Topic: Understanding the Great War (revision lesson)

Target group

7th‑grade students of elementary school

Core curriculum

7th‑grade students of elementary school.

XXV. First World War. Pupil:

2) lists the main reasons for the war – political and economic, indirect and direct;

3) discusses the specificity of war operations: position warfare, maneuvering, air and sea operations;

4) characterizes technical progress during World War I;

5) describes the revolution and civil war in Russia.

General aim of education

Students learn and describe the main causes of war - political and economic, indirect and direct; the specificity of war operations; technological progress during World War I; revolution and civil war in Russia.

Key competences

• communication in foreign languages;

• digital competence;

• learning to learn.

Criteria for success
The student will learn:

• to indicate the main direct, indirect, political, and economic causes of the war and the revolution and civil war in Russia;

• to characterize what the role of propaganda in World War I was;

• to describe the peculiarity of the war activities.

Methods/techniques

• expository

  • talk.

• activating

  • discussion.

• programmed

  • with computer;

  • with e‑textbook.

• practical

  • exercices concerned.

Forms of work

• individual activity;

• activity in pairs;

• activity in groups;

• collective activity.

Teaching aids

• e‑textbook;

• notebook and crayons/felt‑tip pens;

• interactive whiteboard, tablets/computers.

Lesson plan overview

Before classes

1. The teacher informs students about the need to review the material from the completed e‑textbook section: World War I.

Introduction

1. The teacher explains the students the topic and goals of the lesson and develops success criteria together with them.

2. The teacher explains that the main purpose of the repetitive lesson will be to conduct an open discussion on the topic selected or drawn by students.

Realization

1. The teacher asks students to do in pairs the following tasks: Task 1, Exercise 1‑3, Task 2. While the students are working, the teacher provides feedback to the students.

2. Students write down their suggestions for discussion. For example: *Did the rule of Tsar have to fall ?; If not, the US would not join the Great War. What reason deserves to be called the key one?; Science in the service of war. Shameful and glorious side of human inventiveness.* The draw is taking place.

3. The purpose of the students' further work is to prepare arguments for a 7‑minute discussion on the subject proposed and drawn by the students.

4. The teacher chooses two students who will conduct a debate on the topic chosen by the students in the class forum. The third student performs the function of a secretary: he or she measures the time of the participants' speeches, they monitor the order of the discussion, allow the willing to speak.

Summary

1. The teacher sums up the debate, adds (if necessary) further conclusions. He places them in the context of the most important phenomena from the World War I.

Homework

1. Listen to the abstract recording at home. Pay attention to pronunciation, accent and intonation. Learn to pronounce the words learned during the lesson.

2. Make at home a note from the lesson, for example using the sketchnoting method.

The following terms and recordings will be used during this lesson

Terms

Texts and recordings

Understanding the Great War (revision lesson)

The direct cause of World War I was the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand of the Habsburg dynasty. The successor to the Austrian throne was killed in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. This caused an armed conflict between Austria and Serbia. In the months that followed, the war was joined by other states that supported either of the sides.

For the Germans, their lightning war strategy was supposed to be a remedy for the lack of strategic raw materials. Their main objective was, therefore, to crush France, then transport the forces Eastward and defeat Russia. However, the French managed to stop the German offensive in the Battle of the Marne. This battle put a definite end to maneuver warfare in Western Europe. It was replaced by trench warfare. The trenches stretched for hundreds of kilometers along the frontlines. In 1916, the Germans attempted to break the Western front. The Battle of Verdun began at the end of February 1916; in the July of the same year, the French and the British launched their counteroffensive (the Battle of the Somme). None of those battles, taking place simultaneously until the end of 1916, managed to shift the position of the front either way.

On the Eastern front, the Russian offensive was stopped at the turn of August 1914 by Paul von Hindenburg, who claimed victory in the Battle of Tannenberg. At the beginning of September 1914, the Russian military captured Lviv, and, after a few months’ siege, it managed to capture the Przemyśl Fortress in March 1915. In May 1915, the Austrian‑German offensive in the Carpathians was launched. The Russians’ loss at Gorlice forced them to abandon Przemyśl and Lviv. At the beginning of August, the Germans entered Warsaw. By that time, the frontline stabilized around the border set by the Second Partition of Poland. This state of affairs lasted until 1916. Fierce fighting took place in the Balkans as well. In October 1915, the Central Powers attacked Serbia and Montenegro. The situation changed markedly when Bulgaria joined the war on the Central Powers’ side. Serbia’s defeat at the hands of the Bulgarians gave the Germans the desired direct land connection with Bulgaria and Turkey. In the end, the operations in the Balkans failed to provide a resolution to the conflict between the two blocs. Everything changed when the USA joined the war on the Entente’s side.

The miserable social and economic situation in Russia led to the February Revolution; Tsar Nicholas II was deposed. The power in the state was seized by the Provisional Government. Another important center of power was the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, subdued by the Bolsheviks. As a result of the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, seized power in Russia. They dissolved the Constitutional Assembly and introduced the dictatorship of the proletariat. In the middle of December 1917, Russia signed a treaty with the Central Powers, and, a few days later, began negotiations with Germany, Austria‑Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria. In 1918, the power in Russia was seized by the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik) (RCPb). The former Tsarist Russian generals, known as the Whites, took a stand against the Bolsheviks. The civil war would last until 1922.

In 1918, Germany saw the rise of revolutionary attitudes and worker strikes. In July 1918 the Entente managed to, once again, stop the Germans at the Marne. Bulgaria’s resistance was broken as well, and in October, the Ottoman Empire surrendered. Due to the people’s revolt, German Emperor Wilhelm II abdicated on 9 July 1918. On 11 November 1918, the Entente’s representatives signed the armistice with Germany in Compiègne, thus ending the Great War.

World War I was the first armed conflict where entire nations and societies – not just armies, as it was in previous wars – fought one another. A total of almost 70 million people were called forth to fight on tFamiliarize yourself with drawings and graphics from the period of the First World War. Pay attention to the dates of their creation. What are the phenomena and social problems that they inform about in a symbolic way? List them in points.

he fronts by all of the states taking part in the war. Almost 9 million soldiers died on the battlefields, and ca. 20 million ended up wounded. Conscription and human losses caused a demographic crisis, especially due to the fact that the majority of the people who perished were fairly young. Further millions of people died from starvation and epidemics. In total, Europe lost at least 32 million people between 1914 and 1919. The war caused a shift in the intergender relationships too. During the men’s absence, the women became more active in all spheres of social life, if more out of necessity than by choice. The war augmented the national ambitions and conflicts. In Central and Eastern Europe, the following nations fought for political autonomy or statehood: Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Ukrainians, the Baltic nations, Croatians and Slovenes. In Western Europe, the Irish question was exacerbated permanently. The war had an emancipating effect on the populations of colonies as well.