The War I Finally Won

Use this activity to engage all types of learners, while requiring that they refer to and incorporate details from the text over the course of the activity.

“Local Newspaper”

In this activity, students will create a local newspaper for Kent informing the public on important events that occur based on novel details.

The War I Finally Won is a historical fiction novel based on real events and places during the time of World War II. Create a newspaper with one or more entries describing important local events and events abroad that are described in the novel.

• Divide your newspaper into sections that include advertisements, articles, pictures, and other items that may be found in newspapers.
• Conduct research to discover more about events that occur in the novel.
• Create one or more articles for your newspaper describing local news.

Present your newspaper to peers and explain the article or articles, pictures, and advertisements you included. Draw parallels between Ada’s experiences and those you learned about in your research.

Teaching Suggestion: Students may find it beneficial to discuss different items in the novel that may contribute to the creation of their newspaper including Spam, blackout curtains, events abroad, and local events that occur. It may be useful to explore templates of newspapers online for students to use for their articles and examples of historical newspapers. To save time with formatting and streamline the project, it could be helpful to print out a blank front page of a newspaper to use as a template.

Differentiation: For students with visual impairments, creating a newspaper might be challenging. An alternative assignment that would still meet the learning goals might include writing an example article and example headlines or advertisements. For students who need an extra challenge, encourage them to write a second article (or more, depending on the original assignment requirements) or design a historically accurate advertisement.