Utilizing Literature Circles

As a history teacher, I’m always concerned about how to most effectively guide students through a book.  Years ago, when I assigned All But My Life by Gerda Weissmann Klein, students “completed” reading guides that followed the book.  It became increasingly clear that students were treating this assignment as busy work- filling in random comments and copying reading guides.  This trivialized Gerda’s story so I was eager to try something new.  Several years ago, English Language Arts colleagues modeled a literature circle with MCHE's Isak Federman Holocaust Teaching Cadre.  This completely changed the way I approached All But My Life.  Students are naturally interested in Gerda’s story and her writing is easily understandable and engaging for high school students.  Their interest, coupled with the reading quizzes I gave, kept the students reading and allowed the students to have meaningful conversations during class time.

To further acquaint yourself with literature circles, Facing Historyprovides some excellent tips for literature circles, especially covering the sensitive subject of genocide.  They also include valuable assessment and extension activities. 

The literature circles allowed my honors sophomores to develop a deeper understanding of the complex history and an appreciation for Gerda’s compelling story.  My literature circle discussion questions were adapted from the teaching materials provided by the Gerda and Kurt Klein Foundation.  I taught this book to honors World History students for roughly ten years and highly recommend it for teenagers (15+) and adults. 

3 weeks to teach...

This year my time spent teaching the Holocaust has been reduced from a quarter to maybe 3 weeks.  I am now teaching social studies instead of literature.  Trying to condense my material has been quite a challenge.  That is the main reason I chose to continue using the Echoes and Reflections curriculum with my8th grade students. I have had great success with this program in the past. This program is divided into ten lessons.  Each lesson provides a historical context for the topic as well as survivor testimony and primary source material, including photographs, diary entries, poems and historical documents.  You certainly do not have to teach everything in each unit or even teach all of the units, but incorporating the survivor testimony would be a great way to bring the individual aspect of Holocaust study to you students. 

In addition to Echoes and Reflections, I am still having my students read a variety of Holocaust literature.  Within their literature circle groups, they read The Diary of Anne Frank, A Coming Evil, The Boy Who Dared, Behind the Bedroom Wall, Torn Thread, Play to the Angels, Someone Named Eva, Yellow Star, I Have Lived a Thousand Years and All But My Life.

As a class they will read Surviving Hitler by Andrea Warren.  This memoir chronicles the experiences of local Holocaust survivor, Jack Mandelbaum during his adolescent years in World War II Europe.  There is an excellent teaching guide for this selection on the MCHE web site (requires registration).

 

I always have my students use the MCHE or USHMM websites for any information that they need for assignments or projects in my class.

 

Nazis and aliens...

I happened to be up late recently grading essays when a television show came on titled, “Unsealed:  Alien Files.”  In it, they claim to be “unearthing the biggest secret on planet Earth,” and proceed to start saying that the Nazis had alien technology that enabled them to become the world power they did before and during the war.  I could not believe my eyes and ears.  After I closed my open mouth, my first response was to want to write the station to tell them how I could not believe they would be so irresponsible as to air such a ridiculous story.  But, then, I remembered that there were all types of “reality” television shows on that attract such “fringe” viewers to them.  Some of the “experts” who were featured on the show were publishers of UFO Magazine and the web site TheBlackVault.com, which I obviously do not subscribe to or visit, or I would have already known that Hitler was trying to build a time machine.

 My most pressing concern was that Holocaust deniers would use something like this to say that the Holocaust did not happen, that people were not responsible for the atrocities that happened, and that the truth was unknown.  Sometimes, it is difficult for me to understand how anyone could deny the Holocaust happened, and then I see this on television, and I think anything is possible.  However, there is more evidence that the Holocaust happened than I saw evident on the show that aliens helped the Nazis rise to power during World War II.  This is once again validation that Holocaust education is so important to make sure that people know the truth.  I just hope I was the only person watching this show.  

Share your ideas with me!

I teach in a school with the IB diploma program.  When students take IB History they have to write what is called an Internal Assessment (IA).  The IA is basically a research paper based on an essential question.  Most teachers encourage students to research a question based in the 20^th century, because a majority of the curriculum is focused on that time period.  What I find is that many students want to write about the Holocaust.  Because I work at the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education, most of the History teachers send the students interested in studying the Holocaust to me for guidance.  I really enjoy working with these students, but find that most of the time they just want to describe life/death/medical experiments in the camps, which does not really address an essential question.  I’ve suggested topics like examining the different experiences of men and women in the camps.  I’ve also encouraged kids to think about the use of science in justifying policies, like German eugenics programs.   I wasn’t sure if anyone had any other great ideas I could suggest for students.  I want to make sure I don’t give students a topic they are not intellectually able to handle—in other words I sometimes fear they will come to an “inappropriate” conclusion because the complexity of the topic is too difficult for them to really understand.  Any thoughts or suggestions would be great!