Lesson Plans

The See You Next Year! collection provides teachers with classroom lesson plans exploring and utilizing the WWII high school yearbook images featured within it. All lessons are designed to be one class period in length and are written according to common core social studies and writing standards for grades 9 – 12, and can be easily adapted to best suit your classroom and your students' needs.

• Lesson Plan 1

  Close To Home

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  No two Americans experienced the events of WWII in the same way. This was also true with American students and American high schools, as can be observed in the primary source yearbooks that they left behind. In this lesson, students will examine yearbooks from two high schools – one nearby, the other far away – and compare and contrast how one yearbook’s treatment of WWII events is different from the other, as well as other examples students can find that a world war was being waged.

• Lesson Plan 2

  Society's Struggles

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  While the U.S. was fighting fascism abroad, there were many problems at home that remained. Black men and women in the military found themselves assigned to units as segregated as roughly half the nation’s schools. Japanese American students faced removal from their homes and confinement in camps and suspicions about their loyalty. Women, Latinos and Native Americans also dealt with unfair and demeaning treatment. In this lesson, students examine selected yearbooks to better understand attitudes towards race and gender during WWII.

• Lesson Plan 3

  Honor Roll

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  Prior to serving in WWII, young men and women who served completed assignments not on the battlefield, but in the classrooms of their local high school. With so many students graduating from civilian into military life, yearbooks often highlighted alumni in service. For those still in school, it became commonplace to see the familiar names and faces of former classmates listed amongst those killed, missing or taken prisoner. In this lesson, students compare and contrast the ways in which schools presented the service and sacrifice of alumni.

• Lesson Plan 4

  Learning The Lingo

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  While high school yearbooks from WWII can tell a school or a community’s story, it is the personalization – in the form of signatures, autographs and inscriptions – that truly makes each of these yearbooks unique and individual. However, this personalization is only accessible if the specific style and slang from 70 years ago can be interpreted and understood. In this lesson, students will use a glossary of 1940s slang to interpret signatures, autographs and inscriptions and determine their meaning or relationship to the War.