Voice from the Concentration Camps | EL Education Curriculum

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ELA 2019 G8:M3:U2:L10

Voice from the Concentration Camps

In this Lesson

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Focus Standards: These are the standards the instruction addresses.

  • RL.8.1, RL.8.2, L.8.1c, L.8.1d, L.8.3a

Supporting Standards: These are the standards that are incidental—no direct instruction in this lesson, but practice of these standards occurs as a result of addressing the focus standards.

  • RL.8.3, RL.8.4, RL.8.10, W.8.4, W.8.10, SL.8.1, L.8.4c
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Daily Learning Targets

  • I can determine a theme and analyze its development in an excerpt from Night. (RL.8.1, RL.8.2)
  • I can write an objective summary of an excerpt from Night. (RL.8.2)
  • I can use verbs in different moods to achieve particular effects. (L.8.1c, L.8.3a)

Ongoing Assessment

  • Opening A: Entrance Ticket
  • Work Time A: Track Gist, Plot, Character, and Theme: Night, Pages 29-34 note-catcher (RL.8.1, RL.8.2, RL.8.3)
  • Work Time B: Objective Summary: Night, Pages 29-34 (RL.8.1, RL.8.2)
  • Closing and Assessment A: 5-Minute Mini Language Dive note-catcher: Excerpt from Night, Pages 29-34 (L.8.1c, L.8.3a)

Agenda

AgendaTeaching Notes

1. Opening

A. Engage the Learner- L.8.1d (5 minutes)

2. Work Time

A. Read: Excerpt from Night, Pages 29-34, and Identify Development of Theme - RL.8.2 (25 minutes) 

B. Write an Objective Summary: Excerpt from Night, Pages 29-34 - RL.8.2 (10 minutes)

3. Closing and Assessment

A. Mini Language Dive: Excerpt from Night, Pages 29-34 - L.8.3a (5 minutes)

4. Homework

A. Verb Mood: Students complete Homework: Verb Mood: Objective Summary: Night to answer selected and constructed response questions about verb mood.

B. Independent Research Reading: Students read for at least 20 minutes in their independent research reading text. Then they select a prompt and write a response in their independent reading journal.

Alignment to Assessment Standards and Purpose of Lesson

  • L.8.1c – Opening A: Students answer a selected response question about the form of the conditional mood.
  • L.8.1d – Opening A: Students answer a selected response question to correct an inappropriate shift in the conditional mood.
  • L.8.3a – Opening A: Students answer a selected response question about the particular effects created by the conditional mood.
  • RL.8.2 – Work Time A: Students determine the theme(s) of an excerpt from Night, pages 29–34, and analyze the development of the theme(s) over the course of the excerpt.
  • RL.8.1 – Work Time A: Students identify key plot elements from text to determine the theme.
  • RL.8.2 – Work Time B: Students write an objective literary summary with a theme statement for an excerpt from Night, pages 29–34.
  • L.8.1c – Closing and Assessment A: Students participate in a Mini Language Dive to explore how the conditional mood is formed.
  • L.8.3a – Closing and Assessment A: Students participate in a Mini Language Dive to explore how the conditional mood conveys possibility and uncertainty about outcome.

Opportunities to Extend Learning

  • Students can read Night in its entirety and write a whole-text summary and text reflection. Invite students to share about the book with the class.
  • Students can research Elie Wiesel and his life and reflect on his experiences. Encourage students to consider how his actions model habits of character and to consider how they, themselves, have used empathy to better understand his perspective and actions.
  • Have students identify examples of the imperative, interrogative, and conditional moods in the text excerpt. Students can add these sentences to their Verb Mood Organizer and spend time discussing how these verbs are formed and the particular effects they achieve (possibility, uncertainty, unreal hypotheticals).
  • Students may identify additional themes in the text in their objective summary.
  • Create additional selected and constructed response questions so students may continue determining verb moods and their effects in sentences.
  • Students may research additional stories of survivors of the Holocaust who were imprisoned in concentration camps. Students can share what they have learned in small groups or with the whole class.

How It Builds on Previous Work

  • In the previous lesson, students read an excerpt from a text about a Holocaust survivor, determined the theme, and wrote an objective summary of the excerpt. Students will build upon this work by reading another excerpt of a text about a Holocaust survivor and writing an objective summary, including the theme statement.

