Letters to Anne Frank (LS-RO-305)
Starting from the idea that education is not memorizing that Hitler killed six million people, but focusing on the fact that it means understanding how millions of ordinary Germans were convinced that it was required, and it is learning how to spot the signs of history repeating itself, this learning scenario aims to teach students about a young girl, Anne Frank, who lived during that period of time.
Democracy, human rights and European socio-cultural patrimony
Created by Nadina Carmen NICOLICI, a Romanian teacher of English, this lesson is targeted at students aged 16-17 who learn history by the means of English and French, and it addresses issues such as democracy, civism and human rights, inter-personal relationships, and the European socio-cultural patrimony. It makes use of the materials in the Europeana Collection about Holocaust and Anne Frank, and it includes the following activities:
- A warm-up activity aimed to get students closer to the topic of the lesson.
- Watching a short video and discussing it, an activity during which students make use of their existing knowledge about the Holocaust and Anne Frank, and they also learn new things on these topics.
- Reading activity, during which students read a short extract from “The Diary of a Young Girl” and then they work in groups and identify the similarities and the differences between their lifestyles as teenagers of the 21st century and Anne Frank’s lifestyle before and during the Holocaust. They also learn how to write letters to this young girl.
- Final conclusion related to the ways in which war affects people’s lives in general, and teenager’s lives in particular.
- An assignment for which students pick up one of the letters written by their mates and reply to it as if they were Anne Frank.
Aim of the lesson
The aims of these activities are to:
- Develop students’ critical thinking skills by having them analyze, compare and contrast information.
- Develop and improve students’ knowledge about the Holocaust, with a special focus on human rights, civism and democracy.
- Develop and improve student’s skills of collaboration, communication (in foreign languages and in mother tongue), and creativity as they will work in groups with their mates.
The lesson makes use and integrates project-based learning, collaborative learning and it is student-centered.
Would you like to know more about this learning scenario? You can download it below:
If you find this learning scenario interesting, you can have also a look at:
- Life on the trenches by Marco Neves
- Face of War by Adam Stepinski
- Letters and postcards from war times by Heathcliff Schembri
CC BY-SA 4.0: the featured image used to illustrate this article has been found on Europeana Collections and provided by Fortepan.