When planning this unit, I also planned on doing the Holocaust unit three days a week because of the fact that this time in history is not a happy and exciting one, I didn’t want the kids to have a subject that is horrible every day of the week. I figured the other two days of the week, we would implement something that was more of a light-hearted subject for the kids. I know for me personally when I teach the Holocaust, I often end the period on such a low note because of all the bad things that were going on at that time, and I think that at least some of the kids feel the same way. I think it would be good to have some light hearted topics the other two days or other parts of World War II presented, but I didn’t include these because I wanted to solely focus on the Holocaust for my unit.
The unit is based around the book, “The Devil’s Arithmetic.” I read it in college for a reading log I had to do for my language arts class for elementary teachers. It was one of the only books where I actually read the book and didn’t just look up the summary on the internet. It was really good and gave a good description of what the Holocaust was like from a child’s point of view, so it wasn’t gruesome and something a middle school student couldn’t read for themselves. Students will be keeping a journal of chapter summaries, with vocabulary words, places, and people in the story. Included in these journals will also be the leaders of the the Holocaust and places and places that aren’t mentioned in the book (we will go over these in class through different assignments). They will also be doing assignments along the way that will include a variety of options for the students to choose from so that they feel some ownership throughout the unit. unit. The unit will culminate in a project where students will have a choice in the type of presentation they do as well as from whose point of view (i.e. German soldier, person in camp, person outside of camp) they will be presenting the Holocaust. When the unit is over the students should be able to give a detailed account of the Holocaust, including leaders and places, camps, and outcomes.
I tried to create a unit that had many options for how to do different assignments and a final project. “Differentiating does not mean providing separate, unrelated activities for each student but does mean providing interrelated activities that are based on student needs for the purpose of ensuring that all students come to a similar grasp of a skill or idea” (Good, M. E., 2006, pg. 12). The end result of what they learned would be the same, but I’m not one that gives students a lot of options, after taking this class and working on this unit though I see the benefits of giving options and allowing students to choose the one that works best for them and how they think they would learn best. In the end, they all learn the same information, but in a way they like best. I need to let go of the control that there is only one way to do an assignment, because this isn’t true, and that is something I have learned through the course of this semester.
I created this unit planning on using it in my classroom next year and seeing if it worked with my students. I could change it as I go because it is a working document, it is not set in stone with concrete assignments. If something wasn’t working or we needed more time with a certain area in the unit, it’s not a problem to add more time in. I think that’s another reason to have those two days a week for more light hearted topics, if we needed one or both of those days some weeks to have more time to work on projects, it would be easy to give that to students without having to rework the remainder of the unit. A lot of classes would probably choose to wrap up this unit by watching the movie “The Devil’s Arithmetic.” I am not choosing to go this way because I watched the movie a few years ago and it scared me, not because it’s a scary movie, but because of the fact that it actually happened and could happen again, so I would choose to not put my students through viewing that movie.
However, since I created this unit, we have redone the whole schedule for next year, and I’m not teaching language arts at all, and only teaching 4th and 5th grade history. Quite the change, but thinking about this unit, I think I could still use it, but use a different book, and essentially do the same types of projects at an appropriate grade level (with the assignments that are too difficult thrown out). We would also do a lot more whole class activities where we do our journals altogether rather than in small groups. Flexibility is part of the differentiated classroom, not only in time, but also how we group kids together, and the goals which we have for our students and the goals they have for themselves (Tomlinson, C., 2000), so this already differentiated lesson, teaching to younger kids, will allow me to practice a different element of differentiation through the process of flexibility (which in my mind is more needed for the younger grades).
My completed unit is the document attached after the bibliography.
Bibliography
Good, M. E. (2006). Differentiated instruction: Principles and techniques for the elementary grades. San Rafael, CA: School of Business, Education, and Leadership at Dominican University of California.
Tomlinson, C. (2000). Leadership for differentiating schools & classrooms. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
stages1-3holocaustubdunitplan_(3).docx |