Throughout our unit on World War I, we relied on primary sources – texts and images from the time period – to understand what the conflict was like for leaders, soldiers, and citizens. We also wanted to understand how perspectives on the war drastically shifted from the beginning of the conflict to its end.
As a culminating project, students created “found poems,” or poems made entirely of text from other sources. Each of their three poems explores a different period of the war – before, during, and after. Students used only primary source texts, including propaganda posters, articles, letters, regulations, songs, and even other poems from the time period.
Students used superscript citations to note the sources of their text, you can locate these original sources on our citations sheet at the bottom of this page. We also encourage you to read the Artist Statements – located on the last page of each student’s poetry document – to understand what themes the students wanted to highlight in their poems.
