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Ronald Reagan Day High School Lesson Plan

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Ronald Reagan Day High School Lesson Plan Ronald Reagan Day High School Lesson Plan Section 37222 of California Education Code designates February 6th of each year as Ronald Reagan Day, and encourages public schools and educational institutions to engage in exercises remembering the life of Ronald Reagan. For the full text of Senate Bill 944, the legislation which authorizes Ronald Reagan Day, please see the appendix to these lessons. The Fall of the Soviet Union "It is the Soviet Union that runs against the tide of history.... [It is] the march of freedom and democracy which will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash heap of history as it has left other tyrannies which stifle the freedom and muzzle the self-expression of the people." - President Reagan in an address to the British Parliament in 1982. In the decades after World War II, it seemed that even the slightest provocation could lead to a devastating conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States. Of all the foreign policy achievements of Ronald Reagan’s Presidency, none is more important, or had more lasting impact on the world, than the fundamental change in U.S.-Soviet relations. President Reagan often said: “We don’t mistrust each other because we’re armed; we’re armed because we mistrust each other.” He believed that if the mistrust was eliminated, then so, too, could the dangerous policy of Mutually Assured Destruction. For years, President Reagan reached out directly to Soviet leadership, confident that if he could get his Soviet counterpart in a room and tell him face-to-face that America had no hostile intent, the mistrust would begin to evaporate. It wasn’t until the rise to power of Mikhail Gorbachev that President Reagan got his wish. Over several years and four official summits, President Reagan and General Secretary Gorbachev met and ultimately agreed to reduce nuclear arms through the INF Treaty. In 1987, President Reagan called on Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall, and in 1989 the enduring symbol of the Cold War crumbled. In December of 1991, the Soviet Union, the largest and most powerful communist nation on earth collapsed as well. President Reagan’s prediction that communism would be left “on the ash heap of history,” had come true. Overview In this lesson students will analyze various factors contributing to the fall of the Soviet Union. They will examine sources that reveal both historical details and rhetoric that led to the collapse of the eastern communist superpower, and ultimately the end of the Cold War. In pursuit of this understanding, students will analyze and evaluate the discourse between Mikhail Gorbachev, General Secretary of the Soviet Union, and Ronald Reagan, 40th President of the United States. 1 Standards Common Core State Standards Reading: Informational Text o Grade Nine and Ten: 1. Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text. 2. Determine a central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details; provide an objective summary of the text. 3. Analyze how the author unfolds an analysis or series of ideas or events, including the order in which the points are made, how they are introduced and developed, and the connections that are drawn between them. o Grade Eleven and Twelve: 1. Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text, including determining where the text leaves matters uncertain. 2. Determine two or more central ideas of a text and analyze their development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one another to provide a complex analysis; provide an objective summary of the text. 3. Analyze a complex set of ideas or sequence of events and explain how specific individuals, ideas, or events interact and develop over the course of the text. Speaking & Listening o Grade Nine and Ten: 3. Evaluate a speaker’s point of view, reasoning, and use of evidence and rhetoric, identifying any fallacious reasoning or exaggerated or distorted evidence. o Grade Eleven and Twelve: 3. Evaluate a speaker’s point of view, reasoning, and use of evidence and rhetoric, assessing the stance, premises, links among ideas, word choice, points of emphasis, and tone used. History Social Science Content Standards for California Public Schools World History, Culture, and Geography: The Modern World o Grade Ten: 10.9.7. Analyze the reasons for the collapse of the Soviet Union, including the weakness of the command economy, burdens of military commitments, and growing resistance to Soviet rule by dissidents in satellite states and the non-Russian Soviet republics. Objectives Students will be able to (SWBAT): Understand, explain, and analyze major contributing factors to the fall of the Soviet Union. Understand the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective leaders. Identify the role President Reagan played in ending the Cold War. Write an analytical summary to show understanding of primary sources. 2 Materials Print Resources: Copies of Primary Sources A-H Suggested Online Resources Computer or laptop stations with internet video capacity Copies of Student Handouts Classroom Procedures I. Essential Question(s): What causes change? II. Agenda Essential Question: See above Hook: Respond to Campaign Commercial from 1980 • Guided Practice • Primary Source Exploration/Independent Practice: • Exit Slip (Optional) III. Hook• (10-15 minutes) • Tell students they will watch a political commercial from 1980 titled “Peace through Strength.” You can find this advertisement at The Living Room • Candidate website. Select “Peace” from the thumbnail videos listed next to Republican: http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/1980 Have them respond to the following prompt as they watch: o In your class journal, explore the idea of “strength” leading to peace. Use • examples from the advertisement, from history you’ve learned, from movies, books, or TV shows, or your own experiences to support your response. Allow 5 minutes for writing and responding to the clip. Students should then share their response with a neighbor. Call on a few • students to share out with the class. Suggested questions to drive discussion: • o How does the advertisement support the notion that strength leads to peace? o According to the advertisement, why is strength such an important component for peace? o What experiences in your life either confirm or refute the claims in this advertisement? Explain to students that in 1980 an important component of the campaign of Ronald Reagan, former Governor of California, was the idea of “Peace • Through Strength.” For decades the United States and the Soviet Union had been engaged in the Cold War. Both sides were stocked with nuclear weapons, and maintained the peace through a policy called Mutually Assured Destruction (M.A.D). In short, this policy meant that neither side would fire the first shot, because nuclear war would wipe out both countries. Ronald Reagan believed that if America improved and modernized American military forces, then the Soviets would have to come to the table and negotiate arms reductions. These actions would make the United States stronger and allow the U.S. to emerge from the Cold War as the world’s strongest country both economically and militarily. Eventually, Ronald 3 Materials Reagan was able to lead the way in bringing an end to both the Soviet Union Print Resources: Copies of Primary Sources A-H and the Cold War. This lesson will explore a number of the factors that Suggested Online Resources contributed to this result. Computer or laptop stations with internet video capacity Explain to students that a superpower does not collapse because of one man Copies of Student Handouts or one reason alone. In fact, if you look at the collapse of other major world • superpowers (Rome, for example) there are often a myriad of reasons for the Classroom Procedures collapse. In this lesson, students will examine a number of primary source documents. I. Essential Question(s): What causes change? IV. Guided Practice II. Agenda Tell students that today they will be examining a series of primary sources Essential Question: See above looking for clues that indicate reasons why the Soviet Union might ultimately Hook: Respond to Campaign Commercial from 1980 collapse. To help them analyze and evaluate these documents, they will be • Guided Practice using a technique known as rhetorical précis. • Primary Source Exploration/Independent Practice: • Exit Slip (Optional) Distribute Student Handout A to students. Read through the description of III. Hook• (10-15 minutes) the different components of a rhetorical précis, and then, using the “Peace • Tell students they will watch a political commercial from 1980 titled “Peace through Strength” advertisement as an example, draft a rhetorical précis that through Strength.” You can find this advertisement at The Living Room effectively models the process for your students. An example of this is • Candidate website. Select “Peace” from the thumbnail videos listed next to provided below. Note that students should combine these separate sentences Republican: http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/1980 into a paragraph when they are finished. Have them respond to the following prompt as they watch: Requirements Sentence Sentence 1 Author President Ronald Reagan and his Campaign Staff o In your class journal, explore the idea of “strength” leading to peace. Use • examples from the advertisement, from history you’ve learned, from Genre wrote the commercial “Peace Through Strength” movies, books, or TV shows, or your own experiences to support your Title and argued that world peace could be achieved response. Date through strong leadership.
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