Lesson Plan: Massacre in El Salvador

Subjects:

Social Studies – U.S. History, Modern World History, Government/Civics

Grade Level:

8-12

Note: Resources in this lesson and the supporting video contain graphic depictions and personal narratives on the massacre in El Salvador. Please have this in mind when using the activity with students.

Lesson Duration:

• 2-3 class periods

Essential Questions:

• What were the causes, effects, and significant details of the El Mozote massacre?
• How can we use photojournalism to understand historical events at which photojournalists were not present?
• How can forensic evidence be used to corroborate or disprove interpretations of historical events?

Lesson Objectives:

Students will:

• Examine the El Mozote massacre from multiple perspectives using multiple sources
• Analyze forensic evidence to understand the conclusions of the UN Truth Commission’s report on the El Mozote massacre
• Write a reading response that situates the El Mozote massacre in the larger context of U.S. Cold War policies and actions in Latin America
• Study the photojournalism of Susan Meiselas and collaborate as photojournalists to evaluate the role of photographic evidence in modern historical events.

Materials:

• Retro Report video “Massacre in El Salvador”
• Internet access for accompanying resources, including those below:
• The U.S. in Latin America: The New Agenda (Ch.2) | Harvard University
• From Madness to Hope: the 12-year war in El Salvador: Report of the Commission on the Truth for El Salvador | United States Institute of Peace
• Student Activity

Procedure:

1. Either on their own or as a full class, students will view the video “Massacre in El Salvador” (minutes 0-16:40) and complete the graphic organizer. (This works great as a flipped classroom homework assignment!)
   1. The first portion of the activity asks students to organize supporting details from the video into three main ideas: causes, the massacre, and effects.
   2. Students may work on this while watching the video and/or work alone or in groups to recall information from the video after it is finished.
   3. Review students’ answers as a class when everyone is finished.
2. The next portion of the lesson uses the “Using Forensic Evidence to Understand Historical Events” section of the activity, and asks students to analyze how forensic evidence helps historians prove or disprove interpretations of historical events.
   1. Ask students to read the “context” section of the document on their own.
   2. Divide the students into 3-6 groups.
   3. Assign each group 2-4 pieces of evidence to analyze.
   4. Instruct the groups to read their pieces of evidence together and discuss how the evidence supports one or more of the forensic team’s conclusions (in bullet points).
   5. Once they’ve discussed, groups should insert a comment on the evidence (an example is shown below) to explain their analysis.
   6. Ask groups to present their analysis to the class and/or contribute to a single shared document for the whole class to see.

   3. The final portion of the lesson asks students to synthesize their understanding of the El Mozote Massacre within the broader U.S. involvement in Latin America during the Cold War.

   1. Students should read pages 39-45 of The U.S. in Latin America: The New Agenda
   2. Then, write a response to the following prompt: “Evaluate the El Mozote Massacre as part of American involvement in Latin America during the Cold War.”

Extension Activity:

The following activity should be introduced and modeled in class, but students will likely need to complete the assignment as homework or part of a larger project.

• Have students study the photographs of Susan Meiselas from “Remembrance of a Massacre– El Mozote” as mentor texts and write down their observations.
• Noticings should include both aspects of Meiselas’s style and content.
• Students should notice that the collection curated through Retro Report shows some causes and effects of what happened at El Mozote, but not the event itself.
• Catalog and discuss these noticings as a class, writing them on the board.
• Acting as photojournalists, students should choose an event in their own lives to photograph.
• Students should photograph things that led to the event as well as the effects of the event, but not the event itself.
• Then, students will place their images on a slideshow. Captions are optional.
• Ask students to share their images with the class without telling the class what the event was. Have the class try to guess the event that the student photographed. Discuss how the images provide evidence for both the event’s causes and effect as well as what happened at the event.
• Teachers can choose to have students create a larger scale project with this, including using the photographs to create a virtual museum.

About the Author:

Samantha Futrell is the Vice President of the Virginia Council for the Social Studies and an award-winning teacher of U.S. History, World History, and Geography in Richmond, Virginia.

Standards

Common Core Standards:

• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.9-10.1: Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources, attending to such features as the date and origin of the information.
• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.9-10.2: Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary of how key events or ideas develop over the course of the text.
• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.9-10.5: Analyze how a text uses structure to emphasize key points or advance an explanation or analysis.
• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.9-10.8: Assess the extent to which the reasoning and evidence in a text support the author’s claims.
• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.11-12.1 Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources, connecting insights gained from specific details to an understanding of the text as a whole.
• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.11-12.9: Integrate information from diverse sources, both primary and secondary, into a coherent understanding of an idea or event, noting discrepancies among sources.

C-3 Framework Standards for Social Studies:

• D1.4.9-12. Explain how supporting questions contribute to an inquiry and how, through engaging source work, new compelling and supporting questions emerge. 
• D1.5.9-12. Determine the kinds of sources that will be helpful in answering compelling and supporting questions, taking into consideration multiple points of view represented in the sources, the types of sources available, and the potential uses of the sources. 
• D2.Civ.11.9-12. Evaluate multiple procedures for making governmental decisions at the local, state, national, and international levels in terms of the civic purposes achieved.
• D2.His.1.9-12. Evaluate how historical events and developments were shaped by unique circumstances of time and place as well as broader historical contexts.
• D2.His.5.9-12. Analyze how historical contexts shaped and continue to shape people’s perspectives.
• D2.His.10.9-12. Detect possible limitations in various kinds of historical evidence and differing secondary interpretations.
• D2.His.12.9-12. Use questions generated about multiple historical sources to pursue further inquiry and investigate additional sources.
• D2.His.16.9-12. Integrate evidence from multiple relevant historical sources and interpretations into a reasoned argument about the past.

AP U.S. History

• Period 8: 1945-1980