The Armenian Genocide Assessment: Part 4

About This Assessment

In this optional activity, students review what they have learned about the postwar efforts to hold perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide accountable for their crimes and the impact of the ongoing denial of the genocide by the Turkish government, and then they make their final additions to their Assessment Analysis Organizers.

With their organizers complete, students participate in a structured class discussion to share and strengthen their thinking about the assessment prompt, and then they transition into the writing process.

Essential Questions

• What choices and conditions led to the genocide of the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire during World War I?
• How can learning about these choices and conditions help us protect the most vulnerable groups in our society today?

Instructions

Activity 1: Discuss the Importance of Analyzing Responses to Genocide and Other Injustices

Remind students that the lessons they have completed since they last added to their Assessment Analysis Organizers explored events that occurred after rather than before or during the Armenian Genocide. Explain that these choices and events, even though they happened “after the fact,” can still provide valuable information to help us answer the assessment question: What can we learn from the history of the Armenian Genocide about what it takes to protect the most vulnerable groups in our society today?

You might take a few moments to discuss with students how the ways we respond to past injustices can impact our ability to prevent new injustices in the future.

Activity 2: Introduce the New Assessment Analysis Organizer

Because the last two lessons explore what happened after the genocide, students will use a new graphic organizer with different headings to record their notes and analysis.  Distribute Armenian Genocide Assessment Analysis Organizer, Part 4 and read the column headings on the graphic organizer together with the students. Point out how the first two columns now ask them to identify responses to the Armenian Genocide and then explain how each response connects to the issues of accountability or memory.

We recommend completing the first row of the organizer together, using what students learned about efforts to hold CUP leaders accountable for the Armenian Genocide in Lesson 9. Part of the first row of Handout A.3 is pre-filled with the information about military tribunals in the chart below.

Give students time, working individually or in pairs, to add new information, analysis, and connections to Armenian Genocide Assessment Analysis Organizer, Part 4. Their goal should be to complete at least two new rows of the organizer. Review some possible responses for this activity in this document that outlines The Armenian Genocide Assessment: Part 4 in a Google Doc.

Once students have had some time to work on the organizer, use a strategy such as concentric circles to give them the opportunity to share what they recorded and the connections they are making. Let students know that after hearing their classmates’ ideas they are welcome to revise and strengthen their own responses.

Activity 3: Whole Group Discussion of Prompt

Before students transition into the process of developing a thesis, outlining, and drafting their essays, it can be helpful to have a structured class discussion about the assessment prompt question. This will provide students the opportunity to hear what each other is thinking, build off each others’ ideas, and consolidate their own thinking about the prompt.

First, give students some time to review everything that they have recorded on Armenian Genocide Assessment Analysis Organizer, Parts 1–3 and Armenian Genocide Assessment Analysis Organizer, Part 4. Since the assessment prompt asks them to write about at least two factors that influenced the fate of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, they should choose two factors from their organizer that they think have the strongest connections to today. (They can change their choices as they move through the writing process.)

Then, use the Fishbowl strategy to discuss the following questions (or you might adapt elements of a Socratic Seminar if you prefer to have student-led discussions), and encourage students to pose their own unanswered questions about the unit and writing prompt:

• Which of the factors that made the Armenian Genocide possible that you recorded seem most relevant today, and why?
• What universal themes in history and human behavior are illuminated by the examples we are discussing?
• What do the examples we are discussing show us about what it takes to protect the most vulnerable groups in our society today?

Activity 4: Transition to the Writing Process

The Common Core Writing Prompts and Strategies supplement provides additional guidance and activities to help support students through the process of writing their argumentative essays.