Historica Canada Education Portal

The guide's purpose is to enhance your students’ learning and appreciation of the pivotal role that this 1917 battle played within Canadian history. The questions and activities of the guide also aim to have students examine issues and situations from an individual, humanistic point of view as well as from a macro perspective.

Structured around five primary sources from the First World War, this guide asks students to think and to empathize as they analyze and deconstruct those pieces of...

When Canada entered the First World War in 1914, men of all ages enlisted by the thousands. However, this zeal waned as reports of casualty rates arrived home. Recruitment posters were an integral part of encouraging men and women to enlist at all points between 1914 and 1918. They appealed to the many motivations for enlistment and used various propaganda techniques to achieve their goal. In this activity, students will examine reasons for enlistment, recruitment posters, and...

The impact of the First World War and the Second World War on artists and the art they produced cannot be denied. Along with everything else in Western society, the creators of art and the art they created post-war were much different than anything that had come before 1914. This lesson is about the depiction of war and its aftermath by artists affected by the conflicts. They may or may not have been participants.

To have students understand the nature of the art produced...

Students learn more of the First World War by way of a study of the Canadian, British, and American soldier poets that served in France and Belgium.

Students will search and read the poetry of their soldier poet. It is hoped that they will choose a poem or two that appeals to them and ones in which they can examine word choice, imagery, mood, and figurative language. The pair of students will research and write a biography of their soldier poet. The aim here is that the students...

Students create a newspaper, from a distinct perspective, that exemplifies an event of the First World War. This project can be modified to the Second World War. The full assignment is attached below.

Students will gain a greater understanding and appreciation of a specific aspect of the Great War. Students will gain competence is print presentation methods. Other goals can be added to this project to meet specific teacher's needs and curricular outcomes.

This project...

The lesson allows students to gain a better understanding of the trenches and the effects of chlorine gas on the soldiers through the use of poetry through an analysis of the poem "Dulce et Decorum est" by Wilfred Owen.

The aim of the lesson is to show how horrific war was for the soldiers that fought in the First World War. It also shows the horrors of the gas attack as witnessed by a soldier, Owen, who served in the war. The poem brings a different dimension to the study of...

A book club novel study for senior academic English and/or History students focusing on Canada’s role – at home and abroad - in the two world wars.

Aims

The purposes of this unit are to allow students: