Based on legislation passed by the Kentucky General Assembly in 2008 (HJR 6), the Kentucky commissioner of education convened a work group (the Kentucky Social Studies Teacher Network) to review Holocaust curricula and the Kentucky standards to develop a High School Holocaust Curriculum Guide. Network members researched Holocaust curricula from all 50 states. State and national standards were used to develop this curriculum guide. Members of the network visited and consulted with the Holocaust Museums in Houston, Texas, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. In addition, four members of the network visited the Jewish Museum in Berlin, Germany, as part of the Atlantik-Brucke Study Tour Trip in both 2006 and 2007. The knowledge gained from these experiences was invaluable, as it gave the network members multiple viewpoints from which to begin this work.
The following curriculum guide will provide Kentucky teachers with Holocaust resources and lesson plans that may be used in their classrooms. The guide consists of links to curricula used in other states as well as other countries. Also included are cross content area lesson experiences for social studies, arts and humanities, international, world languages, English language arts, mathematics and science.
Additional Kentucky teacher-prepared resources are coming soon.
Combined Curriculum Document
High School Social Studies Standards
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Program of Studies: Understandings |
Program of Studies: Skills and Concepts |
Related Core Content for Assessment |
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All of the following Understandings are grouped together in this document to reflect the conceptual nature of historical perspective. Each specific era in both U.S. and World will include the following Understandings:
SS-H-HP-U-1
Students will understand that history is an account of human activities that is interpretive in nature, and a variety of tools (e.g., primary and secondary sources, data, artifacts) are needed to analyze historical events.
SS-H-HP-U-2
Students will understand that history is a series of connected events shaped by multiple cause-effect relationships, tying past to present. |
SS-H-HP-S-1
Students will demonstrate an understanding of the interpretative nature of history using a variety of tools (e.g., primary and secondary sources, Internet, timelines, maps, data):
a) investigate and analyze perceptions and perspectives (e.g., gender, race, region, ethnic group, nationality, age, economic status, religion, politics, geographic factors) of people and historical events in the modern world (world civilizations, U.S. history)
b) examine multiple cause-effect relationships that have shaped history (e.g., showing how a series of events are connected) |
SS-HS-5.1.1
Students will use a variety of tools (e.g., primary and secondary sources, data, artifacts) to analyze perceptions and perspectives (e.g., gender, race, region, ethnic group, nationality, age, economic status, religion, politics, geographic factors) of people and historical events in the modern world (1500 A.D. to present) and United States History (Reconstruction to present).
DOK 3
SS-HS-5.1.2
Students will analyze how history is a series of connected events shaped by multiple cause and effect relationships, tying past to present.
DOK 3 |
Social Studies Holocaust Resources:
A Cybrary of the Holocaust:
A Holocaust community founded this site in 1995 to collect, remember and inform about the events of the Holocaust. Remember.org offers contributors, survivors, liberators, historians and teachers a place to connect and share the best research resources and stories through art, photography, painting, audio/video and remembrance.
Jewish Virtual Library
This site gives an in-depth background of content knowledge surrounding the history of the Holocaust. The passage contains links to maps, graphs, policies, photographs, and historical data from the Holocaust era.
New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education
The core mission of the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education is to promote Holocaust education. The commission's site includes curriculum guides for classrooms ranging from kindergarten through 12th grade. On a continual basis, the commission surveys the status of Holocaust/Genocide Education; designs, encourages and promotes the implementation of Holocaust and genocide education and awareness; provides programs; and coordinates designated events that will provide appropriate memorialization of the Holocaust on a regular basis. The commission provides assistance and advice to the public and private schools and will meet to assist with the study of the Holocaust and genocide.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
The museum has a multitude of resources, materials, lessons, activities and teacher guides. It will assist teachers striving to help students learn the history of the Holocaust and guide students to reflect upon the moral and ethical questions raised by that history. The site will explain reasons for teaching the Holocaust, curriculum to teach, teacher training opportunities available and the ten guidelines for teaching Holocaust in a thought provoking responsible way.
Social Studies Lesson Experience
This lesson experience includes seven primary source documents that will engage students in a group research project. Students will analyze perceptions and perspectives of the Holocaust and determine how history is a series of connected events shaped by multiple cause effect relationships.
Read Write Think
In this "read write think" lesson experience students will travel through information-filled Web sites and read first-hand accounts and individual experiences from the Holocaust. This online inquiry will have students researching, creating, analyzing, illustrating and synthesizing and it will engulfed them in complex reasoning.
Arts and Humanities Holocaust Resources
A Teachers’ Guide to the Holocaust
This guide is an overview of the people and events of the Holocaust through photographs, documents, art, music, movies, and literature developed by the Florida Center for Instructional Technology at the University of South Florida in 2005. This is an extremely comprehensive site. Arts resources include extensive use of Web links, MIDI sound examples, thumbnails of art works and explanations of style of arts leading up to time of Holocaust.
