Today we started with my favorite video clip from Oprah. The kids reaction, "OMG, we love Oprah!!!" The loved the video. If you would like to watch a portion of the interview, click here for part 1. I promised the kids we would watch a few parts of the Oprah interview as a bellringer over the next few days. They are wonderful. We may end up the unit with part of the Bob Costas interview. This is a fairly short novel, so we will only be reading for (maybe) 2 weeks. We will have an extra week for other assignments that will accompany the novel. I will post the links for the other Oprah interview below.
If you are beginning your research over the Holocaust, then a WONDERFUL place to start is the Birmingham Holocaust Education Center. We will access this website during class so if you get a chance to look around at home, please do so! I would say start here and watch some of the powerful presentations. Today, some kids asked some phenomenal questions about everything surrounding the Holocaust. One thing they asked was, "Why didn't everybody else do anything? What was wrong with those people?" Someone brought up our "right" and so I located the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and upload the file. You can click below and read them for yourself. I know that I didn't study these until college but the kids were asking. We won't go over them in class, but feel free to read over them.
Here are the links for the Elie Wiesel interview conducted by Oprah Winfrey. We will watch parts of these videos in class as a bellringer for the next few days. The images are real and I've told the kids that if they don't want to watch, they don't have to. Most are very interested, concerned, and saddened about what happened during the Holocaust.
Oprah's Elie Wiesel Interview, part 1
Oprah's Elie Wiesel Interview, part 2
Oprah's Elie Wiesel Interview, part 3
Oprah's Elie Wiesel Interview, part 4
Oprah's Elie Wiesel Interview, part 5
Oprah's Elie Wiesel Interview, part 6