Exploring Holocaust Texts
from NCTE INBOX 6/10/08

Sixty-six years ago this week, Anne Frank received a small red and white diary as a present for her 13th birthday. Her diary has become one of the most read texts in the world, and students everywhere learn more about the Holocaust as they follow Frank's experiences. The following resources suggest techniques for exploring Holocaust texts with students at all academic levels.

Answering questions about the Holocaust can be challenging in the elementary classroom. "A Letter to My Children: Historical Memory and the Silences of Childhood" (E) from the NCTE book Teaching for a Tolerant World: Grades K-6 explains how one father answers his children when they ask, "What are Nazis? Are they bad guys?" The Talking Points article "Eric's Journey" (E) demonstrates how a reading of Lois Lowry's Number the Stars inspires a student to explore the Holocaust in his own writing.

In the Voices from the Middle article "Multiple Texts: Multiple Opportunities for Teaching and Learning" (M), author Laura Robb describes how she and a colleague met the needs of the various students they taught by designing a Holocaust unit that used multiple texts of varying reading levels.

Begin your unit with "A Silent Warm-Up" (M-S-C) from Classroom Notes Plus, which introduces the difficult subject of the Holocaust by asking students to think about related issues on their own before they have a whole class discussion.

For an extensive unit on the Holocaust, read the English Journal article "Telling the Tale: Sharing Elie Wiesel's Night with Middle School Readers" (M-S) which explains how the author uses Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel's autobiography, Night, in a nine-week unit on tolerance and prejudice.

Another extensive exploration, "Voices of the Holocaust: A New Course" (C) from Teaching English in the Two-Year College, describes a course that involves reading five survivors' autobiographies, hearing four survivor speakers, one of whom was one of the authors, and hearing a speaker who had researched the murder and victimization of her family during the Holocaust.

If you're interested in research on the teaching of the Holocaust, read the Research in the Teaching of English article "God on the Gallows: Reading the Holocaust through Narratives of Redemption" (M-S-C). The qualitative study explores how secondary students use religious narrative frames to build an understanding of Jews and the Holocaust through their readings and offers related suggestions for classroom practice.

NOTE: Free access to journal articles mentioned in this INBOX is provided for 21 days. After this free access period expires, articles are available to journal subscribers only. This Inbox Idea was published 6-10-08.

Initials in annotations indicate academic level of the resource (E=Elementary, M=Middle, S=Secondary, C=College, TE=Teacher Education, G=General).

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