Grade 8 Students Explore Curiosities About World War I After Reading Kipling’s Choice

Oct 16, 2019 | Humanities, Impact, Inquiry, Maverick, Middle School News, Multiplier, PBL/IBL

This semester in Grade 8 Humanities with David Leflar, students are studying World War I by reading the book Kipling’s Choice.

Kipling’s Choice is a fictionalized story of a boy who grew up the son of a famous writer, living a charmed life, to the trenches of World War I where his young life ends.

Following reading this story, students worked independently to create an original infographic that detailed and described information from the book. In addition to the infographic, each student included a written description of the topic and information that they covered in their infographic.

Topics covered in the students infographics ranged from a timeline of World War I to the figurative language used throughout the book. One student looked into the different vehicles that were used during this era, while another studied the weapons used during this war.

Grade 8 Student Ellie McGoldrick shared, “This project was really interesting. I really enjoyed that I got to choose my own topic from the book to explore and then turn my research into an infographic. I chose figurative language because that was a big part of our unit. I also liked that Teacher Leflar let us be creative and use our artistic abilities.

Junie Shin added, “I decided to make a physical infographic and wanted to imply epitaphs by Rudyard Kipling. Rudyard Kipling was the author of our book, Kipling’s Choice, which was dedicated to his son who died as a Lieutenant in WWI. I mostly enjoyed tracing the silhouettes on the poster and corresponding them to the gravestones. During this project I learned a lot about epitaphs and how to interpret them. This unit, in general helped me gain a clearer vision of WWI. My biggest challenge was making the layout on the poster. I struggled to place the plaques, silhouettes, gravestones, and epitaph explanations all on the small poster, but in the end I made a satisfying layout. Another big challenge was understanding the epitaphs because the meanings dug deep. Overall, this project was very fun to do and had a fantastic outcome.

Through the reading of this fictionalized story, students were able to dive deeper into their curiosities and interests around the World War I period in a way that was most intriguing to them.