Description:
This activity looks at the dropping of the Atom Bomb on Hiroshima in August 1945. It uses two websites to explore both the impact of the bomb, and the debate as to whether or not it should have been dropped.
The first activity, ‘What was the impact of the Atom Bomb?’ uses part of the website www.ABOMB museum to explore what survivors have said about the bomb, and to look at some of the remaining artefacts to try to get a feel of the intense heat and damage caused by the explosion.
The second activity, ‘Should the Bomb have been dropped on Hiroshima?’ uses part of another website to look at primary evidence and official government minutes to try and decide why the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, and not on an uninhabited island as a demonstration, as some scientists suggested. It also helps students explore the decision-making process and start to realise the complexities that lie behind what often seem to be quite straightforward decisions.
Both of these are intended to be ‘online’ activities, and thus will need access to computers linked to the internet. It would be possible to download some of the evidence from both sites and print it off thereby making a more traditional lesson, but to my mind that limits the use that can be made of the evidence available on the websites. One of the skills targeted by these activities is selecting evidence and presenting it in a coherent argument.
You may like to take this activity further by asking pupils themselves to make decisions about how they present their findings, opening up the possibility of using word-processing, desk-top publishing or even presentation software, or by altering the intended audience – other pupils rather than teacher, younger (or older) pupils, etc.
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