Support All Students

  • Note that the excerpt from Night, pages 29–34, in this lesson brings up potentially sensitive topics such as suicide, religion, fire pits in death camps, and the separation of families. Allow for time to process and respond to this topic during individual, small group, or full class discussion, and reach out to families as needed. Use thoughtful strategic pairing for discussions around these topics to ensure that all students feel comfortable.
  • Some students may have difficulty determining the theme of a new text. Ask prompting questions to support students in identifying themes in Work Time A. ▲
  • Some students may require reminders about synthesizing a text to identify the most relevant details for the context of a summary. Support students in annotating the text for the most poignant details to include in their summary. ▲
  • Some students may benefit from choosing how they will read the text. Read the text aloud with some students, have student-led groups read amongst themselves, and allow other students to read independently. ▲

Assessment Guidance

  • Review student summaries after the lesson to check whether they are on the right track. Use common issues as teaching points for the whole group in the next lesson.

Down the Road

  • In the next lesson, students will choose from a selection of texts about Holocaust survivors and continue to practice the skills of analyzing the development of themes in a text as well as building strong summaries independently. Students will continue to read voices of Holocaust survivors, building toward a poster-sharing session commemorating victims and survivors of the Holocaust in Lesson 14.

In Advance

  • Prepare Entrance Ticket: Unit 2, Lesson 10.
  • Ensure there is a copy of Entrance Ticket: Unit 2, Lesson 10 at each student's workspace.
  • Preread the excerpt from Night, pages 29-34 in preparation for reading the text with students in this lesson. Note the strong emotional content about the harsh conditions in concentration camps.
  • Post the learning targets and applicable anchor charts (see Materials list).

Tech and Multimedia

  • Continue to use the technology tools recommended throughout previous modules to create anchor charts to share with families; to record students as they participate in discussions and protocols to review with students later and to share with families; and for students to listen to and annotate text, record ideas on note-catchers, and word-process writing.

Supporting English Language Learners

Supports guided in part by CA ELD Standards 8.I.C.11 and 8.I.C.12.

Important Points in the Lesson Itself

  • To support ELLs, this lesson includes repeated routines and a familiar sequence of tasks. Students read an excerpt of a Holocaust memoir and write a summary. In Closing and Assessment A of the lesson, students will participate in a Mini Language Dive using a sentence from the memoir students read in Work Time A to further explore the conditional mood, which builds directly upon work in previous lessons with verb moods and serves to prepare students for the grammar-based End of Unit 2 Assessment in the next lesson.
  • ELLs may find it challenging to read the Excerpt from Night by Elie Wiesel, pages 29-34, as this text is quite lengthy and contains subject matter (Elie Wiesel's experience inside a concentration camp) that may be especially sensitive to many students. Encourage students to read the text multiple times and in a variety of ways (e.g., silently, for gist, aloud). Use the glossary included in the differentiated version of the excerpt to guide support with vocabulary comprehension as students read.

Vocabulary

  • N/A

Materials from Previous Lessons

Teacher

Student

  • Homework: Verb Mood: Objective Summary (answers for teacher reference) (from Module 3, Unit 2, Lesson 9, Homework A)
  • Criteria for an Effective Literary Summary anchor chart (one for display; from Module 1, Unit 2, Lesson 1, Work Time C)
  • Holocaust Glossary (one for display, from Module 3, Unit 1, Lesson 3, Work Time A)
  • Verb Mood organizer (example for teacher reference) (from Module 3, Unit 2, Lesson 8, Closing and Assessment A)
  • Homework: Verb Mood: Objective Summary (one per student; from Module 3, Unit 2, Lesson 9, Homework A)
  • Holocaust Glossary (one per student; from Module 3, Unit 1, Lesson 3, Work Time A)
  • Summarize a Literary Text rubric (one per student; from Module 3, Unit 2, Lesson 1, Work Time C)
  • Verb Mood organizer (one per student; from Module 3, Unit 2, Lesson 8, Closing and Assessment A)
  • Independent reading journal (one per student; begun in Module 1, Unit 1, Lesson 6, Work Time B)

