discussions and make sure that each group get a chance to clearly speak out their position and their perspectives.

4

Close reading of a single article

After the group activities read individually the English article "The shot that sparked the First World War".

a. Colour code (or mark in the margin) causes of World War One in the article.
b. List and Identify and rank the key causes of World War One.
c. Is this article true or false?
d. Does this article change your opinion about the causes of World War One? How? Why?
e. How can you decide which article to trust? Why?
f. How is it possible to see that the article comes from a popular history magazine?

This article holds a very simple perspective on the causes of World War I. Still as a teacher you can help the students to see that also this “single” narrative has its strengths. It might be useful to argument for the article, to make sure that students do not reject the account too easy. The writer of the article is a credible historian and his knowledge of World War One is respected. But perhaps the article is too simple because the writer wants it to fit into a popular history magazine. Simple narrative, striking headlines, actors and drama are quite common in popular history.

5

General Questions: Critical Literacy

Critical literacy: weighting different accounts: determination of truth

a. How are the articles similar?
b. How do the articles differ?
c. Which articles are most trustworthy? Why? Why not? Justify your answer (e.g. evidence, academic credentials, list of sources, pictures, layout, hard data)

After using and reading all five articles it might be useful to look at all the articles at the same time and as a group sum up the findings.