Veterans Day Lesson Plans For Middle School Students

Veterans Day lesson plans are important to add to your teaching plan this month.

The weeks around Veterans Day are a great time to remember and acknowledge the contributions of veterans and current soldiers who fight in the name of freedom.

I’ve built a unit to support you in teaching these important lessons to your students. This Veteran’s Day unit helps students further understand and appreciate the impact of service men and women.

This Veterans Day Unit comes packed with media analysis and opportunities for reading, speaking, writing, and dramatic activities. Each lesson and activity comes complete with detailed lesson plans and step by step instructions for your classroom use. The graphic organizers and worksheets are open-ended to support all learners and include full answer sheets for your reference.

I’ve also included resources for paperless classrooms such a individual PDFs that can be uploaded to any learning management system like Google Classroom and Google Slides graphic organizers.

The following lessons are included:

What is Veterans Day?

In this minds on activity, students make connections to an included reading about Veterans Day. Discussion prompts and graphic organizers are included.

Music Lyric Analysis

Students use a graphic organizer to analyze the meaning of a song related to war. Students will practise their analysis skills.

Poem and Song Analysis

Building on their analysis skills from the previous assignment, students will compare a song and poem surrounding the concept of peace. After analyzing both pieces of work through the included worksheet, students complete a Venn diagram for a final assessment.

Video Analysis

In this assignment, students engage with videos about veterans and the meaning of Veterans Day. Building on their understanding developed in the previous tasks, students will analyze four media clips and have a final assessment.

World War 1 Trench Life Simulation

This optional activity uses an online simulation of life in the trenches to have students better understand the life of soldiers in World War 1. Links and assessment resources are included.

Choral Reading

This choral reading assignment has students revisit some of the poems and songs discussed earlier and present in a choral reading format.

Modern Day Armed Forces

Students will take a look at the efforts and work of soldiers around the world today. Students will respond to videos about how modern day soldiers are helping out around the world in non-combat missions. After discussing modern day efforts, students will complete an assessment piece on the Warrior Games using the included graphic organizer.

Opinion Writing

In this assessment paragraph, students will use their learning thus far to respond one of two writing prompts about Veterans Day. This tasks asks students to articulate their opinion of this article using their knowledge built throughout the unit.

Photo Analysis

Students will work in a jigsaw activity to look at and discuss 10 different images associated with veterans before writing their ideas down in a graphic organizer. After viewing and discussing all the images, students will select one that resonates best with them to develop a paragraph reflection for assessment.

I know your students will have meaningful discussions when completing the activities in this unit. This unit provides resources, images, and discussion points to help your students make real life connections to Veterans Day. Find this resource on Shopify CAD or Teachers Pay Teachers USD.