Eighth-graders’ diorama project explores Anne Frank's story

Wiley Middle School ELA students learned about Anne Frank through reading and presentations.

Eighth-grade students from Anisha Mahone and Christy Lemanowicz’s English Language Arts (ELA) classes recently read The Diary of Anne Frank.

The Wiley Middle School students then created and presented visual displays, including dioramas, to their classmates, as part of a discussion of cultural biases, stereotypes and prejudices.

Anne Frank, who would later perish in a concentration camp, was roughly the same age as the Wiley eighth-graders when she wrote her diary, in hiding, during two years of the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.

The students related to Frank’s struggle, and learned how the Holocaust had social, political and economic consequences for minority groups and the population as a whole. The project connected Common Core history with an International Baccalaureate (IB) Area of Interaction: Approaches to Learning and Human Ingenuity.

Angee Shaker

Angee Shaker is director of communications for the Cleveland Heights-University Heights City School District.

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Volume 7, Issue 4, Posted 10:07 AM, 03.31.2014