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- Contributed By: Facing History and Ourselves
This curriculum is about more than the Holocaust. It's about the reading and the writing and the arithmetic of genocide, but it's also about such R's as rethinking, reflecting, and reasoning. It's about prejudice, discrimination and scapegoating; but it's also about human dignity, morality, law, and citizenship. It's about avoiding and forgetting, but it's also about civic courage and justice. In an age of "back to basics" this curriculum declares that there is one thing more basic, more sacred, than any of the three R's; namely, the sanctity of human life. The purpose of this lesson is to help the classroom community develop a safe, productive environment to support the learning and sharing of ideas that will take place throughout the unit.
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http://www.facinghistory.org/resources/lessons/decision-making-times-injustice-
This lesson uses a case study of a 7th grade classroom to introduce students to major themes and questions they will address in this unit. Presenting new concepts and vocabulary to students through an engaging and familiar example is an effective way to lay the ground work for studying the complex history of Germany in the 1920s and 1930s.
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http://www.facinghistory.org/resources/lessons/decision-making-times-injustice-0
This lesson introduces the theme of identity to students, for whom the question "Who am I?" is especially critical at this point in their adolescent lives. Understanding them concept of identity is not only valuable for students' own social, moral, and intellectual development, but it is also critical to understanding the choices made by individuals and groups living in Germany during the 1920s and 1930s (as well as during other historical moments). The sharing of "Where I'm From" poems in this lesson also contributes to nurturing a strong classroom community where all students are known.
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http://www.facinghistory.org/resources/lessons/decision-making-times-injustice-1
While in Lesson 3 students explored how individuals define their own identities, in this lesson students consider how people are also defined by others. This lesson helps students understand the meaning of prejudice and stereotyping-concepts that are central to making sense of the historical content they will cover in future lessons.
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http://www.facinghistory.org/resources/lessons/decision-making-times-injustice-2
One of the key learning goals of this unit is to help students develop an awareness of race as a myth that has been abused to justify discrimination and violence, not only against Jews but against many other groups as well. To that end, the purpose of this lesson is to help students reject the idea of Jews, or any group, as belonging to an inferior race.
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http://www.facinghistory.org/resources/lessons/decision-making-times-injustice-3
The purpose of Lessons 6 and 7 is to help students understand the conditions in the Weimar Republic that resulted in Germany's transition from a democracy to a dictatorship.
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http://www.facinghistory.org/resources/lessons/decision-making-times-injustice-4
In this lesson, students will interpret how conditions during the Weimar Republic may have impacted the appeal of the Nazi Party to specific German citizens, students begin to recognize how economic, political, social, and cultural factors influence their own beliefs and choices.
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http://www.facinghistory.org/resources/lessons/decision-making-times-injustice-5
he purpose of this lesson is two-fold: 1) to help students understand how Hitler was able to use the Nazis' victory in these elections to suppress opposition, control the spread of information, use fear to establish authority, and, ultimately, to make himself Führer, the supreme leader of Germany, and 2) to help students recognize how the choices made by German citizens, members of parliament, and other leaders contributed to Hitler's rise to power.
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http://www.facinghistory.org/resources/lessons/decision-making-times-injustice-6
In this lesson, students engage with material that will help them answer the question, "Once the Nazis came to power, why did most Germans follow the policies dictated by Hitler and the Nazi Party?"
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http://www.facinghistory.org/resources/lessons/decision-making-times-injustice-7
In this lesson, students will continue to explore the concept of obedience through the lens of the laws passed during Hitler's first years in power.
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http://www.facinghistory.org/resources/lessons/decision-making-times-injustice-8
In this lesson, students will analyze several examples of Nazi propaganda in order to identify the messages that permeated German society, and to consider the impact these messages might have had on the actions and attitudes of German children, women, and men.
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http://www.facinghistory.org/resources/lessons/decision-making-times-injustice-9
In this lesson, students read narratives describing life for German youth in the 1930s.
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http://www.facinghistory.org/resources/lessons/decision-making-times-injustic-10
Events throughout history, and in our lives today, are shaped by decisions made by ordinary individuals-decisions to perpetrate injustice, stand by while unjust acts occur, or take action against injustice.To help students understand this idea, students will analyze two events in this lesson: a contemporary story of bullying from a middle school in Arkansas and a night of state-sanctioned violence against Jews in Germany in 1938.
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http://www.facinghistory.org/resources/lessons/decision-making-times-injustic-12
The purpose of this lesson, and the following one, is to give students an awareness of the enormity of the crimes committed during the Nazi Holocaust and to help them grasp the fact that thousands of ordinary people-teenagers, fathers, daughters, brothers, etc.- participated in perpetrating these crimes, while thousands more stood by and quietly witnessed the suffering and death of millions of innocent people.
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http://www.facinghistory.org/resources/lessons/decision-making-times-injustic-11
In this lesson, students will explore stories of individuals, groups, and nations who made choices to resist the Nazis and rescue Jews and other victims of persecution.
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http://www.facinghistory.org/resources/lessons/decision-making-times-injustic-14
The purpose of this lesson is to help students define what justice looks like after the Holocaust and to help them develop a deeper understanding of justice in their own lives.
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http://www.facinghistory.org/resources/lessons/decision-making-times-injustic-15
In the final lesson of this unit, students will address these questions by creating a monument to their learning about Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior.
Navigate to This External Web Link:
http://www.facinghistory.org/resources/lessons/decision-making-times-injustic-16
