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From: Dean Schneider <schneiderd>
Date: Wed, 19 Apr 2006 08:57:40 -0500
I've been doing a Holocaust unit in my English classes for years, using fiction, nonfiction, picture books, and videos. Since our 8th grade takes a trip to Washington, they include the Holocaust Museum on their itinerary and are well prepared (at least as well as one can be) for their experience there. Traditionally, we read M.E. Kerr's Gentlehands and Elie Wiesel's Night and Susan Bachrach's Tell Them We Remember, and several students always want to read more, so I bring in other books from my collection. Now, with Susan Campbell Bartoletti's Hitler Youth out, I'm changing things around. We're going to read that as our first book; it's nonfiction writing at its best and a great focus on the youth of Germany, a connection students will appreciate. The author will then visit my classes to talk with my students. Then we'll read Night, and students will choose one more book from a selection of some of the really good Holocaust books: Jerry Spinelli's Milkweed, Uri Orlev's Run, Boy, Run, Kerr's Gentlehands, Anne
Frank, Jennifer Armstrong and Irene Gut Opdyke's In My Hands, Daniel Half Human, MAUS, and others.
Even though there are enough great books to do a much longer unit, I keep it at one quarter of the school year, and the other quarters we read other books, some of which tie in to themes raised by a Holocaust study - the mob scene in To Kill A Mockingbird, a Vermont town standing up to the Klan in Karen Hesse's Witness, and various ways various characters learn to stand up for themselves and others in so many good novels. Even Nancy Farmer's The House of the Scorpion, which we're currently reading, has a clear Holocaust parallel, when El Patron, the drug lord of his kingdom of Opium, is described as a f?hrer, relying on slave labor to amass his fortune and maintain his power. It's important to make connections beyond the Holocaust, to demonstrate to students that the hatred and cruelty of the Nazis was not an isolated example.
Dean Schneider
Ensworth School
Nashville, Tennessee 37205
schneiderd at ensworth.com
Received on Wed 19 Apr 2006 08:57:40 AM CDT
Date: Wed, 19 Apr 2006 08:57:40 -0500
I've been doing a Holocaust unit in my English classes for years, using fiction, nonfiction, picture books, and videos. Since our 8th grade takes a trip to Washington, they include the Holocaust Museum on their itinerary and are well prepared (at least as well as one can be) for their experience there. Traditionally, we read M.E. Kerr's Gentlehands and Elie Wiesel's Night and Susan Bachrach's Tell Them We Remember, and several students always want to read more, so I bring in other books from my collection. Now, with Susan Campbell Bartoletti's Hitler Youth out, I'm changing things around. We're going to read that as our first book; it's nonfiction writing at its best and a great focus on the youth of Germany, a connection students will appreciate. The author will then visit my classes to talk with my students. Then we'll read Night, and students will choose one more book from a selection of some of the really good Holocaust books: Jerry Spinelli's Milkweed, Uri Orlev's Run, Boy, Run, Kerr's Gentlehands, Anne
Frank, Jennifer Armstrong and Irene Gut Opdyke's In My Hands, Daniel Half Human, MAUS, and others.
Even though there are enough great books to do a much longer unit, I keep it at one quarter of the school year, and the other quarters we read other books, some of which tie in to themes raised by a Holocaust study - the mob scene in To Kill A Mockingbird, a Vermont town standing up to the Klan in Karen Hesse's Witness, and various ways various characters learn to stand up for themselves and others in so many good novels. Even Nancy Farmer's The House of the Scorpion, which we're currently reading, has a clear Holocaust parallel, when El Patron, the drug lord of his kingdom of Opium, is described as a f?hrer, relying on slave labor to amass his fortune and maintain his power. It's important to make connections beyond the Holocaust, to demonstrate to students that the hatred and cruelty of the Nazis was not an isolated example.
Dean Schneider
Ensworth School
Nashville, Tennessee 37205
schneiderd at ensworth.com
Received on Wed 19 Apr 2006 08:57:40 AM CDT