Anti Defamation League
The ADL is a leading provider of anti-bias education and diversity training programs that help create and sustain inclusive home, school, community and work environments.
Echoes and Reflections
Echoes and Reflections, developed by the Anti-Defamation League, the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education and Yad Vashem, includes everything an educator needs to teach the complex issues of the Holocaust.
I Survived the 20th Century Holocaust
The purpose of this "Forget You Not"™ project is to disseminate and publicize the most important available online Holocaust Web pages. The project references and places direct links to the selected Web pages that can be seen in their entirety through specially designed frameset windows. Teachers can find a multitude of visual and aural resources about the Holocaust.
Paperclips
Paperclips is a documentary film that tells the story of a group of middle school students from Whitwell, Tennessee who collected six million paper clips to represent the number of Jews killed during the Holocaust. It is available from the Anti Defamation League on the Web.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
A living memorial to the Holocaust, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum inspires citizens and leaders worldwide to confront hatred, promote human dignity, and prevent genocide. The museum has many resources for teachers striving to help students learn the history of the Holocaust and reflect upon the moral and ethical questions raised by that history.
Arts and Humanities Social Studies Cross-Reference Chart
This chart aligns arts and humanities and social studies cultural and historical core content.
- Using Nazi "approved" art and "degenerate" art, all art disciplines can research, discuss, compare/contrast, analyze and more.
· Visual Arts (Toolkit, KET.)·
1. The lesson plan on page 197 deals with an Artist’s Shrine, based on building a shrine in the style of Latin America. Students can look at displays of artifacts from Holocaust museum and design and build their own shrines to holocaust victims.
2. The lesson plan on page 229 deals with transforming ads (can be any kind of image) into to artwork. Students can take a photograph or propaganda poster of the era and rearrange elements to create their own artwork.
3. The lesson plan on page 269 deals with Renaissance door carvings that tell religious stories. Students can view the work of David Olère, make compare/contrast works and written observations of that and Renaissance work such as Bosch’s “Garden of Earthly Delights.”
· Music
1. Students can listen to the works of Wagner, Beethoven and other German Nationalist composers and make inferences as to the sound of the music, how it could be used to inspire national pride and more.
· Drama
1. Any number of dramatic readings, plays, novels and more (i.e., The Diary of Anne Frank) can be utilized. Students can write original monologues or skits dealing with the Holocaust and dramatize readings such as Elie Wiesel’s Night.
· Dance
1. Students may participate in interpretive/improvisational dances to show the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, resistance fighters and more.
International Education Resources
The Challenge of Teaching the Holocaust in a Multicultural Classroom
Yad Vashem’s International School for Holocaust Studies published this one page article describing the issues European teachers with multicultural students face in addressing the Holocaust and suggesting strategies for making the topic accessible to all students.
Holocaust Education Reports
This site provides links to reports on Holocaust education in the following countries: Argentina, Austria, Croatia, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Israel, Lithuania, Luxemburg, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Teaching about the Holocaust
This 56-page book describes findings from a Council of Europe seminar on approaches to and best practices in teaching about the Holocaust in the 47 member European countries. Topics include: Holocaust in its historical context; the Holocaust within the curriculum, historic consciousness and how to teach the Holocaust; and targets to be attained.
Issues in Holocaust Education
The authors examine a range of topics, including the need for Holocaust education, the attitudes and practices of teachers and the use of Holocaust study to further the goal of participatory democracy. While application is international, the context for the research is the United Kingdom and Canada.
Holocaust Education in China
This paper describes the unique aspects of Holocaust education in China and how it relates to the Nanjing Massacre and current issues of human rights. Discussion questions are provided.
Yad Vashem
A Web site in six languages dedicated to education about and remembrance of the Holocaust, provides links to educational materials, online courses, research and more.
Cross Curricular Resources
Art
Footprints for Hope
This site was developed by the Holocaust and the United Nations Outreach Program developed for use with students age 13 and over. The site provides a lesson plan, Power Point Presentation, film and art works to teach the Holocaust.
Learning about the Holocaust through art
This site offers a visual approach to learning about the Holocaust and includes a teacher’s guide, student activities and study resources. Available in multiple languages
Understanding the Holocaust through art and artifacts, A Curriculum Guide
This resource offers teachers of 6th-grade through 12th-grade students’ ideas for exploring the Holocaust through art.
World Language Holocaust Resources
Spanish
Holocausto Seis (2007)
A fictional and nonfictional film based on blended testimonies of Holocaust survivors. The plot revolves around a grandfather and grandson’s journey through six Latin American countries in search of documents on the Holocaust.
Learning about the Holocaust through art
This site offers a visual approach to learning about the Holocaust and includes a teacher’s guide, student activities and study resources.
French
La Colline aux mille enfants
This site shows a scene from the 1994 Jean-Louis Lorenzi made-for-TV movie La Colline aux mille enfants, about a town that harbored 300 children from the Nazis.
