LAST POST! Week7

I had to leave early Wednesday night due to an emergency concerning my daughter. I had left her at my mother's house so I could so some homework but she fell and hit her head then soon started throwing up so we took her the ER. She is fine thank goodness but they told us no concussion that she probably threw up because she was crying so hard. Had a follow-up and still no signs of concussion..yay!!

What I did take from that short bit of class time on Wednesday, we started talking about readers theater and I love readers theater! I really think it gets the kids extremely engaged in the story they're reading or short poem. The video that Mrs. Steffes showed us with the class doing the hand signals and movements together was super creative, engaging, and interactive with the students!

What I took from EDUC 337 was all of the different learning strategies we learned. This particular thing I, personally, have worried about since day 1 of deciding to become a teacher. That and creating lesson plans :). My two biggest fears. Look at us now, becoming lesson plan creating pros and understanding all sorts of new strategies to teach our future students! All that stress for nothing :)

WEEK 6 10 Books

10 Essential Books About the Holocaust That You Didn’t Read in Class

Here are 10 books that I assume would be labeled as controversial books since the title is what it is. 😜

1. Maus by Art Spiegelman: One of the boldest choices and most salient features of the book is that it uses different animals to represent humans: Germans as cats, Jews as mice, and non-Jewish Poles as pigs. 

2. An Underground Life: Memoirs of a Gay Jew in Nazi Berlin by Gad Beck: I can almost guarantee that you couldn't find this book in a school. WHO KNOWS. His memoir provides a look at a gay man’s coming of age in Nazi Berlin, showing how the human spirit can triumph over bigotry and violence.

3. A Scrap of Time and Other Stories by Ida Fink: 

Fink’s collection of short stories offer an intimate look into the lives of families during the Holocaust, providing a perspective from survivors, witnesses and victims in the villages of occupied Poland. Fink is a Polish Holocaust survivor and a master of the written word, diving head first into the horrors and tragedies that she and those she loved were forced to face.

4. The Journal of Helene Berr by Helene Berr : She writes about the issues that consume her life: friends, studies, boys and the growing impact of France’s Nazi occupiers. 

5. The Last Jew of Treblinka: A Memoirby Chil Rajchman

Rajchman was one the of lone survivors of the Treblinka extermination camp, and he provides a devastating account of his experience in this memoir. 

6. This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen by Tadeusz Borowski

This collection of short stories was originally titled Farewell to Maria, a seemingly strange title for a Holocaust book until you learn Borowski’s history.

7. Women Heroes of World War II: 26 Stories of Espionage, Sabotage, Resistance and Rescue by Kathryn J. Atwood

This collection chronicles 26 engaging stories of brave women from Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Denmark, Great Britain and the United States.

8. Things We Couldn't Say by Diet Eman

It’s rare that “love story” and “Holocaust story” are in the same sentence, but this book manages to combine the two with the incredible real-life story of Diet Eman and Hein Sietsma.

9. Boy 30529 by Felix Weinberg

Weinberg was only 12 when he was forced into a concentration camp in 1939, yet he survived five different concentration camps, including Auschwitz and the Death March from Blechhammer in 1945, reuniting with his father in Britain only after being liberated at Buchenwald. 

10. Rena’s Promise: A Story of Sisters in Auschwitz by Rena Kornreich Gelissen

This is one of the few Holocaust memoirs that details the lives of women in concentration camps. It tells the story of Rena Kornreich, who went to great lengths to keep her promise to her mother that she would protect her sister Danka. It’s a story of the bonds between family and a reminder of what we can risk and endure for those we love.

The genre of memoir often gets poked fun at, and in a time where every “struggling” 20-something seems to have one, that may make sense. Still, it’s good to remember what an important and profound medium the memoir can be. It allows victims to have a voice and to take ownership over their own story. After all, these memoirs will act as the voice of the Holocaust when the victims are no longer with us and able to tell us their stories first-hand.

Week 5

Tonight in class we talked about many things but the graphic organizers and talking about different authors really stuck out to me and Stephenie Meyer is one of my favorite authors and she was on that list. It got me thinking about when I truly started reading for fun when her Twilight series came out when I was in HS. I love to read and I have tons of books in my bookshelf now. I love how we can use all the links Mrs Steffes gives us afterwards because they are so helpful to use and keep for future references.

Lesson Plans: Well I have figured out which subject I am least excited about teaching. Language arts. I had the hardest time thinking of a language arts lesson and I don't know why. I think maybe it is because I find things and I think it could easily be taken as a social studies or history lesson and not language arts. Also as I ma writing this, my daughter is screaming in my face, pulling on my arms as I write which also could be another reason why I cant think of a good lesson BUT I finally thought of a good unit, The Holocaust. I can have my students write a biography about Anne Frank or make a timeline of the events leading up to the holocaust and so on. I think it will be a great unit!