Who’s Afraid of the Big, Bad Communists?

Fellowship Lesson 2008

Krista Ruud

Champaign County Archives

Lesson 5 - And Now We Know…

To download this lesson plan in PDF format, click here.

Length: 2-3 class periods

Set-up: Individual work

Procedures:

§ Review with students what they learned in the past days

o What was Communism? Democracy? the Cold War?

o Where were Communist nations located?

o Why were Americans so fearful of Communism?

o What might Communists do in America?

o How did Americans respond to the threat of Communism?

§ Pass out the Project Info & Rubric sheets to the students. Go over the directions of the project with them as well as the expectations. Students will then have time in class to work on making their own informational pamphlet detailing the evils (or pros) of Communism. Make sure students reference work they did in class while putting together the pamphlet.

Local Primary Sources: Students will use information from the local primary sources they viewed: newspaper articles from the Champaign-Urbana Courier and the Champaign News-Gazette about Communism and William H. Martin and documents kept by Mr. & Mrs. Elmer Martin of Urbana, Illinois.

National Primary Sources: Students will use information they gathered from the About Communism pamphlet as well as the Cold War era world map.

Assessment: Students will create their own informational pamphlet detailing the bad (or good) things about Communism. To do this, students will need to reference work done prior in the unit and think as though they lived in America in the early 1960s.