Read Lindquist's article, Guidelines for Teaching the Holocaust: Common Pedagogical Errors. Assign each student one of the eight pedagogical error to read and complete a research log (one column for new words, one column for notes-like Cornell -- with a summary on the bottom. Students join other students who read the same section and write a small poster with the details -- errors teachers make when teaching about the Holocaust followed by recommendations. (Jigsaw) Add questions on the poster that you have about the Holocaust.
Day 2:
Students go to the posters their created yesterday and add to their notes using posters students from other classes made. Notice how informational texts are written and then how different readers make sense of the same text differently. Conversations about texts deepens meaning. Then, tape up the posters around the room and have students do a gallery walk in silents. You can set a 2 minute timer, and at the end of each 2 -minute segment, then quietly walk to the next poster, read, and take notes.
Debrief: What did you learn today that you didn't know before you came in? Use this time to talk about how complex and nuanced teaching and learning about the Holocaust is.
Day 3:
Watch a 4 minute video clip and have students do a research log writing down names of places, people, and dates in the language column and then notes in the note column:
Read an article about the Holocaust from the Choices curriculum. Again, this informational text is organized by headings. Students will create a double-entry journal. One column is labeled quote, the other is labeled response. Students should read one section, stop, write one quote that they think is essential to the section or particularly interesting, then write in the response column why they chose it then extend the reasoning to connect to something else we've learned this year in reading or history. Do this for each of the five parts.
The teacher should do the first one or two with students, and then have students do this on their own. Monitor their quotes and responses and offer feedback to encourage their thinking to extend to the article or video, at least, or to other texts we've read this year.
Discuss the quotes and responses whole group one section at a time.
Day 4
Context. While Common Core is cautioning too much "front loading" for reading, responsive teaching recognizes that some explicit instruction is useful. To read Night, by Elie Wiesel, and considering the pedagogical errors teachers make, students do need some geographic and historical context to understand why in 1941 the Jews in Sighet had not emigrated outside the "range" of the Axis forces or why, in 1944, they denied they would soon be deported after eye witness reports warned Sighet would soon be invaded. Students unfamiliar with Judaism would benefit from some of the basic tenants of the religion to understand young twelve year old Elie Wiesel's dreams of becoming a cabbalaist or what a Hasidic Jew is. Thus, today, provide some context. I actually have a student, who is Jewish, preparing a Prezi about being Jewish. She has been coming in at lunch for a few weeks now to work on it with me, and just the other day she and her mother went to Starbucks to work through some familial details in her story.
Read the first 10 pages or so of Night and ask students to track events, response, and consequences of 3 events in those pages; for example, event: Moshe the Beadle was deported because he was a foreign Jew; response: Elie and the people of Sighet soon forgot about him; what happened: Moshe miraculously survived and came back to warn them.
Day 5
Student lecture on Being Jewish.
Terrible Things. Journal about terrible things and yours/people's responses. Read Terrible Things by Eve Bunting; discuss how the creatures react. Discuss allegory and ask students to write about which part of chapter 1 in Night Terrible Things is allegorizing.
Read chapter 2 and respond to two questions about Schacter's foreshadowing and repetition; use text support for your responses.
Day 6
Journal for 8: Write about uncertaity. Perhaps students would write about how they feel becoming a freshman or perhaps they will write advice to 6th graders coming into 8th grade. The idea is to get students thinking about uncertainty and the power that comes from "knowing" or being the one "more experienced." This may lead to discussions of abuse of power to some degree.
read chapter 3 in class; discuss how in 1941 Hitler invaded Russia and needed many supplies and weapons. Many concentration camps were labor camps where prisoners made weapons. In 1942, at the Wannsee Conference, Hitler and his allies developed the "final solution" to "liquidate" or "elminate" all the Jews; lethal injections, poisonous gas, and gas chambers were added to the camps.
As we read chapters 3-5, we will make a flow chart of Wiesel's experiences noticing moments of uncertainty and advice that may or may be reliable.
read chapter 4 for homework continuing the flow chart and responding to a few questions about the chapter for comprehension purposes.
Day 7
Journal for 8: Value vs. Worth. Write about something you value that is not worth a lot of money or something worth a lot of money that you do not value.
quiz on chapter 4 for discussion purposes and to bring all students up on events; connect this to the journal (the gold crown, the spoon, the knife, bread)
read chapter 5 together; throughout this section, Wiesel uses language related to death, darkness, night, and decay to convey horrors aruond him. The word choice/symbolic language is important to point out and encourage students to notice and to tie back to the journal we wrote at the beginning of class.