New Materials

Teacher

Student

  • Entrance Ticket: Unit 2, Lesson 10 (example for teacher reference)
  • Track Gist, Plot, Character, and Theme: Night, Pages 29-34 note-catcher (example for teacher reference)
  • Objective Summary: Night, Pages 29-34 (example for teacher reference)
  • 5-Minute Mini Language Dive Guide: Excerpt from Night, Pages 29-34 (for teacher reference)
  • 5-Minute Mini Language Dive: Excerpt from Night, Pages 29-34 note-catcher (for teacher reference)
  • Homework: Verb Mood: Objective Summary: Night (answers for teacher reference) (see Homework Resources)
  • Entrance Ticket: Unit 2, Lesson 10 (one per student)
  • Excerpt from Night, Pages 29-34 (one per student)
  • Synopsis: Excerpt from Night, Pages 29-34 (one per student)
  • Track Gist, Plot, Character, and Theme: Night, Pages 29-34 note-catcher (one per student)
  • Objective Summary: Night, Pages 29-34 (one per student)
  • 5-Minute Mini Language Dive: Excerpt from Night, Pages 29-34 note-catcher (one per student)
  • Homework: Verb Mood: Objective Summary: Night (one per student; see Homework Resources)

Assessment

Each unit in the 6-8 Language Arts Curriculum has two standards-based assessments built in, one mid-unit assessment and one end of unit assessment. The module concludes with a performance task at the end of Unit 3 to synthesize students' understanding of what they accomplished through supported, standards-based writing.

Opening

Opening

A. Engage the Learner - L.8.1d (5 minutes)

  • Repeated routine: As students arrive, invite them to complete Entrance Ticket: Unit 2, Lesson 10.
  • Using a preferred classroom routine, collect or review the answers to Homework: Verb Mood: Objective Summary from Lesson 9. Refer to the Homework: Verb Mood: Objective Summary (answers for teacher reference).
  • Repeated routine: Follow the same routine as the previous lessons to review learning targets and the purpose of the lesson, reminding students of any learning targets that are similar or the same as in previous lessons.

Work Time

Work TimeLevels of Support

A. Read: Excerpt from Night, Pages 29-34, and Identify Development of Theme - RL.8.2 (25 minutes)

  • Review the appropriate learning target relevant to the work to be completed in this section of the lesson:

"I can determine a theme and analyze its development in an excerpt from Night."

  • Display the Holocaust Glossary, and instruct students to retrieve their copy.
  • Focus students on the definition of concentration camps. Have a volunteer read the definition for students to review how Nazi soldiers transported people to these camps and killed hundreds of thousands of people.
  • Remind students that Vladek in Maus I describes his experience being taken to Auschwitz, the largest of the Nazi concentration and death camps. Adolf Hitler successfully convinced Germans that Jewish people, Romani people, homosexuals, the disabled, and others should be exterminated because they were unfit for German society. Hundreds of thousands of people were rounded up and brought to camps for slave labor, were imprisoned, or were gassed and burned to death.
  • Explain to students that they will read a story of a Holocaust survivor's experience in one of these concentration camps. Emphasize the importance of learning about a horrific event that actually happened in history from a firsthand account of one of the few survivors. Elie Wiesel describes his loss of hope as he faces death at the hands of the Nazis.
  • Repeated routine: Follow the same process as with previous lessons for students to read Excerpt from Night, pages 29-34. Instruct students to read the text independently, and support struggling students as needed. Remind students that they can refer to their Holocaust Glossary if they encounter domain-specific vocabulary they do not understand. If students do not finish reading the sections within the allotted reading time, distribute Synopsis: Excerpt from Night, Pages 29-34 to each student to review the key details of the text. Have students track the gist, key plot elements, and character using the Track Gist, Plot, Character, and Theme: Night, Pages 29-34 note-catcher. Refer to Track Gist, Plot, Character, and Theme: Night, Pages 29-34 note-catcher (example for teacher reference) if necessary.
  • Be available to support students in reflecting as they read. Ensure students have what they need to process, whether a quiet space to think, someone to talk to about how they are processing the text, or paper to write or sketch.
  • Think-Pair-Share, and remind students of the habits of an ethical person, particularly respect, empathy, and compassion, as they discuss the potentially upsetting content in this story:

"What did Elie think the Nazis were going to do to him and the other men in the procession?" (Burn them in a fiery pit.)

"Why did Elie start to doubt his beliefs?" (He believed his god was letting this happen to the Jews.)

"Why did Elie think about jumping onto the barbed wire?" (To end his life quickly instead of dying slowly in the flames.)

"How did you feel about Elie's thoughts on his way to the pit?" (Answers will vary, but may include that he thought they were afraid of him jumping on the barbed wire or being pushed into the pit.)

