Goals

 

Details

Duration: 90 minutes

Assessments: Student reflections/journals, Student discussions, Student writing

 

Description

IN-CLASS:
1. Do Now: Close your eyes and take a moment to think...can you picture every detail of the face of the person in your life that you most care for and love beyond all else...? Using clear, expressive and vivid details, describe this face in writing.
2. Finishing the novel: Read/Discuss pages 99-109 of Night
3. Final Thoughts & Sharing: What is happening inside of you as we read? Write your 'gut' reactions to the novel in your scrapbook: What do you have to say to this novel?
4. In the next to last sentence in the book, Elie says that when he looked in a mirror after liberation (1 year since he lived in the ghetto), he saw "a corpse" gazing back at him. He ends the book by stating, "The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me." Take a moment and reflect about what he means. What do you see of yourself when you look in the mirror? Who are you? Using a metaphor, finish the following sentence so that it expresses the truth about yourself:
"FROM THE DEPTHS OF THE MIRROR, ________________ GAZES BACK AT ME."
5. Share and Reflect

HOMEWORK DUE NEXT CLASS:
1. In your scrapbook, identify and respond (2 paragraphs each!) to 3 quotes from pages 99-109 of Night.
2. Writing Assignment (3 pages minimum): When we began our project, The Search for Meaning, we talked about how in the Jewish tradition, a witness is a messenger who 'says how things are'...who speaks truth. Throughout this project, you have been asked to be a witness. Now I would like for you to begin considering your 'testimony'. Use the following writing prompts to help you write a three-page reflection about your experience reading Night by Elie Wiesel:
1. What is the 'truth' told in this novel? What have you 'seen' and experienced and thought about? What have you learned?
2. How has writing about, reading and discussing this novel helped you to think about your own identity and understand more about who you are and your "why" for living?
3. What is the message of this novel? What does it communicate to you about who we are, who we must be and what our responsibility is to one another?

The End of 'Night'
This PPT has the prompts for students to reflect on the ending of the book as a class. This allowed no words to be spok...
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Author Reflections

This was possibly the most powerful day we shared together, reading the last pages of the text and completing the activity. The mood in the room was weighty, sincere, reflective and personal. Having students share out who/what they see in the mirror...wow.

The writing assignment they completed for HW this night became the foundation for a lot of work that followed, including memorialzing the text as well as a base for the Humanities Essay they wrote surrounding the Holocaust.