About This Lesson
In this unit, students examine writings by Anne Frank. Anne’s writing is important largely for its content, the fact that it expresses the thoughts and feelings of a young person caught up in a global war, and also its literary qualities. In terms of literary skills, students will focus on relationships and characterization, figurative language, connotative meaning, point of view, and perspective.
Students will be exposed to content-area vocabulary and words derived from Greek and Latin roots judex, juro, malus, pan, polis, and volvo. In terms of literary skills, students will focus on relationships and characterization, figurative language, connotative meaning, point of view, and perspective. Students will work on grammar skills involving dangling and misplaced modifiers. Students will plan, write, edit and publish a personal narrative. Students will follow a logical sequence of steps that guide them to the creation of an original, finished text that mirrors the styles of some of the narratives they are reading in this unit’s Reading strand.
In this unit, students will read selections from Anne Frank’s Tales from the Secret Annex as well as selections from Realms of Gold, Volume 2. Anne Frank (1929–1945) was a Jewish girl born in Germany during the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. She and her family moved to Amsterdam, Netherlands, in 1934 because of growing anti-Semitism in Germany. After Germany captured the Netherlands during World War II, the Franks—along with four other people—went into hiding to avoid being sent to Nazi prison camps. During this time, Anne began writing in her diary about what day-to-day life was like in hiding, as well as noting her typical adolescent struggles. She also wrote about her hopes of becoming a journalist or writer in the future, but she never got the chance. The annex was discovered by the Gestapo (the Nazi secret police) in the summer of 1944; Anne and the others were sent to German prison camps, where she died at age 15.
