Identity Exploration

Night by Elie Wiesel Unit Plan

Copy of Unit 2 - NIGHT- Unit Plan

This is my four week unit plan that focuses on the Holocaust memoir Night by Elie Wiesel. As you can tell by the essential question and rationale, I wanted to focus on identity during this unit. Elie Wiesel's identity is greatly impacted and is constantly shifting due to his experiences during the Holocaust. As my rationale explains, students spent three weeks (duration of the text) learning about Elie’s identity and the circumstances that affected him. We then used the last week to connect this concept to their own lives in order to create relevancy and give space for self-exploration. Since classroom community is a huge, if not the most important, aspect of my teaching philosophy, I wanted to use writing in my first unit to get to know my students on a more personal level.

Step One: Tracing Elie Wiesel's Identity

Click Me: Motifs Lesson Plan

Motifs

Tracing Motifs

Students were asked to select a motif, either silence, faith, memory, survival, or dehumanization, to trace for the entirety of the novel. All of these motifs, and the change that occurs within them, reveal parts of Elie's identity shifting and changing. Students collaborated with their motif group each week and synthesized their thoughts on our classroom Padlet. This allowed students to notice and trace the changes that were occurring within Elie's identity. This mini-lesson was also crucial for students to understand before their summative constructed response. Their summative constructed response focused on motifs, theme statements, and students continued working on claims. This constructed response required formal writing and demonstrated writing skills that we actively worked on throughout the unit.

Click Me: Close Read Lesson Plan

Night 7-9 Close Read

Close Reads

I also utilized close reads while teaching students about Elie's identity. Annotating, answering the questions on the side, and discussing as small groups and as a whole class, helped students understand his continuously shifting identity. They also helped zoom in on the circumstances he was facing.

Step Two: Student Identity Exploration

Click this button to see my lesson plan for all of the activities listed below!

Identity Photo Portfolio Week

EE Identity Night WN

Introducing Personal Identity

Throughout the unit, I made sure to create occasional writer notebook prompts that dealt with student identity in some way. I wanted to slowly but surely introduce personal identity to my students. We always talk through these prompts with small group and whole group discussions.

Identity Exploration

Exploring Student Identity

Although it may seem obvious and simple, identity can be a hard thing to understand, especially for a sophomore in high school. I wanted to create a tool to help them explore their identity at their own pace. These slides were designed to assist students in discovering parts of their identity. This would later help them decide which parts of their identity they wanted to explore in their photo portfolio.

Step Three: Summative Identity Photo Portfolio

I wanted to give students the opportunity to play around with their writing in this portfolio. We had spent the past few weeks focusing on formal writing (W2), and I wanted my students to practice writing creatively if they chose to do so (W3). The writing directions were lax, but I knew that some students would struggle with creative writing. We spent class time working on revising what they had written to make it more creative. We specifically talked about how "zooming in" to a memory connected to what you are writing about can help revise for style. My students amazed me at how well they handled this task. No two students took the same approach when it came to their writing, and that was something that I thoroughly enjoyed.

Instructions & Rubric

Photo Portfolio Assignment

Peer Review

Photo Portfolio Peer Review Checklist

Ms. Reese's Identity Portfolio Examples

My Example Slides

A Project Filled With Sun in a Unit Filled With Night

Student Feedback

I actively seek my students' opinions and feedback on how our class is going. Again, this ties into building a strong classroom community which is one of my top priorities. I gave them a "Night Unit Feedback" form via Google Forms, and one of the questions I asked was "If you could pick to do MORE of one kind of assignment, what would it be?". As you can see from the photo to the left, many of my students requested we do more activities like the photo portfolio project. Since this was my first time assigning a summative project, I was extremely proud of myself. I was also proud of my students for how vulnerable they were willing to be with me through their projects.

Being a Vulnerable and Honest Teacher

This project allowed me to use my comments to be vulnerable and honest with my students. Many times, we are taught that as teachers we should not allow our students to know information about ourselves. That we should be viewed as a teacher and that is it. If one of my main priorities as an educator is to get to know my students beyond the role they play Monday-Friday, then why on Earth would I adhere to that advice? Why would I want my students to strictly view me as who I am Monday-Friday? Listen. I understand the potential danger of students getting to know you, but I am not suggesting that I let my students know who I am dating, the drama in my life, what my plans are this weekend, etc.. They aren't my friends, but they are my students. I believe that giving them small insights into who I am as a person and my life experiences thus far helps create the trust that is necessary for a classroom community to thrive. For example, I recently asked students to create a cultural pie chart for themselves in class. Before I had students fill out theirs, I showed them mine. A piece of my pie chart was the fact that I have ADHD because that IS something that affects my day-to-day life, ESPECIALLY while I am at work. My students know that I am spacey at times. They have seen me teach a lesson and then say "Uhhhh... I totally forgot what I was going to say". It is something that can sometimes affect both me and them. A lot of my students struggle with mental health disorders, why would I hide mine? I believe in giving and receiving vulnerability. I thought out my responses to each of my students; below are some of my responses.