For chapters 6-9, the Allies invade Europe on D-Day, June 6, 1944. His father died in January 1945, and Wiesel was liberated in April 1945. At the time of imprisonment, Germany was already losing the war. Gassing and mass shootings escalated despite the need for more war production laborers. Many camps were closed in the spring of 1944, not long after Wiesel arrived in Auschwitz. Hope and hopeless had a lot to do with survival according to this memoir.
Students will read chapters 6 and 7 for homework doing a double-entry journal. They should note a quote that is important to the book and respond to 1) what is the significance of this quote, 2) how does it related to other parts of the memoir, and/or 3) what bring interpretation challenges.
Day 8
Journal for 8: Write about hope and hopelessness. Define it. Describe it. What is its purpose? What are situations when you've experienced either?
Fishbowl with the dialogue journals. Students will share their quotes and interpretations in a fishbowl format. 8 minutes rounds. This took the entire period, but if possible, read chapter 8 together.
Day 9
read chapters 8 and 9
Prepare some sort of "test" to evaluate their understanding of this text before going on to The Diary of Anne Frank. Night shows that from which the Franks were hiding, but a test will give them an opportunity to process Night as a whole story (with gaps). The format should follow the sort of work we did reading, so the questions should require close reading with a short response using textual evidence. I wrote a test with one question from each chapter including the page number so that students would re-read that part more closely.
Homework -- research Anne Frank, complete a research log
Day 10
Journal for 8: The situation is that there is a tornado warning and you must go to your basement or crawl space with your family for 24 hours with no electricity, internet or plumbing. What would you bring? What conflicts do you anticipate? How will you react? How will other family members react? What might you or your family do to make it work?
Discuss this and then ask students to share the research they did on Anne Frank. Then, show this video in which a young girl reads excerpts from Anne's diary. We learn that she received the diary in June of 1942 and went into hiding in July 1942. Discuss this as a diary genre that was adapted as a play by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett. (You may also show a map of Holland in comparison to Romania and talk about who Elie Wiesel's story overlaps with Anne Frank's yet they responded to the war differently. This also addresses one of the eight pedagogical errors teachers make when teaching the Holocaust.)
Read Act 1, scene 1 of the drama by Goodrich and Hackett discussing the genre of the drama, including staging and how it is an adaptation of the entire diary. Adaptations require selecting, which means aspects are not included, and it also involves adding to provide context for the audience. In Scene 1, it is November 1945, and we know from Wiesel's story that this is seven months after Buchenwald was liberated. Act this out with students.
Make copies of scene 2 and ask students to highlight their assigned parts. In small groups, have students read through the scene to experience the staging and role play. Note the difficulty of reading a play and how the staging is what provides characterization. Discuss the "rules" for living in the Annex and how the Franks and Van Daans must be feeling, along with Kraler and Miep.
Next:
Consider that adapting a text to another visual genre requires the director to make choices of additions, revisions, or even eliminating aspects of the text. View what might be considered the first two scenes of the 2009 representation of Anne Frank.
First make a chart that identifies the time, setting, characters, and conflicts of the text and then notice what choices the director makes to adapt it to the screen. Stop the video at certain parts to illuminate where and when the director chooses to begin the film; the change in setting; the interpretation of characters; the development of the conflict.
read scene 3.
Next -- go to the play or live production of the play followed by small group work to discuss the director's choices and its impact on your understanding of Anne Frank's story, the historical context, etc -- does it add, distract, deepen
Informative Essay: Different Representations of Anne Frank’s Story and Understanding the Holocaust
When a written story becomes a live play or a film, the director of the play or film has to make choices, and this may mean adding, taking away, or interpreting parts of the story for the purpose of the genre because the play is in front of a live audience and the film is viewed instead of read. Write an informative essay that addresses the following ideas and uses examples from your experiences reading and viewing representations of Anne Frank's diary.
· Who is Anne Frank and what were some of the ways Anne’s story is mis-taught (see the notes from the article about the errors teachers make when teaching about the Holocaust? (with specific details from your research and the article.)
· How does the script version of The Diary of Anne Frank begin? Talk about the year, place, conflict and characters from scene one to scene three. (a thorough paragraph that addresses all these ideas with specific examples from the text.)
· What are some of the choices that you noticed the director made in the live and/or film production of The Diary of Anne Frank? (give specific examples from the live play and/or film by describing what you saw in detail.)
· What was the impact of the choices on your understanding of Anne’s experience in the annex, the time period in history, the place, the characters, the problems/conflicts the characters experienced, and/or the theme? ( talk about several ways your understanding was impacted with specific examples.)
