09.09 - Prior Knowledge of WWII and The Holocaust

We started today's class by focusing on what people had learned about WWII and The Holocaust so far from reading Elie Wiesel's Night. Everyone responded to the following prompt in their writing journal:

Look at the sticky notes you've placed in your book for things you have learned.
Choose one sticky note fact and find a way to illustrate the fact in your writing journal.
Your drawing can be either literal or symbolic*.

*In class, we talked about how some of the facts that people learned might be troubling and they might not want to draw them. This is where drawing something symbolic could come in. If necessary, people could choose to caption their image to help explain it.

After everyone had a chance to respond to this prompt, we reviewed what people had learned so far by sharing out their drawings.

Next, we got back into partner groups from last class and did an activity to wrap up our representation of our prior knowledge (what people knew coming into this unit) around World War II and The Holocaust. To do this, we had each partner group looked at a poster of the information everyone put down as known information about our topic and sorted that information into three to four categories that they put on note cards. I explained this process using the following illustration:

(click to enlarge)

We then posted these cards on the back bulletin board which we will be using to keep track of our knowledge in this unit. Groups explained their cards as they posted them on the board. We have two groups left to go and will start with them next class.


Homework:

Continue to read in Night according to the class reading schedule.

When you come across a new fact / piece of information / perspective, summarize it on a sticky note and put the note in your book.