Bomb: The Race to Build—and Steal—the World's Most Dangerous Weapon

Use this activity to engage all types of learners, while requiring that they refer to and incorporate details from the text over the course of the activity.

ACTIVITY 1: “Role Play Interviews”

In this activity, students create questions to ask the book’s key figures, then role play with a partner in an interview.

If the book’s key figures visited an interview show, what questions would you want to ask them? How might they answer?

• Select a key figure from the text and pair up with a partner.
• Compose 2-3 questions to ask the key figure your role play partner chooses to represent. For example, you might choose to be Heisenberg and your partner Moe Berg. Your partner could ask you how you feel about working for Hitler, and you could ask your partner why they chose not to shoot Heisenberg.
• Take turns asking each other the questions. Answer the questions based on details from Bomb. Try to bring some of the figure’s personality traits to your delivery of the answers based on what you learned from the text.
• Once you and your partner have rehearsed the interviews, “replay” at least one of the questions for the class.

Teaching Suggestion: It may be beneficial to review a list of potential key figures for this activity and limit choices to strong possibilities.