Number the Stars

June 7, 2011 | Posted in: Class Updates

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Over the past month, we have worked on a joint social studies and reading unit about the Holocaust.  In early May, we were fortunate enough to have theater educators from The Hartford Stage come to our class each day for one week to begin the unit with a dramatic study of Lois Lowry’s famous novel Number the Stars.  Where a traditional book study would have started with some background instruction about the holocaust, our theater educator, Summer, started by diving into the story with the kids.  The students had some incredibly rich discussions about the events that occurred in this sadly realistic piece of historical fiction.  One of my big focuses was helping the kids to make reader-text connections to the text.  These sorts of connections are very important to comprehending text, and (fortunately) these students have a hard time connecting to the events of the Holocaust.

After the week-long Hartford Stage residency ended, we started reading the story together.  Although I was initially skeptical about how interested the kids would be in the story (since they already knew how many of the pivotal moments ended up), I have been so glad to see that the kids have been tremendously interested in the story.  We’ve had meaningful and thoughtful conversations about the book; the likes of which I’d not previously seen this year.  This book has also been a tremendous opportunity to learn about thick and thin questions: questions that are in-depth and thought-provoking or shallow and fact-oriented, respectively.

Today, we finished the book.  It was a wonderful conclusion, and we had some terrific discussions about the book, character voice, and much more!  I’m so proud of the kids.  I’ll be out of the classroom tomorrow, but the kids will continue to work on activities relating to the book.