"As you read about Elie and the other Jews walking toward the pit, what habits of character were you practicing? Why?" (Compassion and empathy, because it would have been awful for them to burn alive.)

  • Ask students to Think-Pair-Share about theme by asking the following questions.

"What do you think is the theme of Night, Pages 29-34?" (Answers will vary, but may include that trauma can cause one to lose all religious faith and hope.)

"What evidence in the text supports the theme you determined?" (Answers will vary, but may include the following: "I gathered all that remained of my strength in order to break rank and throw myself onto the barbed wire. Deep down, I was saying good-bye to my father, to the whole universe...")

  • As students share, record responses on the displayed Track Gist, Plot, Character, and Theme: Night, Pages 29-34 note-catcher. Instruct students to record these notes in their note-catcher.
  • Repeated routine: Invite students to reflect on their progress toward the relevant learning targets.

For Lighter Support

  • N/A

For Heavier Support

  • During Work Time A, review the glossary in Excerpt from Night by Elie Wiesel, pages 29-34 with students who need heavier support.

B. Write an Objective Summary: Excerpt from Night, Pages 29-34 - RL.8.2 (10 minutes)

  • Review the appropriate learning target relevant to the work to be completed in this section of the lesson:

"I can write an objective summary of an excerpt from Night."

  • Remind students that they will write a summary about Elie Wiesel and other Holocaust survivors in the next few lessons. They will choose one voice from a summary they have written that resonates with them and will choose visual elements to further convey this voice in a commemorative poster.
  • Repeated routine: Follow the same process as with previous lessons for students to write an objective summary of the excerpt from Night, pages 29-34. Instruct students to Turn and Talk and orally summarize the excerpt to a partner. Distribute Objective Summary: Excerpt from Night, Pages 29-34, and instruct students to begin writing their summary. Refer students to the Criteria for an Effective Literary Summary anchor chart and Summarize a Literary Text rubric to keep these criteria in mind as they write their summary paragraph as needed, and clarify any misconceptions.
  • Circulate to support students as they write. Note any trends to highlight in the next lesson. Ensure that all summaries are stored in a safe place for use in creating the commemorative poster in Lesson 12.
  • Repeated routine: Invite students to reflect on their progress toward the relevant learning targets.
  • N/A

Closing & Assessments

ClosingLevels of Support

A. Mini Language Dive: Excerpt from Night, Pages 29-34 - L.8.3a (5 minutes)

  • Review the appropriate learning target relevant to the work to be completed in this section of the lesson:

"I can use verbs in different moods to achieve particular effects."

  • Tell students they will now participate in a Mini Language Dive to explore the conditional mood in Excerpt from Night, pages 29-34.
  • Reread aloud the second section of Excerpt from Night, pages 29-34. 
  • Focus students on the sentence:
    • "I first wanted to see where they would send my father."
  • Use the 5-Minute Mini Language Dive Guide: Excerpt from Night, Pages 29-34 (for teacher reference) to guide students through a Mini Language Dive conversation about the sentence. Distribute and display the 5-Minute Mini Language Dive: Excerpt from  Night, Pages 29-34 note-catcher.
  • Encourage students to add the Mini Language Dive sentence to the conditional row of their Verb Mood organizer.
  • Repeated routine: Invite students to reflect on their progress toward the relevant learning targets.

For Lighter Support

  • To extend practice with verb moods after the Mini Language Dive, ask an additional question that requires students to consider the effects of different moods:
    • "What if the mood of the verb within the infinitive phrase had also been expressed in the indicative mood? What would this look like? How would this alter the meaning of the sentence?" (I first wanted to see where they sent my father; changes the meaning by indicating that the narrator's father has already been sent somewhere.)

For Heavier Support

  • To add support with verb moods after the Mini Language Dive, invite students to search for additional examples of verbs expressed in the conditional mood. Students can share the sentences they find with small groups or the whole class to consider structure and impact on meaning. Seeing multiple examples of the conditional mood will help to reinforce students' understanding of its form and use and the effects it conveys.

Homework

Homework

A. Verb Mood

  • Students complete Homework: Verb Mood: Objective Summary: Night to answer selected and constructed response questions about verb mood.

B. Independent Research Reading

  • Students read for at least 20 minutes in their independent research reading text. Then they select a prompt and write a response in their independent reading journal.

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