Wiki Project (Kist #8)

I will say that the wiki project is by far my favorite project of the semester. Going into student teaching and teaching, I have been worried about how to come up with lesson plans. I am especially worried for my first year of teaching. This project will help save hours of prep time trying to find lesson plan ideas.

I did The Diary of Anne Frank. I was glad that I got this book because I have always been interested in learning about the Holocaust and the specific time period. In high school, we never read this book. But, the book we did read (I forget what it was called), was similar. In addition, there was an Oprah special, where she interviewed Elie Weisel and they took a tour of Auschwitz. I enjoyed watching that. It was eerie to know that that is all thats left.

I was really surprised that this book is banned from many schools.
http://drexelpublishing.org/2010/02/10/anne-franks-diary-banned-from-classrooms/
People need to stop worrying so much about monotonous things. Classic literature cannot be taught because people complained, and in the end the students are the ones missing out. However, I do not think this book is appropriate for an elementary school. It is a way to teach history and I like that it is from a teenager's point of view, which can help students relate to her.

While working on my wiki, I noticed many of my lessons were incorporated or based with Social Studies. It was kind of hard to find Language Arts lesson plans. I did find a website (it's on my wiki) and it was the Anne Frank website. It allowed you to take a virtual tour of the annex where Anne was hiding. I thought it was interesting, yet eerie to view. Another interesting link I posted was the Anne Frank youTube channel. I think this is a great way to have another perspective while teaching this book. It gave testimonals from people who knew her. It also contains the only raw video footage of her.

I have been looking at the other wikis as they are completed and I am excited to know that I have all these great resources to reference to. All the books are used in the classroom and I recognize all of them (even if I haven't read them). It is comforting to know that others care as much about this project as I do. It is so beneficial and a brilliant project idea!