Week Thirteen - Understanding Jewish Life in Pre-War Europe

This Week

Students this week were working for the first three days on the Jewish Life Photo Project whereby they found photos of European Jews before the Holocaust began from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum's website and researched that person's community. Students then compared them to their own lives by comparing photos of themselves with their friends and families, so I wanted to make available to the parents the spreadsheet where you can find your son's or daughter's Prezis to see what they did. You can find them here. The students presented many of them yesterday so that everyone would get a chance to see how the Holocaust affected different people in different communities. I will grade the rest of them this upcoming week.

One notable Prezi was Fatima's, who did a great job with this project. Check hers out by clicking on the link below the picture!

Check out Fatima's Prezi here!

Students also began studying the events surrounding Kristallnacht (learn more about it at this website from the USHMM.org), which we began studying more in depth in class today. Unfortunately, the first period class may need to spend a little more time on homework this weekend as our class work time was cut short by our first "Code Red" Drill evacuation. It went extremely well though and all students exited the school building very quickly to safe locations. Additional homework is a small price to pay for safety preparedness!

Upcoming Week

Next week students are off on Monday while teachers have a professional development day, so students get to sleep in one day! After that we will continue our study of the Holocaust for one more week before moving on to the Cambodian Genocide. Next week we will focus more on the Nuremberg trials as we continue our study of the evolution of the international community's response to genocide.

Also, we now have all of the chaperones we need for the trip. Special thanks to Mrs. Walton-Crichton, Mrs. Kelly, and Mr. and Mrs. Lucas for volunteering as parent chaperones! Again, this trip will take place on November 25th, the Tuesday before Thanksgiving break.

Have a great weekend!

~Mr. Grieve