The Diary of A Young Girl is the diary of a young Anne Frank, kept during the two years that she and her family were in hiding during the Nazi occupation of The Netherlands. Anne Frank and her family were Jewish. When the Nazis invaded and occupied The Netherlands and began rounding up Jews for deportation to concentration camps, Anne and her family, along with some other Jewish friends, went into hiding in sealed off attic rooms in the annex to her father's office building. Loyal friends of her father kept them supplied with food and necessities during the two years and one month that they successfully hid from the Nazis. Someone told the Gestapo about the hiding place, it was raided, and the whole family was deported to concentration camps. Anne died of typhus at Bergen-Belsen two weeks before the camp was liberated by the British. Only her father, Otto, survived the concentration camps, and he was given the diary by a family friend who found it in the attic and preserved it until after the war. The diary is a thoughtful, moving and authentic account of the plight of a young girl and her Jewish family in the face of the Nazi threat. It is, at times, the musing and dreams of a typical 13 year-old girl coming of age, but it is also a fascinating and detailed account of how the family survived in hiding and the terrible specter that loomed over their day-to-day existence. I will use this text to open the study and discussion of The Holocaust that the Nazis perpetrated against an entire ethnic population. I feel that this text will engage the students more than the dry recitation of facts in a history text. I feel that this text will present that historical era from a different viewpoint, one that students roughly the same age as Anne Frank can more readily identify with, and will open-up more meaningful in-depth study and discussion of these historical events. I especially like this text for that purpose because it will engage the girls in my class even more. This text will also be a catalyst for discussion of and teaching ethnic diversity.
7. The Diary of Anne Frank, a film, Directed by George Stevens, released by Twentieth Century Fox in 1959.
This film is based upon the Pulitzer Prize winning play of the same name, and won several Academy Awards itself. The film is a tasteful and respectful film based upon the actual diary of Anne Frank and is faithful and accurate in historical detail. I would not use it if it wasn't faithful to the diary and accurate in historical detail. I will take the unusual step of showing the film to the class before they read the book, but after we have done some pre-reading strategies about the book. I feel that using the film this way will be a good pre-reading tool for my students, and that it will be especially helpful to students who have difficulty processing written text. It will also be beneficial to the understanding of my ELL students. I will make the film available for any student who wants to review it during the learning cycle, and will encourage students to give it a second viewing after they have read the book as a post-reading comprehension exercise. I realize that I will have to develop assessment tools that assure me that the students have read the book, and are not relying simply on viewing the film.
No comments:
Post a Comment