Night Liberation Lesson
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1. Teacher Candidate
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Tess Morrison
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Date Taught
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11/20/2017
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Cooperating Teacher
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School/District
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2. Subject
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Social Studies
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Field Supervisor
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3. Lesson Title/Focus
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Night Liberation Lesson
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5. Length of Lesson
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45 mins
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4. Grade Level
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10th Grade
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6. Academic & Content Standards (Common Core/National)
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CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.9-10.7
Analyze various accounts of a subject told in different mediums (e.g., a person's life story in both print and multimedia), determining which details are emphasized in each account.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.7
Analyze the representation of a subject or a key scene in two different artistic mediums, including what is emphasized or absent in each treatment.
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7. Learning Objective(s)
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Using Night, a letter from an American Solider and a short video, students will analyze three different accounts of the liberation of Nazi Concentration camps by completing a compare and contrast worksheet and a classroom discussion.
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8. Academic Language
demands (vocabulary, function, syntax, discourse)
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Discourse: Watch the video, and read both texts. Fill out comparison chart as you go. Share with partner and class what you wrote.
Language Function: Students will explain how the video and text made them feel and the POV.
Syntax: Students will fill in a teacher created chart and exit ticket.
Vocab: Holocaust, Liberation, Buchenwald, Dachau, Concentration Camp, Pacific Theatre and T.B. (tuberculosis).
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9. Assessment
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Formal Assessment: Students will be graded on how complete their chart is filled out. This assignment will be worth 30 points. This will show they have an understanding of the different perspectives presented and how they are different or similar.
Informal Assessment: Student participation in the discussion and completion of the exit ticket will show me who is mastering the concepts and who are struggling and might need further assistance.
**Attach** all assessment tools for this lesson
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10. Lesson Connections
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Prior Knowledge: Students have been reading Night as a part of a Non-fiction Biography unit. They are assigned chapters each night and the assigned chapters are discussion each day in class. Students know what POV is, the historical background of Night, and how to compare and contrast different mediums.
Future Knowledge: Students will use all prior knowledge to write a short biography of how learning about the Holocaust has impacted their lives and why it is important to learn about. This assignment will be their final assessment and will take a week to complete.
Research-Based Instruction: “Things that create an emotional reaction will be better remembered.” (Willingham, 2009) I chose this quote from Willingham’s book because I think the best way for students to remember any type of content is for them to interact with it in a personal and emotional way. For them to look beyond the words on a page to the real person behind those words and to understand the emotion behind it. It would be a disservice and extremely disrespectful to teach the subject of the Holocaust without talking about emotion, which is why I am spending an entire day having them look at how the events of the Holocaust specifically its liberation emotionally impact them. This will also play a key role in their biography because hopefully they have had something in the course of this unit that emotionally impacted them and they will write about that experience in their biography.
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11. Instructional Strategies/Learning Tasks to Support Learning
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Learning Tasks and Strategies
Sequenced Instruction
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Teacher’s Role
1) Write the Objective on the board in short form. “ Analyze three different accounts of the liberation of Nazi Concentrations”.
2) Have students share a short summary of the last three chapters of Elie Wiesel’s Night.
3) Let students know we are going to be watching a video and if they need to leave the room during it they can. Then play the Band of Brothers clip.
4) Have students quickly write down their first thoughts in the comparison chart.
5) Hand out a printed copy of Harold Porter’s letter to each student and have them read it individually.
6) Have students quickly write down their first thoughts in the comparison chart.
7) Have students next read the last chapter of Night pg. 113-115
8) Have students quickly write down their first thoughts in the comparison chart.
9) Have students share with their table partner what they thought of the different accounts
10) Facilitate a whole class discussion on the different accounts. Focusing on how they affect us differently and the POV.
11) Have students fill out a sticky-note exit ticket answering the three questions from the PowerPoint.
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Students’ Role
1) Students should read the objective and write it in their own words in their classroom notebooks.
2) Students should have read the last three chapters of Night for homework and can volunteer to summarize what was read.
3) Students will be respectful and quiet during the video and can leave if it gets too graphic or upsetting.
4) Students should write their first thoughts on the video and how it made them feel on the chart.
5) Students should read the letter and think about how it compares to the video.
6) Students should write their first thoughts on the video and how it made them feel on the chart.
7) Students should read the last chapter and think about how it compares to the video and letter.
8) Students should write their first thoughts on the video and how it made them feel on the chart.
9) Students should share with their table partner what they thought of the different accounts and how they affected them emotionally.
10) Students can volunteer to share what they felt watching the video, and reading both the letter and Night
11) Students should answer the questions on their exit ticket and stick it to the door on their way out of class.
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Student Voice to Gather
Students will keep track of learning targets in classroom journal to help them keep track of prior learning and what skills they master over the unit. At the end of each week, students will reflect on their understanding of the concepts and turn it into me. This will help me to understand their mastery and if the pace needs to be slowed the next week or a concept needs to be reviewed.
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12. Differentiated Instruction
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Plan
Gifted: Gifted students are encouraged to include more detail in their analysis and can analyze a longer soldier account of the liberation if requested.
504: Student A-B will receive extra time to complete the assignment and will be given priority seating. Student C has severe ADHD and can pace in the back if they need to move around.
IEP: Student D-E have a para-educator to help them write their responses and are given extra time on assignments.
Struggling Readers/ ELL students: These students can have their table-partner help them analyze the text and if needed be given the Porter letter in English and their first language.
