September 11, 2001 was a defining moment in American history. It is so interesting that many of the children who were 8, 9, or 10 years old when the World Trade Center towers fell and the Pentagon burned are now in college. For many of our students they were just “babies” and remember bits and pieces. I am a strong advocate of teaching 9/11 every year and this year is no different being it’s the 10th anniversary of September 11th.
Like most of you, I can remember where I was on 9/11 and how I felt. I was sitting in my US government class in high school. I remember the silence of the halls. I remember my friends getting called out of class to go home because their family members were unaccounted for. This new generation of students are used to filtered news; many watched live television reports of the attacks in their living rooms and classrooms. I remember the overwhelming sense of pride and love for our nation. I wore red, white, and blue and felt an urgency to plant a tree in honor of the victims of 9/11. These feelings will never leave me.
I discovered a wonderful resource called The Internet Archive from Richard Bryne’s blog Free Technology 4 Teachers. I learned about this blog post from Richard’s blog post called Understanding 9/11: A Television News Archive. Richard says the “Internet Archive has assembled more than 3,000 hours of news footage from September 11, 2001 and the six days immediately following. You can explore the footage in a timeline grid format.”
I agree with Richard in that I just spent 20 minutes watching the footage from 9/11 and it took me back to the emotions I had on 9/11. I think this is one of the best resources I found (thanks to Richard) for teaching about 9/11.
Here is a copy of my lesson plan on Friday September 9th, 2011
Here is a link to a previous post about 9/11 lesson plans
Here is a link to a previous post about teaching post 9/11
Here is another link to Great resources from Larry Ferlazzo’s Website’s of the Day entitled “The Best Resources for Teaching about 9/11″