Activity #1
Fourteen Days in October: The Cuban Missile Crisis
This fully developed lesson plan designed by Susan Reed of Fayette County Schools
encourages students to compare President Kennedy’s and Chairman Khrushchev’s
perspective on the Cuban Missile Crisis. Students review primary documents,
fill out a comparison chart, and write an original dialogue between the two
world leaders. All materials, including an assessment rubric, are included.
Activity #2
“Duck and Cover” Part One
Show the video clip “Duck and Cover” from the Cold War Traveling
Trunk CD. Have students complete the NARA “Motion Picture Analysis Worksheet”
(artifact # NARA4) to analyze the film. Discuss student responses together in
class. Have students compare the “Duck and Cover” video with emergency
preparedness procedures at your school (tornado drills, for example).
Activity #3
“Duck and Cover” Part Two
After showing the video clip “Duck and Cover,” divide students into
small groups. Provide each group with a fallout protection pamphlet or access
to information about family civil defense shelters on the internet (see Teacher’s
Guide). Assign groups to do one or more of the following:
1. Have students interview a parent or grandparent who remembers the Duck and
Cover drills and the emphasis on fallout shelters. Were they ever frightened?
Was nuclear war something they often thought about? Did their family have a
shelter? Do they remember where the closest public shelter was? Did their family
stockpile emergency supplies and/or food?
2. Have students research how much it would cost to put together an emergency
supply kit as suggested in some of the pamphlets. Compare these emergency supply
kits to those currently recommended by organizations such as the Red Cross,
the Weather Channel, or Home Depot. (Information can be found on their websites).
How are they the same? How are they different?
3. Have students research what scientists now know about radiation and its effects
and compare the information with that give in the pamphlets. Is it the same?
Is it different? How?
Activity #4
“Illustrated Timeline”
Using web resources (the JFK Presidential Library has a link to President Kennedy’s
diary during the missile crisis), have students construct an accurate timeline
of events from October 14 through October 28, 1962. (It might be easiest to
use larger sheets of construction paper or butcher paper to make the timelines
big enough to work with) Have students place the events on their timeline in
correct order and then draw a picture to illustrate each one.
Activity #5
“A Picture Tells a Thousand Words”
Using the “Photo Analysis Worksheet” form from the National Archives,
have students analyze some of the photographs in this collection. Discuss their
findings as a class and consider creating a classroom mural or individual posters
about living under the threat of nuclear attack.
Activity #6
“News Magazine Scavenger Hunt”
Using the LIFE and Saturday Evening Post magazines, have students compare and
contrast these magazines with current copies of Newsweek, Life, or Time. What
do they see that is similar? What’s different? Many activities can be
developed around the articles surrounding President Kennedy’s assassination
and the space walk as both of these events are representative of the turbulent
Cold War years.