Children of the Holocaust
Children of the Holocaust
Point of View Project
In collaborative groups students will read The Diary of Anne Frank, A Play, conduct research, read memoirs and fictional books related to the Holocaust, and create an element of the museum exhibit. All 8th grade classes will contribute parts to the completed exhibit, which will be displayed in the library and the gym at open house.
Learning Objectives:
1. Students will read and respond to historically significant works of literature and information materials/media that reflect and enhance their studies of literature, history and social science.
2. Students will use multiple multimedia sources to conduct research on a topic about the Holocaust.
3. Students will collaborate within a group to create an element of the multi-media museum exhibit.
4. All students will tour the entire exhibit once it is completed.
These learning objectives will be accomplished using current media tools and online research in order to transform the research process into an experience that will deepen their understanding of the historical period.
Learning Goal: Our goal for this unit is to create empathy in 8th graders at Daniel J. Savage Middle School. Reading about Anne Frank and studying the Holocaust through literature is a particularly relevant and appropriate topic for this age group, and reading poignant accounts of other children’s experiences enables teachers to help students empathize with those who experienced the Holocaust and make connections to the world around them.
Overview: This project was supported in part by a grant from The Olga Lengyel Institute for Holocaust Studies and Human Rights. We greatly appreciate the contribution of memoirs purchased through this grant.
At Daniel J. Savage Middle School we feel it is crucial to expand the study of the Holocaust beyond The Diary of Anne Frank, A Play, and we strive to build and expand our study each year. We added a Children of the Holocaust - Point of View Project in the 2017/2018 school year, which became a core piece of our teaching and learning about this unit.
About our curriculum: We are a 1:1 iPad and Google for Education school using the English Language Arts McGraw-Hill Connect Education/StudySync online curriculum. The eighth grade Unit 2, In Time of War, specifically addresses an in-depth study of The Diary of Anne Frank, A Play by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett and includes Elie Wiesel’s Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech. During this 10 week unit, we utilize materials from a forum held at University of San Francisco in 2012 and the HEN satellite training in Elk Grove, California 2013, as well as online resources from USHMM, Yad Vashem, Jewish Virtual Library, USC Shoah Foundation, The Museum of Tolerance, The Anne Frank Museum, the video Near Normal Man which tells the story of Holocaust survivor Ben Stern, and a video clip on Friedle Dicker-Brandeis from the video Unlikely Heroes to create historical context about the Holocaust for students.
Memoirs provided by a grant from The Olga Lengyel Institute for Holocaust Studies and Human Rights enhanced and deepened our unit of study. With this grant we purchased two class sets of books to add to our Holocaust literature selections available in our library. Each student read and discussed fiction and/or non-fiction literature that revealed a child’s point of view during the Holocaust. These class sets in addition to our current library resources were shared among our ten sections of eighth grade classes.
Pictures of student work from this unit of study:
Students independently read literature, created Flipgrids and symbolism projects about their books, and wrote ekphrastic poems in response to children's art from the Holocaust.
Museum Project:
Each class participated in a collaborative research project in which they created an element for our interactive museum exhibit. We displayed the exhibit in the library and eventually at open house. All students can participate in the exhibit through the Google Classroom site created for this project by joining with the code. Here participants can listen to podcasts of the research that provides information about each part of the exhibit. Works Cited are attached to each part of the exhibit. Museum Project Gallery.
Rabbi Visit:
Rabbi Bochner, our local rabbi, came to our school and gave a wonderful presentation to all of our 8th grade classes on his family’s journey through the Holocaust. We greatly appreciate this powerful component and his generosity with his time and knowledge.
Outcomes:
Students synthesized what they learned and ultimately gained empathy and depth of knowledge. We displayed student projects from this in-depth study in our library for all students to experience. This display will then be moved to the gym for our open house event at the end of the year. This webpage seeks to showcase the depth of knowledge that students gained from this project.
We feel that this project has expanded the range of learning experiences beyond Anne’s story. By studying individual stories and sharing ideas, students learned beyond the limits of our core curriculum. Our guest speaker and expert, who is our local Rabbi, moved students in a way that we as teachers cannot. We hope our learning experience and sharing will extend to the upcoming students, parents and community members who visit our school and create interest in and anticipation for this area of study in eighth grade.
Participation:
4 eighth grade teachers
~250-300 8th grade students participated in this project
500 students pass through the library to observe and participate in the museum exhibit
500-800 students, staff and community members attend open house
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