Lesson Plan in Progress: Alliances and World War I

In my ongoing effort to find new ways to help my students work through and think through issues, I tried to design a simulation that would give them a rough idea of how the alliance system helped lead into World War I. It still needs some work, and I would definitely do some revisions before I tried it next year. But here’s what I came up with – the link goes to the Word document I have in my class’s Google Docs collection.

Alliance System and World War I

I need to tweak the allotted forces, and possibly do some more research to make them more historically accurate. I need better rules for handling multiple conflicts. The first two classes I did this with created very complicated four- and five-way alliances where the partners didn’t know who else was in their alliance, so after that I printed up blank Treaty forms and made every pair sign a form before they were considered allies.

What I really need to do is spend some time studying game design so I can write better simulation rules. 🙂

But I think at the end of this a lot of the students understood why nations formed alliances for protection, and how that could backfire. Hopefully they’ll keep that idea with them when they study the war again some day.

Author: Dave Thomer

Born and raised in Philadelphia. Studied philosophy at Fordham University in the Bronx, where I made many great friends and met my wonderful wife. We moved back to Philadelphia, where I studied philosophy some more and became a teacher. Online and off, I'm looking for ways that we can be better citizens and build stronger communities. View all posts by Dave Thomer