Teacher Lesson Plan

Description:

This plan will teach students how to evaluate presidential foreign policy decisions, using President William McKinley's policy regarding the Philippines before and after the Spanish-American War. Students will read an excerpt from McKinley's First Inaugural Address, analyze his decision to annex the Philippines, and follow the results of that policy.

Outcomes/Core Learning Goals:

CLG 1, Expectation 1, Indicator 8: The student will evaluate the impact of presidential decisions affecting rights of individuals and groups in United States society.

CLG 2, Expectation 2, Indicator 1: The student will explain the impact of Washington’s Farewell Address, the Monroe Doctrine, and Manifest Destiny on United States foreign policy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

CLG 3, Expectation 2, Indicator 3: The student will explain how the geographic location of the United States has affected its foreign policy.

Time Frame:

Main Activity:

Step 1: Between 30 and 45 minutes, depending on whether it is teacher-led or a student activity.

Step 2: Homework assignment or between 30 and 45 minutes in class. (You may choose to teach this step in a different way, without using a Net Investigation, so you should set your own timetable here.)

Step 3: Between 30 and 45 minutes, depending on whether it is teacher-led or a student activity.

Step 4: Approximately 20 minutes.

Closing Activity One: Approximately 45 minutes or one homework assignment.

Closing Activity Two: Approximately 60 minutes or one extended homework assignment.

Materials/Technology/Teacher Differentiation:

If you want to conduct this activity in a computer lab, you need anough computers for each student (or you may pair your students). An alternative option is to use a multi-media projector and use one computer to do a whole-class activity.

Please note that each part of the activity has a printable response sheet, which you may print out and photocopy for student use.

Teacher Preparation:

Please, please, please do the activity yourself first to make sure that you understand the process and can anticipate your students' questions. Also make sure that all links work, and contact Mary Wagner if a link fails. (Email me at Mary_Wagner@fc.montgomeryschoolsmd.org and I will try to fix it for you.)

If you want students to hand in their work, print out the response sheets and photocopy them.

Student Differentiation Options:

This lesson is designed for regular, honors, and AP level students. You do not have to do the entire lesson, but may pick and choose the parts that work for your students.

Note about the closing activities: This is the best part of the lesson, in which students learn to question the pronouncements of those in power, but do not do the closing activities unless you have completed the entire Net Investigation. The students will need the information from steps 1-4 to complete the closing activities.

Student Prior Knowledge and Skills:

Students must understand the concepts of imperialism and expansionism before beginning this lesson.

Lesson Design/Learning Sequence:

Main Activity: General Tips

There are four steps to the Main Activity. Each step may stand alone and be taught as separate activities, although the information in some steps builds on previous ones.

Many of the activities include this icon which indicates that students should either record the responses in their notebooks or print out a response sheet by clicking on the the notebook icon. To print out the response sheets and make copies ahead of time, click on the after each step below.

Specific Tips for Each Activity:

Step 1: Paraphrasing an Inaugural Address

Students will be introduced to President McKinley's policies at the beginning of his first administration. You can have them either read the excerpted section of the speech or click and link to his entire speech. You can assign the contextual vocabulary words either before or after reading the excerpt. Students are instructed to paraphrase the excerpted speech. It may be necessary for you to teach paraphrasing skills. You may choose to teach this as a lesson on paraphrasing, using the speech as the example. If you do this, we suggest printing out the speech excerpt from the web page and projecting it on an overhead, while also giving copies to the students.

CLICK HERE to view a good link for teaching paraphrasing.

Step 2: Reading a Secondary Source for information about the war

At this point in the lesson, the students must study the history of the Spanish-American War. You may teach this by using your textbook (either in class or in a homework assignment) or through another Net Investigation: The Spanish-American War, which links students to an online history, as well as to historic photographs and "Yellow Press" newspapers. This activity includes a list of questions to answer, as well as Closing Activities to provide synthesis.

Step 3: Analyzing the Decision to Annex the Philippines

Students will read an excerpt from an interview with McKinley about his decision to annex the Philippines. The objective of this activity is to have students explore McKinley's decision-making process. MCPS ninth-grade students should already have experience with the concept of Choices/Decisions from their first semester ninth-grade English class. In the "Choices"unit,students discuss, explore, and analyze choices/decisions through literature and writing activities. (In other words, this will not be a new concept for students.) Students will read this short excerpt and chart McKinley's decision-making process on the flow chart provided. If you want to make this a teacher-led activity, we suggest providing students a copy of the flowchart and the interview, then projecting the flowchart on a screen. Model the first couple of steps and allow students to fill in the pros/cons chart on their own. Note: They will be able to find the pros in the interview, as well as some of the cons, but they may have to infer some of the information.

Step 4: Analyzing Multiple Perspectives on the Philippines

Students will compare proclamations by both McKinley and Aquinaldo. They will first need to know the terms: benevolent, assimilation, and manifesto to successfully complete and understand the readings. The students are linked to an on-line dictionary to look up these words. This activity requires students to read the two different documents and write about each document separately. Students may complete the answer sheet or complete the writing in their notebooks.

Closing Activities:

PLEASE NOTE: DO NOT HAVE STUDENTS COMPLETE THE CLOSING ACTIVITIES UNLESS THEY HAVE COMPLETED THE ENTIRE NET INVESTIGATION DESCRIBED ABOVE.

Activity 1: Authentic Task

Students will analyze two McKinley quotes that reveal his changing views on foreign policy. They will then write either a letter to the President or a newspaper editorial giving their perspectives on the issue. Students will by prompted to re-examine several documents to complete this activity. There is no response sheet for this activity. Students should write a response to this prompt in their notebooks.

CLICK HERE to view a site for background on persuasive writing to teach students the techniques of writing an editorial.

Activity 2: Synthesizing Ideas and Inferential Thinking

Students will analyze several sentences from McKinley's Second Inaugural Address to examine changes in his foreign policy. This activity engages students in inferential thinking and writing, thereby guiding them to question the President's motivations, use of language, policies, assumptions, etc. Students may look at these ideas from multiple perspectives. While they may use this document and others in this Net Investigation to formulate their responses, the responses will be student-generated and will not be found in the texts.

Lesson Evaluation: