I teach a class on World War II and there are so many exciting and tragic topics we discuss. We often discuss the numbers of lives lost in the war, but we have a difficult time visualizing what those numbers look like. My students watched the film "Paper Clips" produced in 2004, depicting a rural Tennessee Middle School trying to figure out how to show the numbers of people lost during the Holocaust. They found out the Norwegians wore paper clips as a symbol of resistance to the Anti-Semitism and Nazism happening in Europe and used them as an object to represent the big numbers.
My goal is to do the same but represent the numbers on a bigger, broader scale, all 85 million. My goal is to have one paper clip represent 500 lives lost. I also want to represent the different groups, countries, civilians lost during the war by coloring them to represent those different groups. I think this will impact not only my World War II students but my students in World History and all other students in the school and community.
About my class
I teach a class on World War II and there are so many exciting and tragic topics we discuss. We often discuss the numbers of lives lost in the war, but we have a difficult time visualizing what those numbers look like. My students watched the film "Paper Clips" produced in 2004, depicting a rural Tennessee Middle School trying to figure out how to show the numbers of people lost during the Holocaust. They found out the Norwegians wore paper clips as a symbol of resistance to the Anti-Semitism and Nazism happening in Europe and used them as an object to represent the big numbers.
My goal is to do the same but represent the numbers on a bigger, broader scale, all 85 million. My goal is to have one paper clip represent 500 lives lost. I also want to represent the different groups, countries, civilians lost during the war by coloring them to represent those different groups. I think this will impact not only my World War II students but my students in World History and all other students in the school and community.