Organisation Chart 1

Organisation Chart 2

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Educational objective of this elaboration is a compilation of teaching material about the war cripples of the First World War. To this, it should be noted that the term "cripple" at the time of World War I, was an adequate designation for disabled persons. The designation was noteably coined by Konrad Biesalski (1868-1930) who was one of the founders of the modern care of the disabled. (For this purpose, especially: Ibid.:Kriegskrüppelfürsorge. Ein Aufklärungswort zum Troste und zur Mahnung. Leipzig 1915. P.1f.)
Focus of this to lessons is the change of the public perception of the soldiers in World War I.

Topic of the lesson follows the requirement of the formal curriculum of Baden-Württemberg for students in class 8. The educational objective is that the students get to know the effects of World War I on the soldiers and, in a second step, can lead it back to the mechanisation of the war.
In order to ease the handling of teaching materials, the lessons will be considered separately in the navigation panel (left). It will open the respective organisation chart which describes a possible process of the lesson and teaching materials which are available for download as PDFs .

The following is a brief description of the lessons to give the reader an overview about the structure of the lessons. All materials, which are available for download are shown in bold.

First lesson
After the greeting follows a brief review of the last lesson in which an introduction to the 1st World War was given. The themes of war conditions, war beginning, enthusiasm for war, war developments and the end of war should have been discussed. In order to facilitate the pupils recap of the last lesson, the teacher notes key words on the blackboard (blackboard1).
To initiate now the lesson topic, the teacher asks the pupils to describe how an ordinary job posting looks like. In comparison, job advertisements (overhead transparency1) from the time of World War I are viewed. These are available as pdf for download and should be printed as an overhead transparency.

After a student had read the job advertisements aloud, the teacher guides the students to compare differences between them. The students get a first impression about the effects of World War I on the soldiers and they are now more sensitised about this matter. After the topic of the lesson is introduced, the teacher writes the headline on the blackboard "From Heroes to Cripples".
It is important that the teacher explains the pre-loaded word "cripple" as an appropriate term in this context. The soldiers who came back from the 1st world war as disabled persons were called "cripples" by the society. Therefore, it is a historical term that in this context - and only in this - is opportune.
In the following step, the teacher explains the group work; the pupils develop the topic of the lesson self-employed under the instructions of the teacher then they present their results in front of the class using a self-created overhead transparency.
For the presentationes the students work only on the first task of their work sheet. If groups or group members early finished editing their first exercise, they can continue working on their next task. At the end of the lesson, the teacher gives the second exercise as homework. It is important that the indication of time of 15 minutes is not exceeded. All worksheets (WS1, WS2, WS3) and the associated overhead transparencies (OHP WS1, WS2 OHP, OHP WS3) as a guide for teachers are provided in the organization chart 1 for download.
In group work, three different subject areas are treated.

1. the public perception of the soldiers as heroes
because during the 1st World War, a heroic view of the military was granted. This makes clear that the death for their country, dying in battle, was seen as heroic in the time of World War I.

In contrast to them, there were the war cripples.
2. Therefore, the second group is concerned with the suffering of the disabled. Individual stories clarify the effects of war to the pupils to make clear the consequences of a wounded individual.

3. The third group works on the perception of the war crippled by the public. The pupils understand that the injured returning soldiers did not get the same fame as a soldier who died in the war.
On the one hand, the community wanted to support and reintegrate war cripples, on the other the bullet-riddled bodies and the missing faces of the war cripples had served as a reminder of the defeat, which is why the people abused and avoided them.

After the presentation of the group work, the teacher collects the manual prepared overhead transparencies by the students to supplement and to reproduce them. The copies will be handed out in the next lesson, after the review, to the pupils as an information sheet. Possible is the use of the available pdf overhead templates.
For the next lesson, the teacher gives the second erxercises in the worksheets as homework. In the last minutes of the lesson, the teacher scetches once more the transition of the soldiers as heroes to the cripples who came home from war. With an outlook to the upcoming lesson in which the question is asked why there were so many war cripples after World War I, the teacher ends the lesson.

Second lesson
Theme of the second lesson is the mechanisation in World War I. Educational objective is that the students can lead the effects of the war back to the mechanisation. After a brief welcome the teacher invites the pupils to consider the overhead transparency (OHP transpareny2). On the basis of the advertisements from "Deutsche Blätter für Kriegsverletzte" (German journal for wounded soldiers), the pupils repeat the contents of the last lesson.
Than the teacher collects the homework from the last lesson to correct it in a post-processing.
The teacher collects important generic terms to the disabled soldiers of World War 1 on the blackboard (blackboard2). At the end of the collection should be placed the question, why there were so many war cripples. To answer this question, the next step is to process a worksheet (WS4). By the independent elaboration of the tasks the pupils get to know the mechanisation which took place in World War I, so they can give reasons and examples for it.
After editing a discussion of the results should take place. Under guidance of the teacher, the pupils discuss the tasks in plenary.
A sample template (AB4-answer template) for answering the tasks, you will find in the second organisation chart of the lesson.
The last content of the lesson follows the safeguarding of the earnings on the blackboard (blackboard3). Because the written assurance of the results internalise the learnings and can be read later. In a final step, the teacher concludes the lesson while sketching the theme "war cripples" with concise phrases.

   © 2015 Katharina Fuchs