Nuit et brouillard (1955) -- A film for senior high school mature students; a stark portrayal of the Holocaust by Alain Resnais.
Au Revoir les Enfants (l987) -- A film based on the life of director Louis Malle, who attended a Roman Catholic boarding school and witnessed a Gestapo raid when three of his fellow students were rounded up and taken to Auschwitz.
Hebrew
Learning about the Holocaust through art
This site offers a visual approach to learning about the Holocaust and includes a teacher’s guide, student activities and study resources.
Russian
Learning about the Holocaust through art
This site offers a visual approach to learning about the Holocaust and includes a teacher’s guide, student activities and study resources.
Language Arts Holocaust Resources
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
The museum has many resources for teachers striving to help students learn the history of the Holocaust and reflect upon the moral and ethical questions raised by that history. Rationales for teaching Holocaust history are offered, along with guidelines and activities. Teacher training opportunities are available as both online and face-to-face professional development. A museum fellowship program is available for teachers who want to participate in summer study programs to improve their teaching related to the Holocaust. The site contains numerous exemplary lessons across disciplines with specific lessons asking students to write analytically and reflectively for an intended audience. There also are lessons that ask students to develop and articulate arguments in literary and nonliterary texts. Finally, lessons are included in which students are asked to deliver oral presentations and listen to audio of Holocaust survivors.
The Gerda and Kurt Klein Foundation
Gerda, as a survivor of the Holocaust, and Kurt, as her liberator, have used their experiences as a catalyst for helping to preserve the memory of the Holocaust and to draw on the lessons learned from that dark period of history. The Kleins tell their story and offer lessons and ideas for teaching youth to get involved in their communities. This site provides activities and video footage offering teachers and students relevant materials. Since 2006 the Gerda and Kurt Klein Foundation has partnered with Internet2/MAGPI for a series of interactive video conferences with Gerda Klein and students. MAGPI offers an interactive program to any interested middle school, high school or higher education institution that has Internet 2 connectivity and the ability to do H.323 videoconferencing.
Echoes and Reflections
This multimedia curriculum was produced in partnership by the Anti-Defamation League, Yad Vashem, and USC Shoah Foundation Institute. The curriculum provides interdisciplinary, multimedia lessons on the history of the Holocaust. The Echoes and Reflections Website offers materials and resources along with information about teacher trainings. Lessons include rich primary source materials and compelling video of first-person testimony from survivors, rescuers, liberators and other witnesses of the Holocaust.
Remember Education
This site includes teacher resources and lessons. Highlights of this site for English teachers are the two extensive annotated bibliographies. The first contains historical resources and the second contains literary pieces arranged according to genre as well as literary criticism. Some stories are available to be read online. Primary and secondary sources offer researchers access to the materials they need.
North Carolina Council on the Holocaust
The council’s Website offers teachers’ guides, publications, links to teaching resources, traveling exhibits, contact information for speakers and information on teacher workshops. The Teachers’ Resource is available online and includes an illustrated guide with the background and history of the Holocaust as well as lesson plans with handouts, a glossary and timeline.
Facing History and Ourselves
Educator resources, online workshops, and lessons are available to teach Holocaust history and background. Video clips offer opportunities for viewing and listening. Resource collections, lessons and units, classroom strategies, online modules, and a lending library also are provided.
A Teachers Guide to the Holocaust
This site is operated by the Florida Center for Instructional Technology College of Education at the University of South Florida. A matrix and lessons are provided for high school teachers. Lessons incorporate reading and interpreting primary sources, writing, using technologies to gather historical evidence, listening to interviews with survivors and observing while interpreting photographs and video clips.
Math and Science Holocaust Resources
Biology Lessons of the Holocaust
The DNA Shoah Project is building a database of genetic material from Holocaust survivors and their immediate descendants in hopes of reuniting families disrupted by the Shoah (“Holocaust” in Hebrew). The project aims to match displaced relatives, provide Shoah orphans and lost children with information about their biological families and, eventually, assist in the forensic identification of Holocaust-era remains.
This classroom module contains a DNA Shoah Project Introduction designed to familiarize participants with the project goals and how they will be achieved. The activity then provides learners with a historical context and insight into the impact of the Holocaust through survivor video testimony. The short video segments are punctuated by discussion questions to help facilitate thoughtful discourse. After the historical context is set, the activity moves to a science introduction, which outlines the basic science behind the project and reviews the concepts crucial to the project operations. The final component is an exercise in which participants perform an example forensic reconstruction, using real, non-project, forensic data to construct an individual’s unknown DNA profile. Supplemental materials include a student worksheet PDF, which has pertinent vocabulary and worksheets for the activity and a teacher’s supplemental PDF that includes activity objectives and worksheet keys.
Anne Frank Holocaust Statistics Math Lesson Plan
This lesson incorporates some of the Holocaust statistics, such as total number of Jews and total number killed. The students determine percentages, do statistical analysis and can use the data to graph.