Since 2009, I have been using Echoes and Reflections as an essential resource with English/language arts and history/social studies teachers to help their students understand the literature (fiction and non-fiction) of the Holocaust. Using the well-crafted lessons, powerful visual testimonies, and carefully selected primary documents in Echoes and Reflections, I help teachers learn compelling content and effective strategies that deepen students’ engagement and analysis of Holocaust literary and historical texts. By integrating these texts into Echoes and Reflections, teachers and students personalize the history of the Holocaust; reflect on the role of individual responsibility, and learn to act on behalf of social justice for all.

A lesson that I have found to be particularly effective is a lesson that I developed for use with in-service and preservice teachers using Lesson 4: The Ghettos and We Are Witnesses: Five Diaries of Teenagers Who Died in the Holocaust (Jacob Boas, Scholastic, 1995).

Below is an outline of the lesson “Integrating Holocaust Non-fiction into Echoes and Reflections.”

Lesson 4: The Ghettos addresses Common Core State Standards and the NCTE/IRA Standards for the English Language Arts with its focus on citing textual evidence, analyzing multiple mediums, and referencing texts.

Beverly Ann Chin is Professor of English, Director of the English Teaching Program, and former Director of the Montana Writing Project at the University of Montana in Missoula.

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