· Talk about why reading Anne Frank’s story is valuable for human beings and then talk about what also reading Night helped you to understand about the Holocaust? In other words, what did you learn from reading these two stories. How are they similar and different? ( give specific examples from the texts including historical facts.)
Student Sample
Pawel, 4/21/13
Anne Frank’s story and Understanding the Holocaust
Anne Frank was German-Jew born in Frankfurt, Germany. She was born June 12th, 1929 and lived during World War II (1939-1945). She and her family (Franks) as well as another family (Van Pels) and a dentist, Fritz Pfeffer went into hiding in Amsterdam, Holland while the Nazi’s were deporting hundreds of Jews every day to the concentration camps where most Jews died. Anne is famous for the diary she wrote while she was in the secret annex. There are many Books, Plays, and Movies based on Anne Frank’s diary. Some ways Anne’s story is mis-taught because there are many different people/survivors who have written stories and have info based on their own life experience at the concentration camps. According to the article I read about mistakes teachers make teaching the Holocaust, it says that often teaching about Anne Frank makes it seem like she was the main person of the Holocaust. Also, It says that the diaries that written about Anne Frank often don’t have all the correct dates and names of what actually happened at what time.
“The Diary of Anne Frank” by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett- Scene 1 begins in 1945 with Mr. Frank and Miep at the secret annex after the war is over and with Mr. Frank planning to leave Amsterdam, Holland. Miep is looking through all the stuff and papers that were left behind at the annex. Miep finds a lot of papers and she asks Mr. Frank what to do with them but, Mr. Frank replies to burn them all because he doesn’t want to have any bad memories. Miep then finds the diary that belongs to Anne Frank. She gives it to Mr. Frank and he starts to read it. Scene 2 begins in July,1942 with Mr. and Mrs. Van Daan waking up and nervously waiting for the Franks to arrive because the Franks were supposed to be there at 7. The secret annex that the two families are going to be hiding is located at the upper most level of a herb-spice workplace that Otto Frank owned. The Franks arrive at the secret annex and get settled. Miep and Mr. Kraler are the two people in the workplace that know about the Franks and Van Daans hiding. Both of them supply the families with food and other needed supplies. Mr. Frank reviews the rules that everyone must follow. They must stay quiet and not move around unless necessary, must not speak above whisper, run no water, not use the sink or W.C (water closet/bathroom) from 8am to 6pm. Mr. And Mrs. Van Daan are going to be sleeping upstairs and the rest are going to be sleeping downstairs. Peter has a cat named Mouschi which is a boy cat. Anne starts to talk with Peter and finds out that her, Margot, and Peter all went to the same school, The Jewish Secondary. Scene 3 begins in September, 1942 with all the people in the secret annex getting annoyed with each other. Anne takes Peter’s shoes and he chases her around and gets them back. Mr. Kraler asks Mr. Frank if it is okay if there is another person that moves in with them. Mr. Franks agrees. Mr. Dussel moves in and he is a Jewish Dentist. He informs everyone at the secret annex about what is happening to the Jews. He says more and more are being deported and that Jewish children come home to find their parents gone. Anne finds out that, that is what happened to her best friend. Mrs. Van Daan is getting annoyed with how much cigarettes Mr. Van Daan is smoking.
One thing that I noticed in the script version of “The Diary of Anne Frank” is that Margot told Anne that peter is not used to girls but in the film production Mr. Frank is the one who tells Anne that Peter is not used to girls. Another thing that I noticed that was different from the script and the film production is that in the script, when the robber comes and breaks into the herb-spice workplace, the people in the annex hear noise downstairs, but in the film production there is actually a robber that comes and tries to steal things.
The impact learning about Anne Frank had on my understanding of the holocaust is that I did not know that Jews were being deported in most countries in Europe like Holland. The time period in history mostly made me think about the concentration camps before I learned about Anne Frank. Problems people had both in the annex and at the concentration camps was starvation and fear of being killed by the Nazi’s. The theme was mostly fear and survival.
Reading Anne Frank’s story is valuable to human being because it makes a person think about how good our lives are and that we shouldn’t complain and get upset about little things in life compared to what Anne Frank and most Jews had to go through. The story Night helped me understand the holocaust because I got to hear from a survivor’s point of view in detail. The two stories are similar because both are about the Holocaust and both are stories about what it was like to live during that time period. Both of these stories are different because “The Diary of Anne Frank” is a diary and some names and dates are exact. But on the other hand “Night” was written from a survivor’s point of view with correct names and dates. For example, The name Van Daans is not the correct last name of the family in the secret annex but Van Pels is.
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