Cannot believe it has been 10 years since 9/11/01. I remember it like it was yesterday, in my first year of teaching–1st graders. And while you and I have memories of that fateful day, our friends do not. They were alive, but everything they do know about September 11, 2001 is from stories, TV, books, etc.
So how do you deal with a major topic in their history in a way that both makes sense and doesn’t scare them?
I decided to tackle the anniversary first in Writer’s Workshop. First we read Fireboat: The Heroic Adventures of the John J. Harvey, and then talked about what we were thinking. We used this as an opportunity to both teach a strategy for writing (responding to literature and what’s going on in the world around us) as well to work through their thoughts and feelings of the day. Everyone wrote entries about what they knew about 9/11 or what they were wondering.
Later in the day we took some time to watch a news segment made just for kids. It was from Nick News and was called What Happened?: The Story of September 11th. It did a super job of explaining what actually happened as well as addressing questions that many kids have about that day. They went back to the entries they wrote earlier in the day and listened for answers, or to add information they wanted to remember. Hopefully your student came home talking about it, and you were able to have a discussion with them about it, too.
Let’s help them remember.