It was World War I all over again, sans trenches, at New England Tech last Friday, as the East Greenwich High School sophomore class gathered for a day of debate and war games.

Four years ago, social studies and English teachers teamed up to design a study unit for the students on the First World War. After six weeks of study, the unit culminates at New England Tech. The university was conveniently empty because of spring break.

“This project came about from a collaboration between Andrew Perrin and myself years ago,” said English teacher Tim Kenney. “At the time, Andy and I were teaching honors sophomores, so we had those students in common. We wanted to try to have some sort of “event” that would serve as a culminating activity for all our students, so we developed the WWI debate. As the years past, we created a humanities team in which two English teachers and two history teachers would teach all the sophomores. This project is the culmination of a five-week unit that began in their history classes.”

The students are sorted into different “teams” – country alliances. On Friday, a coalition was formed of Germany, France and Russia won the day because those three countries collectively earned enough points to win.