Two new lesson plans on the Iran conflict from the Economist Educational Foundation

Saw this one in my in-box last week (for the newer of the two lessons) but was already committed to finish the 3-part series on birthright citizenship. This "crisis" I expect to be in the news for the rest of the school year - whether it ends peacefully or not - so I think either of these lessons would be useful in April, May, or beyond.

Before I get into the two lesson plans, I wanted to share at the top some good sites to monitor the situation in the Middle East. I don't do a lot of specific current events lessons on here, but at the same time most of these resources are used regularly in other areas (for example, Al-Jazeera covers the Middle East and African countries more completely than almost any outlet in Europe or North America does). It also matters if the resource is free or behind a "paywall" - I like some stories from the Washington Post, for example, but I'm not willing to pay that much for a few stories each year.

Free Media Resources specific to the U.S./Iran Conflict:

"U.S./Israel War on Iran", Al-Jazeera, Apr 2026, https://www.aljazeera.com/tag/israel-iran-conflict/ for individual stories on the conflict OR USE https://www.aljazeera.com/ to access live updates in the upper left corner of their home page

"Special Series on Middle East Conflict", National Public Radio (NPR), Apr 2026, https://www.npr.org/series/1205445976/middle-east-crisis Regular stories on the conflict and how it affects individuals - tends to be 3-4 stories per day rather than "breaking news" updates

"Tracking U.S. Military Assets in the Iran War", Forward Defense (a program of the Atlantic Council), Apr 2026, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/commentary/trackers-and-data-visualizations/tracking-us-military-assets-in-the-iran-war/ If you are specifically focused on the military commitment and resources, this site has been keeping track of U.S. troop movements regularly

One more article I would recommend reading - "AllSides’ Unique Approach to Covering the Iran War", All Sides, Apr 2026, https://www.allsides.com/blog/allsides-unique-approach-covering-iran-war I particularly like the way they note that labels of "left", "center", and "right" may ignore other ideological biases - the article also links very specific media outlets in the Middle East

AS A NOTE - among paysites I have primarily been monitoring Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and The Free Press for their coverage of the conflict

LESSON #1 - "Iran: a just war? - The Middle East, intervention and the just war theory":

Lesson link - https://talk.economistfoundation.org/resources/iran-a-just-war/

Home Page for the "Economist Educational Foundation" (may require you be signed in to access) - https://talk.economistfoundation.org/

Sneak Peek (below) of what some elements of the lesson look like (I'm not going to include much, since I want you to visit their website):

This video clip is NOT part of the lesson, but in case your students are not familiar with "just war theory", this clip from Crash Course might help:

LESSON #2 - "Strait of Hormuz: war, oil and the cost of living":

This one is a more timely lesson (makes sense, since it was released in early April) looking at the issues around the Strait of Hormuz and the right of shipping to pass freely through the area. Like the first example, it includes a lesson plan, PDF materials, and a PowerPoint set of slides to assist with the in-class presentation. Again, I'm not going to include too much here, and once again I will add a recent video clip (not from the lesson) at the very end:

Lesson link - https://talk.economistfoundation.org/resources/strait-of-hormuz/

Video link from CBS shared below - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mS2RxSl8Cm8

Sneak Peek (below) of what some elements of the lesson look like (again, I'm not going to include much, since I want you to visit their website):

Once again, this video clip is NOT part of the lesson. It is a recent (like in the past few hours) clip that does the best job I have seen of emphasizing the maps of the region to show the significance of the Strait as well as the actions of both Iran and the U.S. going into the current crisis.