Universal Design: The two texts used and the video allows this lesson to connect with many different learners and focuses on each student experience with the text so there isn’t a “right” answer.
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13. Resources and Materials
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Plan
Teacher Materials- Teacher Computer, Copy of Night, whiteboard, copy of Porter Letter, parent permission slips, PowerPoint and Sticky-Notes.
Student Materials- Journals, Pencil/Pen, Copy of Night.
Resources- Research: Willingham, Daniel T. (2009). Why Don't Students Like School? San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Video: Ambrose. S and Orloff. J (Writers) & Frankel. D. (Director). (2001). Why We Fight [Television Series Episode]. In S. Spielberg (Producer), Band of Brothers. USA: HBO.
Letter: Onion, R. (2014, May 02). “It Is Difficult to Know How to Begin”: A U.S. Soldier Writes Home From Dachau. Retrieved November 18, 2017, from http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2014/05/02/holocaust_liberation_letter_from_american_soldier_at_dachau.html
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14. Management and Safety Issues
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Plan
Emotional: This lesson could be very emotional for some students because of the sensitive content. While each student will need to read Night and the letter, they can leave the room for the video and if they need to step away for longer they can. All discussion topics and responses will be appropriate and respectful or the student will lose all points on the assignment.
Behavioral: Students will be respectful during all part of this activity, because of the nature of this lesson students will receive one warning before they are removed from class and sent to the administration.
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15. Parent & Community Connections
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Plan
Parent: Parents will need to approve the Band of Brothers clip a week prior to the showing of the video. If video approval is not given another video of camp liberation will be submitted for approval.
Community: Invite any WWII veterans or Holocaust survivors in the community to come in and speak about their experience.
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Name: Date:
Complete the compare and contrast chart below in your own words. Use details and complete sentence.
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Describe what happened?
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How did it make you feel?
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What did is focus on and what did it leave out?
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Why We Fight clip
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Harold Porters Letter Home
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Night by Elie Wisel
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Harold's Letter
7 May 1945
Dear Mother and Father,
You have, by this time, received a letter mentioning that I am quartered in the concentration camp at Dachau. It is still undecided whether we will be permitted to describe the conditions here, but I'm writing this now to tell you a little, and will mail it later when we are told we can.
It is difficult to know how to begin. By this time I have recovered from my first emotional shock and am able to write without seeming like a hysterical gibbering idiot. Yet, I know you will hesitate to believe me no matter how objective and focused I try to be. I even find myself trying to deny what I am looking at with my own eyes. Certainly, what I have seen in the past few days will affect my personality for the rest of my life.
We knew a day or two before we moved that we were going to operate in Dachau, and that it was the location of one of the most notorious concentration camps, but while we expected things to be grizzly [sic], I'm sure none of us knew what was coming. It is easy to read about atrocities, but they must be seen before they can be believed. To think that I once scoffed at Valtin's book Out of the Night as being preposterous! I've seen worse sights than he described.
The trip south from Göttingen was pleasant enough. We passed through Donauworth and Aichach and as we entered Dachau, the country, with the cottages, rivers, country estates and Alps in the distance, was almost like a tourist resort. But as we came to the center of the city, we met a train with a wrecked engine - about fifty cars long. Every car was loaded with bodies. There must have been thousands of them - all obviously starved to death. This was a shock of the first order, and the odor can best be immagined [sic]. But neither the sight nor the odor were anything when compared with what we were still to see.
Marc Coyle reached the camp two days before I did and was a guard so as soon as I got there I looked him up and he took me to the crematory. Dead SS troopers were scattered around the grounds, but when we reached the furnace house we came upon a huge stack of corpses piled up like kindling, all nude so that their clothes wouldn't be wasted by the burning. There were furnaces for burning six bodies at once, and on each side of them was a room twenty feet square crammed to the ceiling with more bodies - one big stinking rotten mess. Their faces purple, their eyes popping, and with a hideous grin on each one. They were nothing but bones & skins. Coyle had assisted at ten autopsies the day before (wearing a gas mask) on ten bodies selected at random. Eight of them had advanced T.B., all had typhus and extreme malnutrition symptoms. There were both women and children in the stack in addition to the men.
While we were inspecting the place, freed prisoners drove up with wagon loads of corpses removed from the compound proper. Watching the unloading was horrible. The bodies squooshed and gurgled as they hit the pile and the odor could almost be seen.
Behind the furnaces was the execution chamber, a windowless cell twenty feet square with gas nozzles every few feet across the ceiling. Outside, in addition to a huge mound of charred bone fragments, were the carefully sorted and stacked clothes of the victims - which obviously numbered in the thousands. Although I stood there looking at it, I couldn't believe it. The realness of the whole mess is just gradually dawning on me, and I doubt if it ever will on you.
There is a rumor circulating which says that the war is over. It probably is - as much as it will ever be. We've all been expecting the end for several days, but were not too excited about it because we know that it does not mean too much as far as our immediate situation is concerned. There was no celebration - it's difficult to celebrate anything with the morbid state we're in.
The Pacific theater will not come immediately for this unit; we have around 36,000 potential and eventual patients here. The end of the work for everyone else is going to be just the beginning for us.
Today was a scorching hot day after several raining cold ones. The result of the heat on the corpses is impossible to describe, and the situation will probably get worse because their disposal will certainly take time.
My arm is sore from a typhus shot so I'm ending here for the present. More will follow later. I have lots to write about now.
Love, Harold.
