United States History and Geography including World War II, the Holocaust, and current history.

CONNECTIONS TO MANDATE/MISSION:

An investigation of human behavior and an understanding of the ramifications of prejudice, racism and stereotyping, and what it means to be a responsible and respectful person.

CORE CONCEPTS:

• Change: how other people and events can change the lives of people - war.
• Conflict: ethical and unethical uses of power.
• Culture: resistance to, and lack of, the exchange of cultural ideas and values.
• Interdependence: how indifference in the community can affect peoples' lives.
• Perspective: how people accept and reject stereotyping of others.
• Responsibility: how political and social decisions affect the quality of life of all within a community. 
• Scarcity: limited resources created systems of living and working.

During this unit, lesson, or activity, students, individually or in groups:

• brainstorm what it would be like to have a war in the United States and what they would do if they were required to move.
• investigate organizations that helped children during periods of war.
• investigate what happened to Japanese Americans and Africans during World War II.
• make ration books- investigate why materials were rationed during times of hardship .
• investigate what happened to European children who were Gypsies, Jewish, or Jehovah's Witnesses during World War II.
• investigate how propaganda was used to form peoples' beliefs.
• discuss survival during war.
• interview survivors and family members to gain understanding of hardship, resourcefulness and creativity in order to survive.
• investigate resourcefulness and creativity of children involved in war.

• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
• Jewish Foundation for the Righteous
• Ghetto Fighters House
• Anti-Defamation League 

As the visitors enter, the classroom students are engaged in literature circles.  Discussions are taking place about readings from yesterday, and the students are focused on what they would do in situations similar to those characters in their stories.  Most of the books (i.e., Snow Treasure, The Upstairs Room, The Big Lie, Number the Stars) deal with hidden children or how children helped, or were helped, during the Holocaust.  The students are also discussing separation from families, being hidden by strangers, risk taking, and loss of family.

· Marie Silverman

Mobiles are suspended from the ceiling showing one important event of each child's life.  They serve as real reminders that children hidden or deported during the Holocaust were deprived of these memories of their childhood.

On a bulletin board, poetry from I Never Saw Another Butterfly is mounted.  The students have created  butterflies and artistic interpretations of the poetry that is displayed.  Other students are reading poetry from the same book and discussing what the children meant as the poems were being written.  They are entering their reactions in personal journals.

Around the television and VCR, a few students are looking at A Camera of My Family and talking about putting together a "baggie" quilt to demonstrate learning.  They are planning to create scrapbooks of their families.

Another group of students is outlining the dangers of prejudice and stereotyping and what it means to stand by and do nothing when others of different ethnic, cultural, or religious group are being attacked by words or deeds.  The entire class will participate in a project, which will be shared with the other students in the school and with the community.  Students are working on tile designs for a wall in the FloridaHolocaustMuseum showing positive actions one can take to fight prejudice and stereotyping.

LEARNING ASSESSMENTS:

At the conclusion of units, lessons, or activities students might

• develop community projects which focus on ending discrimination and stereotyping.
• keep journal entries on their reactions to the related readings on the Holocaust.
• present student research projects in various visual and oral formats.
• participate in varied writing projects.