Ms. Niles is a fifth grade teacher who is teaching a language arts unit on autobiographies using primary sources. She plans to organize the unit around the book, Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. The unit will address the essential question, "How does literature present truth?"
Ms. Niles introduces the genre of autobiographies. She also discusses how diaries might be different from some other kinds of autobiographies. She tells them that they will be reading a diary written by a young girl during World War II. In order to help them understand the book, she divides her students into groups and asks them to do a webquest using smartphones or tablets that will give them an overview of World War II and the Holocaust. On the webquest page, created using Weebly, she provides links to sources that are at the appropriate age for her students. She focuses on sources, especially photographs and maps that were created during the war. With their smartphones or tablets, each group of students collects photos and images from the webquest and uploads them into an online Snapfish group room.
Then each group uses their online shared collection of photos and images and their laptops to create a timeline of the events of the war using the tool xTimeline.
Ms. Niles begins exploration of Anne Frank's diary by reading out loud the first entries written in June 1942. The class discusses these entries and the setting of the book. They enter this information into the class wiki. Each day the students read another section of the book, discuss it in literature circles and make entries in the wiki. The different literature circle groups take turns making the first entry in the wiki and the other groups edit it to make additions or corrections.
To ensure her students use their time productively, Ms. Niles begins each class session by sharing an agenda or "to-do" list with the students. This strategy helps her to ensure her students have a clear understanding of what she expects them to accomplish during the session.
As the students read and discuss the diary, they use their laptops to add events to their timeline on World War II to include events described by Anne Frank. They compare Anne Frank's perspective of World War II to the events occurring during the war.
The unit concludes with each group using primary sources and their laptops to create a presentation about Anne Frank, World War II, or the Holocaust in one of the following formats: A slideshow, a concept map, a timeline, or an eBook.