Number the Stars/Lois Lowry

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Permalink Reply by Nancy Bosch on February 18, 2008 at 5:51pm

I think a scavenger hunt about the Holocaust sounds creepy. I'd suggest using the primary source documents. like the Voyage of the St Louis, or The Anne Frank Museum . You could also look at the story of these kids in Kansas.

There is a student project going on called Many Voices for Darfur, you students could take a look at genocides going on today. I thnk if you are going to teach students about The Holocaust you need to do it with a depth that will respect the event or not do it at all.

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Permalink Reply by Andrew Pass on February 19, 2008 at 9:09pm

Nancy,

Before I would use a word like "creepy," I would want to have a deeper understanding of the scavenger hunt. Life is Beautiful was a comedy about the Holocaust and I personally thought that it was a fantastic depiction. It's goal was not to necessarily teach about the entire Holocaust but simply one aspect of it. Another example is the book Maus by Art Spiegelman. The book is a comic strip which depicts Nazis as cats and Jews as mice. It was very well written and it conveys a powerful lesson. I could easily imagine web quests that while speaking to the students in an appropriate language that they understand simultaneously teach the horrors that individuals can do to one another.

I'd love to read other opinions on this issue.

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Permalink Reply by Nancy Bosch on February 20, 2008 at 6:14am

It's the terminology I object to, using the internet and various resources to study the Holocaust is fine by me--but the term "scavenger hunt" is too cutesy a term to depict what students are really doing. I also don't like the idea of studying the Holocaust in isolation, which elementary classrooms tend to do through reading one book like Number the Stars or Diary of Anne Frank. I'd want my students to get the "big" picture. N

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Permalink Reply by Patti Lewis on February 20, 2008 at 7:48am

Happy Snow Day to Cincinnati! Thanks for your comments. I used the wrong terminology about the holocaust scavenger hunt. The scavenger hunt applies to Lois Lowry, the author. I do include sites about the holocaust so the assignment is really teacher directed. Some students do delve deeper and find many graphics that are completely sad. Rest assured I do not find the Holocaust a cutesy assignment. I am the media specialist and I plan this web activity with the students' LA teacher. This year, as a district, we have been embracing web 2.0 technology and my idea was to connect to another classroom studying Number the Stars and Lois Lowry. As far as teaching the holocaust in isolation I think that would be impossible to do given our standards and the fact that in my opinion, the Holocaust is still a living history and "current event". We study the book and it is a good preparation for later and a fine piece of Newbery literature. Thanks for the input!


Patti

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Permalink Reply by Nancy Bosch on February 20, 2008 at 8:53am

I knew that you were doing a rich and relevant study and didn't mean to imply otherwise. Sometimes in our district the curriculum is an inch deep and a mile wide, students never get the big picture. Good luck in your studies. N.

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Permalink Reply by Patti Lewis on February 20, 2008 at 9:51am

Boy, I hear this so much (inch deep and a mile wide). Right now I am working on my reading endorsement and in my class we get waylayed a lot talking about the current methods we have to use due to the "evil tests" . So the challenge is making it matter to the kids. THIS IS HARD. I think technology helps in a big way. Number one, they love it. Number two, it really helps connect some of the dots. In our district we are also being introduced to UBD (understanding by design) - Are any of you using IBD?

Patti

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Permalink Reply by Nancy Bosch on February 20, 2008 at 10:06am

Never heard of it--but it has to be better than what our teachers are doing which is 2 hours of reading (Open Court) and an hour and a half of Math. No time for SS or Science, creativity, writing or research. I'm lucky I teach in a gifted program and write all my own curriculum. In 2001 I facilitated the best work of my life. We spent the year studying WWII and ended with the interviewing 54 WW veterans. You can see my blog about the final project here.

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Permalink Reply by Andrew Pass on February 19, 2008 at 9:21pm

Have you seen this video: http://college.usc.edu/vhi/exhibits/childrenspeak/shoahContent.html. My thought is that you could ask students to use the information presented in this video-cast to develop "personal narratives." Students might develop blog entries or wiki posts explaining how they felt as "Jews living during the period of the Holocaust."

Patti, I'm not sure if you know about Teachingcontent.ning.com but it is a new social network that I've started designed as a place where teachers can discuss content that they are teaching and how technology might help them teach this content.

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Permalink Reply by Alice Barr on February 20, 2008 at 9:07am

Have you looked in the iTunes Store in the podcast section?
Open iTunes, go to the iTunes Store, then click on Podcasts, then search for US Holocasut Memorial Museum to get started. There is an amazing amout of content there. What I like is the fact that students can download these items to their computer and listen over and over. You can also right click on a podcast and copy and paste the link so that it's easy for students to get to it from a webpage.

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Permalink Reply by Nancy Bosch on February 20, 2008 at 9:37am

Isn't technology amazing? :)

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Permalink Reply by Patti Lewis on February 20, 2008 at 9:57am

Thanks! I'll go there.

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