Literacy Focus: The Holocaust

Older students have been spening time reading and discussing picture books, chapter books, articles, and facts about the Holocaust. To continue their study, the students charted some of the many things they have learned about the Holocaust. We tied this conversation into how to write paragraphs. The children worked in smaller groups to write their own paragraphs to contribute to a short non-fiction piece titled "The Holocaust." Here are some pictures with the students working in their small groups and the writing sample they created.

The Holocaust
By Isabel, Jacob, Ben, William, Molly, Nicole, Aubrielle, Alex, Lexi, Manny

Concentration camps can be called labor, death, or hostage camps. In the camps about six million people were killed by gas chambers, starvation, dehydration, hypothermia, and shootings. The Nazi’s thought they were doing the right thing.

The Jews were transported by boxcar sometimes they were in the boxcar for days or weeks. Some people died before getting to the camps. When they arrived they got their hair shaved off and were given other clothes.

The Nazi party killed 1.2 million children during the Holocaust. Three million Jews were killed in gas chambers alone. No one could escape from these gas chambers. And there was absolutely no privacy!