Conflict in the Pacific: The Battles

I enjoy teaching Conflict in the Pacific (for Part IV of the Modern History HSC syllabus) because I feel like there's a genuine interest from a lot of Australian kids about this part of history. All the bits of World War II are big, and interesting, but it's arguably the Pacific Theatre that has the most relevance to our corner of the world. When I hear students talking about the impact the Pacific War had on their grandparents, and think about the way it influenced Australia's foreign policy and sense of identity, I feel like I'm in the 'goldilocks zone' of the Modern History subject. It's not too close to home that students are disinterested, and it's not too distant and alien as to make them feel like it's irrelevant to their lives and experience.

I've taught Conflict in the Pacific before and if there's one thing I took away from the experience it was that I could cover the battles better. There's a dot point in the syllabus that specifics coverage of four battles - the Battle of the Coral Sea, the Battle of Midway, the Battle of Guadalcanal, and the New Guinea Campaign.  

I think I struggle with battles in general. They seem like such visual and kinesthetic things that a classroom can never really do them any justice. How do I get the real nature of a battle across to my students when I myself have never experienced such a thing? How do I explain the strategies and the implementation of each side's campaigns? And what of the impact on the course of the overall war itself?

In the past I've created research sheets and turned it into an jigsaw-styled activity. I've been guilty of doing this with the syllabus-dictated WWI battles too, but I wanted to move away from this because my current cohort aren't the biggest fans of these kinds of lesson. So this time around I was determined to find a better way to teach the battles in a relatively efficient amount of time. 

If you're waiting to hear about some amazing new pedagogical process I'm afraid you're about to be disappointed. All I did was put together a PPT describing each battle in its various stages, and gave students an accompanying set of sheets to fill in while we discussed each one. I guess my sense of achievement here is simply that I processed something that, to me, seemed incredibly complex, and then turned it into something more teachable in my Western Sydney classroom. The bits I'm happiest with are the simple little annotations I've added over the top of each of the maps. 

So if you've got a class who can listen a little while they work, and are looking for a relatively easy way of teaching the battles, then get them to do the following:

1. Work through the PPT below, talking about each battle as you go.
2. Stop at each map and have the students annotate them on the 'Battles' sheet with the arrows and labels shown in the PPT. 
3. Discuss the logistics of each stage of the battle as you move through the PPT, whilst students fill in the accompanying sections of the 'Battles' sheets.

NOTE: I left the New Guinea Campaign out of the PPT because I wanted to focus on it separately.

Resources
Turning Points in the Pacific War (PPT)
Battles (pro forma)