So trying to avoid having to write an assignment and it also appears that i have to rewrite the openign sentence 3 times before i remove all the mistakes. Anyway was just gonna write a quick post about a history class i ran during my practicum in which we were looking at Nazi Germany and what it was like to live there during such a totaltaristic regime.

So anyway it started with abit of a discussion and a reading from 1984. Each student got a card which had German Jew or German Working class on it and then something more speciffic under it. I then ran them through a series of years which all had consequences for them depending on what card they had. The game ran through the great depression up untill the start of the war showing them how hard the depression was, how ruthless Hitler was towards Jews, handicapped, communists and others persectuted udirng his terrible regime and some other things. I used avalibility of space and chairs and name tags to restrict them and put attempt to put them in the shoes of someone who was living in nazi germany and how repressive that state actualy was. So when ran through the years and a series of consequences chuckign in the histroical facts along the way in hope they would be taking these on board as well.

So after the game i got the students into some groups and they had to make some still images about what it was like in Nazi Germany before the war, which didn’t really go well because some didin’t grab the concept of still image which was my fault for insufficiently explaining the task but there were a few good ones. Then after this i got them all to develop a short scene in their groups showing what they thought Nazi Germany was like during the war. There was some really good stuff that came from this excercise from a couple of teh groups.

After all of this we had a whole class discussion about how they would feel living in a place like nazi germany under such a repressive regime, what they would do etc.

There were a few things that didn’t work for this excercise firstly one problem was that the space avaliable to us was very limited making everything cramped and hard for the students to move around and perform in. I would defiantly change some things next time i ran this but i think the students generally enjoyed the lesson and it ran well.