I-Search Independent Research Projects

  1. Paradoxes: As the President of the United States, you deliver a speech condemning Hitler’s treatment of Jews. Afterwards, a reporter questions you on the comparison between Jews in Germany and Blacks in the South. Be prepared to respond to the reporter’s question and defend your position in a two-minute oral argument.
  1. Attributes: Read five selected memoirs of various people who lived on the home front during World War II on the What Did You do in the War, Grandma? website at Think about the individuals, their circumstances before the war, the obstacles they faced on the home front during the war, and the ways in which they handled adversity and challenge. Write a five-paragraph essay describing the personal qualities of these Americans on the home front during WWII and address the significance of these traits on the American war effort.
  1. Analogies: Compare the images of men and women in WWII propaganda posters. Complete a Venn Diagram in which you compare and contrast the imagery, theme, tone, symbolism, and affect of each piece. Present your findings in an oral class presentation, complete with examples of the posters you examined.
  1. Examples of Change: As a result of labor shortages on the American home front, women were mobilized on behalf of the war effort and moved into industries formerly reserved for male labor. How did women’s roles on the home front influence post-war American society (e.g. politics, families, labor, women’s rights)? Find five primary source documents that support your findings and write a three-page essay that cites the primary sources as supporting evidence for your thesis.
  1. Intuitive Expression: Write a poem from a child’s point-of-view as you practice air-raid drills, write letters to your father who is stationed in the Pacific, and help out around the house while your mother works in an airplane factory. Include as many details as possible about life for children on the American home front during WWII.
  1. Creative Listening Skill: Listen to a radio program from WWII. Rewrite your own radio program on the topic of Pearl Harbor and call on classmates to help you perform it. Include authentic details, imagery, vocabulary, etc.
  1. Evaluate Situations: What if German-Americans and Italian-Americans were deported and emigration from Europe ceased during World War II? What would be the consequences of this situation? What challenges would this have presented to efforts on the American home front? How might the outcome of WWII been different? Present your ideas in a 10-slide PowerPoint, complete with visual aids and graphs.
  1. Creative Writing Skill: Create the front page of a newspaper dated 1942-1945. Choose a specific date and base it in a local city/town. Your front page should include a headline describing a major war event that occurred on the date of your paper, editorials, advertisements, and one political cartoon.
  1. Study Creative People and Processes: Analyze the work of journalists, photographers, broadcasters, musicians, and artists during World War II and determine how their contributions mobilized the home front war effort. Chose an example from each of the five categories and create a slideshow complete with visuals and audio that describes the work and its contribution to the war effort.
  1. Visualization Skill: Watch the Walt Disney propaganda cartoon “Der Fuehrer’s Face” and analyze wartime propaganda aimed at children. What impact do you think these visuals had on children? How were children used to instill fear in Americans and how were visuals used to make children fearful of the enemy? Create a collage of images aimed at children on the American home front during World War II and analyze/explain the purpose of these images.
  1. Provocative Questions: The U.S. government chose to keep Japanese “Balloon Bomb” attacks on the Northeast a secret from American citizens, despite the fact that five people (including children) were killed by these incendiary devices. Write a two-page editorial defending our nation’s position.
  1. Skills of Search: Research and describe the various POWs imprisoned throughout the United States during WWII. How were POWs used in the war effort? How did they interface with local populations? What were the results of these interactions? Write a news story that highlights the impact of POWs on the American home front and war effort and present it in the radio broadcast/newsreel style of the 1940s.

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