Tuesday, January 16, 2018

The Holocaust, Day 4 - Class Recap


A quote on the wall of the Miami Holocaust Memorial. Our discussion today in class had a large part to do with whether or not we believe something like this could happen again. Photo taken in 2011.

Dear class,

This was a somewhat challenging day for me as a teacher, to try and give control over to student discussion without teacher intervention. Although there were points where it was quiet and awkward, I still think almost everyone did well and that the conversation was productive. Here's what happened in class today:

Learning Targets:
Knowledge LT 17: I can explain how and why world societies organize themselves and how power is established and maintained.
Behavior LT 1:  I can manage my responsibilities as a student.
Behavior LT 2:  I can self-direct my learning.
Behavior LT 3: I can communicate and work effectively within a team or group.

Soundtrack: "Talk" by Coldplay. Selected for today because most of the class was made up of students talking about the rise of Hitler and whether or not it could happen again. Lyrics here.

AGENDA 1/16/18:
News Brief – Darren
The Path to Nazi Genocide
Socratic Seminar
Debrief

Homework: Read the blog. All late/missing/revised work due by this Friday! Next news brief: Jaycee.

News Brief: Darren selected an article about this story for the news brief today: BBC.com - US holds back $65m aid to Palestinians. We talked about this story for a bit, in terms of why this would be happening, and then moved on.

Jaycee was selected to do the next news brief.

Mr. Puterbaugh sent me this article to talk about with the class, as well, and I said I would link to it on the blog: NYTimes.com - German Idea to Fight Anti-Semitism: Make Immigrants Tour Concentration Camps. What do you think of this idea?

We also watched the one minute BBC World News update. Here's the link to see the latest one minute update, at any time of day (it will probably be different from what we watched in class):


The Path to Nazi Genocide: To finish preparing for the discussion in class, we watched the following film from the National Holocaust Memorial Museum, which aims to place many of the events and issues that we learned about into a concise documentary (students had been asking for something like this in class):



As students were watching, I encouraged notes to be taken on questions that came up, as well as connections to what we have already talked about with the unit.

Socratic Seminar: Next, we had the discussion that we started preparing for last class. This was the first time we have attempted to do this in class, and I think it went really well! I was proud of everyone participating.

This was the reading that we were discussing in class:


The questions and answers that I wanted the class to do in preparation for the discussion on this were:

1) What happened so that Hitler could get power?

2) Make three discussion questions (not yes or no answers) about the reading. Try to base your questions on specific quotes from the reading.

To help with this, I passed out these tips for helping the conversation flow:


I explained that I wanted the discussion to be student led and directed, and then I tried to get out of the conversation as much as possible. Overall, I was pleased with the conversation and I think you touched on some really important issues and questions! Thanks for being willing to participate. We ended with this, due to time. See you next class!

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