Lesson 6

Lesson: Japans Path to War / Project Assignments

Objective: Students will be able to explain Japanese aggression in the 1930s, which led the
nation to war. Events include background to Japans situation, Japanese leaders at the time,
the countrys invasion of mainland Asia, and the Rape of Nanking.
Students will be assigned topics on which to do projects, due near the end of the unit.
Common Core Standards:
10.1 Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources,
attending to such features as the date and origin of the information.
10.2 Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide
an accurate summary of how key events or ideas develop over the course of the text.
10.3 Analyze in detail a series of events described in a text; determine whether earlier
events caused later ones or simply preceded them.
Materials: Tablets, blogs, computer, SmartBoard, PowerPoint
Directions: Remind students that they just learned about Germanys path to war. Explain
to them that they are now going to learn about the path to war of another Axis power,
Japan. Use the PowerPoint presentation to lecture on Japans path to war (the first slide is
a review of what students have learned about Germany). Students use their blogs to take
notes. The presentation includes Japanese leaders, the countrys dire economic situation
during the 1930s, and its eventual invasion of mainland Asia, including the event known as
the Rape of Nanking.
After the lecture, students are assigned a topic for a project that will be due near the end of
the unit. Each student is responsible for a two-page paper on the topic, as well as some sort
of presentation on the topic. The presentation can be any type of the students choosing,
from PowerPoint or Prezi, to making a poster, to creating an original song or rap, or
anything else they come up with. The presentation has to cover the key points of the given
topic. Possible topics include people, like Heinrich Himmler or Hideki Tojo, places, like
Auschwitz, and battles, like the invasion of Normandy, among other things. There are 40
possible topics, so no two students are assigned the same one. They can be assigned
randomly or in any way the teacher chooses.