Student Activity Samples
Analyzing the Great Society Speech Activity #1
For this activity one will need transcripts of the speech and the audio or video from YouTube. Because links change it does not make sense to give them here, but a general search of Johnson’s Great Society Speech on Google and YouTube will yield easily findable copies of both. In addition to audio and text copies of the speech students should be given a graphic organizer to fill out as they are listening, and then specific questions to respond to once they have the transcript.
Individual teachers are capable of creating their own lessons and procedures around analyzing a primary source, but here is how my students will work with this speech. They will first listen to or watch Johnson give the speech, and as they do, they will fill out an organizer asking them to list the source, occasion, audience, and purpose, as well as the tone. (This is sometimes referred to as SOAPsTone.) After Johnson finishes speaking students will compare answers first in pairs and then in groups of four. Some of the groups of four will then share with the whole class or write their thoughts on the whiteboard.
After discussing as a whole class students will then get copies of the transcript and be required to think more in-depth about Johnson’s purpose and reasoning. Why was he proposing this program? Who was it supposed to help? Who might be hurt or be opposed to this type of program and why? And, based on what they see in the world around them, was this program successful and why/why not?
Johnson’s Social Programs – Success or Failure? Activity #2
In this activity students will be broken up into nine groups – Civil Rights, War on Poverty, Education, Health, Arts and Media, Environment, Housing and Urban Development, Consumer Protection, and Immigration. Using information from the Washington Post article Evaluating the Success of the Great Society each group will prepare a presentation for the class that includes the following key components: Summarize the article and state its point of view, find an additional source that supports the Post’s point of view, find an additional source that refutes the Post’s point of view.
The presentation must explain all three and support each with evidence from the additional sources that students find. Students will be given a choice as to what their output looks like. They can create a presentation using slides, create a video, or make a three-panel poster display instead. All students will present their work to the class regardless of the format that they choose.
Great Society / Vietnam Interaction Analysis Student Activity #3
In this activity the students in my classes will be broken into three different groups. Using a set of primary sources one group of students will examine the case for withdrawal from Vietnam by examining a May 1964 telephone conversation between President Johnson and National Security Advisor Bundy as well as a memo written in early 1965 by then Vice President Hubert Humphrey.
Another group will look at a Johnson speech from April of 1965 that outlines why the United States continues to be involved in the conflict in Vietnam. The third group of students will read and analyze a speech given by Martin Luther King Jr. in April of 1967 that damage that King believes the war is doing to American society.
After the three large groups have had time to read and discuss the materials, the students will be shuffled into new groups with at least one student having knowledge of each of the three different sources. They will then look at the evolution of what is happening with the Great Society and Vietnam during this extended timeframe and take notes about the change and continuity that they see.
The final step in this activity is for students to write a paragraph outlining that cause and continuity in their own words, using the notes created from the two groups sessions. This final paragraph will be done independently, not as a group activity.
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