Exploring World War II

Hello fellow educators!! Thank you so much for showing interest in my WebQuest on World War II. If you are looking for an interactive assignment that will help guide your students in learning more about WWII, than you have come to the right place. Students will learn how to use muliple websites to gather information. This WebQuest was designed for students to work in at least pairs to do the research. At the end they are able to show what they've learned by creating something of their own design that illustrates an aspect of the war. I believe this WebQuest can add depth to any lesson on World War II and can definitely inspire students to learn more about the war. 

 

Standards

This WebQuest addresses the following content standards for California History/Social Science

10.8 Students analyze the causes and consequences of World War II.
1. Compare the German, Italian, and Japanese drives for empire in the 1930s, including
the 1937 Rape of Nanking, other atrocities in China, and the Stalin-Hitler Pact of 1939.
2. Understand the role of appeasement, nonintervention (isolationism), and the domestic
distractions in Europe and the United States prior to the outbreak of World War II.
3. Identify and locate the Allied and Axis powers on a map and discuss the major
turning points of the war, the principal theaters of conflict, key strategic decisions,
and the resulting war conferences and political resolutions, with emphasis on the
importance of geographic factors.
4. Describe the political, diplomatic, and military leaders during the war (e.g., Winston
Churchill, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Emperor Hirohito, Adolf Hitler, Benito
Mussolini, Joseph Stalin, Douglas MacArthur, Dwight Eisenhower).
5. Analyze the Nazi policy of pursuing racial purity, especially against the European
Jews; its transformation into the Final Solution; and the Holocaust that resulted in the
murder of six million Jewish civilians.
6. Discuss the human costs of the war, with particular attention to the civilian and
military losses in Russia, Germany, Britain, the United States, China, and Japan.

11.7 Students analyze America’s participation in World War II.
1. Examine the origins of American involvement in the war, with an emphasis on the
events that precipitated the attack on Pearl Harbor.
2. Explain U.S. and Allied wartime strategy, including the major battles of Midway,
Normandy, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and the Battle of the Bulge.
3. Identify the roles and sacrifices of individual American soldiers, as well as the
unique contributions of the special fighting forces (e.g., the Tuskegee Airmen, the
442nd Regimental Combat team, the Navajo Code Talkers).
4. Analyze Roosevelt’s foreign policy during World War II (e.g., Four Freedoms
speech).
5. Discuss the constitutional issues and impact of events on the U.S. home front, including
the internment of Japanese Americans (e.g., Fred Korematsu v. United States ofAmerica) and the restrictions on German and Italian resident aliens; the response of
the administration to Hitler’s atrocities against Jews and other groups; the roles of
women in military production; and the roles and growing political demands of
African Americans.
6. Describe major developments in aviation, weaponry, communication, and medicine
and the war’s impact on the location of American industry and use of resources.
7. Discuss the decision to drop atomic bombs and the consequences of the decision
(Hiroshima and Nagasaki).
8. Analyze the effect of massive aid given to Western Europe under the Marshall Plan to
rebuild itself after the war and the importance of a rebuilt Europe to the U.S.
economy

Credits

I would like to thank Andi DiPonti, Jen Massender, and Matt Marentette for allowing me to use some of their content for creating my WebQuest. Their activity can be found at http://questgarden.com/140/80/7/120313061529/index.htm.

I do not own the rights to the images on this WebQuest. Those images were found using the Google image search.