TEACHERS
The Power of Story Teacher’s Guide (PDF)
As part of the educational outreach accompanying the film, high schools
across the country will receive a Power of Story Toolkit specifically designed to
help teachers use not only the film and its themes as a teaching tool, but also
to bring the powerful medium of storytelling into the classroom. The teaching
materials meet national teaching standards and provide students with the
means to go beyond the film to learn about World War II and that period in
American history through an exploration of the experiences of their families
and community.
The Power of Story Toolkit contains a series of multidisciplinary educational activities as well as content from filmmakers Ken Burns and Lynn Novick that shares their process for collecting information in the four communities featured in The War. The toolkit, along with Ken Burns’s skillful approach to documentary filmmaking, provides a model for involving students in seeking out, understanding and documenting history in their own communities using the technologies that are part of their lives. The Teacher's Guides will be mailed out the first week of September. More information can be found at PBS.
LESSON PLANS
Lesson Plans have been developed to help teachers bring Ken Burns’s The War into the classroom. Classroom activities are appropriate for students in grades 9-12 and cover major themes addressed in the film. Many of the lessons also incorporate video clips from the film and other resources found on this site. View additonal resources at PBS for the Lesson Plans (PDF) below.
- Doube V
- The War Through the Eyes of Al McIntosh
- On the Home Front
- The Hispanic Experience in World War II
- Letters from the Front Line
- The Holocaust
- D-Day: June 6, 1944
- Censorship
- Just War
- The Battle of the Bulge
- Combat and War
- Japanese-American Internment
- Gaining Insight into the WWII Era through Electronic Records
- Arts and Propaganda
For more information, please call (850) 484-1236, 1-800-239-WSRE or e-mail jhubbs@wsre.org.
OTHER RESOURCES
- Episode Guide
- Viewer Guide
- Collection of Student Sites and Teacher Sites on World War II
- Institute on World War II and the Home Experience Link Collection From Florida State University
- National World War II Musuem: Education
