Soviet Union versus United States

President Truman recalls many of the successes and problems of the Potsdam Conference and the postwar world in his diary entries and letters to his wife, Bess Wallace Truman. Students are given the opportunity to examine these unique documents and argue about their validity as primary sources while learning about the Potsdam Conference.

The students (in groups) will work through a series of primary source documents related to the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. In using the primary sources, the students will confront the difficulties of negotiating at the highest levels.

Use of lecture/film with primary documents to increase student understanding of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The students will have a lecture and view some political cartoons and maps during the time period of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The students will participate in the Notebook activity at the end of the lesson.

Students will examine and evaluate primary documents relating to the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The students will engage in a cooperative learning assignment on the Cuban Missile Crisis. They will work in groups to explore the presidential decision making and the US, Cuban and USSR perspectives on the 1962 Crisis.

Students will read a document of Kennedy-Khrushchev exchanges. Students will take notes, write a summary, and answer questions on a primary resource. They will also take the role of Kennedy and write a response to Khrushchev.

Group activity. Students in class use primary sources like Truman Doctrine speech, Marshall plan, and Iron Curtain speech to discuss foreign policy from US/USSR perspectives at the time of the Cold War.

The student will complete a project creating a PhotoStory describing an event of the Berlin Airlift. They may concentrate on the personalities of the airlift, the German people, the Soviet response to the post-war world, etc.

Students will work together to analyze primary sources on the inter-war period in both the Soviet Union and the United States and will work individually to draw conclusions about those sources by producing a Venn Diagram.