Chapter 19 - Educator Resources

The Home Fires: Montana and World War II from the Montana Historical Society. This trunk explores aspects of everyday life in Montana during the 1941 to 1945 war years, including little-known government projects such as the Fort Missoula Alien Detention Center and Civilian Public Service Camps.

Takeaways

Inspired by reading specialist Tammy Elser, who was in turn inspired by SKC graduate Taylor Crawford, we've created a "Takeaway" bookmark for every chapter of Montana: Stories of the Land. Before starting a chapter, print and cut out these bookmarks and distribute them to your students. Ask them to use the Takeaway to summarize the GIST of what they learn from reading assigned sections of the chapter. Remind them that they don't have much room, so they'll need to think before they write down the most important idea they want to take away from the section. Learn a little more about the GIST strategy.
Even though we've created Takeaways for every chapter, we don't recommend you have your students complete a Takeaway for every section of every chapter they read. That would be exceedingly tedious. However, used appropriately, they can be a useful tool for encouraging reflection and teaching students how to summarize information.

Websites and Online Lesson Plans

World War II propaganda has received much attention, including a National Archives exhibit, "Powers of Persuasion: Poster Art from World War II.
The National World War II Memorial in cooperation with the History Channel created an extensive teacher's guide to the national history of World War II.
Jean Luckowski and James Lopach, the authors of Jeannette Rankin: A Political Woman (Boulder, CO, 2004) have created a timeline of Rankin's life, illustrated with quotations by and about her. Page 15 of the document includes a list of excellent discussion questions. For more on Jeannette Rankin see "Jeannette Rankin: Suffragist, Congresswoman, Pacifist."
Excerpts from letters written by Montanans serving during World War II are included in "Reader's Theater: Letters Home from Montanans at War," a unit that asks students to work in groups to read, interpret, and perform letters written by soldiers at war, from the Civil War to the Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Information on the Smith Mine Disaster can be found here. A 6:23 minute narrated PowerPoint is available here.
The Billings Gazette has created a gallery of five front-page news stories it covering the 1943 Smith Mine disaster.