http://www.ncpublicschools.org/curriculum/artsed/resources/handbook/dance/27integration#diary

Submitted by Susan Hartley, Wake County Public Schools

Lesson Plan

Grade Level 8th grade

This lesson is helpful for students to understand the literature by embody it through their body. Students explore the literature in a different perspective and it will help memorize and analyze the work more thoroughly. This is also very useful for ESL students who cannot fully understand the literature by language. Students feel the contents by demonstrating the words with their body. I chose this lesson because it has strong contents and backgrounds that I can use right away and I think students will also enjoy the lesson that they can integrate the story with dance.

Lesson Focus
English Language Arts/ The Diary of Anne Frank, Anne Frank

Lesson Objectives
Students will have an interdisciplinary experience exploring a variety of aspects presented in The Diary of Anne Frank.

Structure and Strategies for Teaching
Introduction/ Presentation World War II and Adolf Hitler, the Holocaust and the torture and murder of so many of the Jewish faith, the emotions, the life of a teenager and her family all provide a setting for The Diary of Anne Frank. Explain to the class that you will experiment with them, this can also be related Concentration Camps and the "medical" experiments that were conducted on Jews, adults and children and multiples- twins and triplets.

Have the students brainstorm and provide a word list (the teacher can write this out on the board or overhead) describing the situations, the events, and the emotions of the diary. These words can be specifically nouns and adjectives, for example, family, friends, fear, love maturity, hope, responsibility, greed, courage, danger, crowded, goodness, evil, silence, safety, lack of freedom. Reflect back to this list throughout class to "connect" what the students are experiencing.

Exploration Have the students find good personal space and lie down on their backs, knees bent, feet on the floor, eyes closed (constructive rest). Quietly direct them to imagine themselves in Anne Frank's place, surrounded by family and strangers, pulled abruptly from your friends and your life, loosing everything. Have the students imagine being confined with their family for 25 months, over two years without being able to get away from them, never leaving the annex. Have the students listen for the silence, the safe sounds, the unsafe sounds. Talk them through what life would have been like- the urgency for silence. What if someone sneezed or coughed? Every sound could mean your discovery, the end of your life, the end of the lives of your family. The need for silence was - (during this time, find a heavy book and position it over a surface that when the book is slammed a very loud sound will be produced). Drop the book! Ask the students what happened. Was it the Gestapo, the green police, the bookcase being destroyed, and the hiding place being discovered?

Discuss again the idea of closeness, the inability to get away from each other. Have the students form a standing group, a blob. Have the class, as this group, move as one, from one corner of the room to another, staying close, always touching in total silence. Experience the closeness. Share the experiences with one another. Anyone claustrophobic?

Dependent upon the numbers, use the entire class or divide the class into groups. Have one person sit in the middle of the group. Have the rest of the group hover over the "sitter" never touching, but obstructing light and space by positioning their bodies and their hands around the "sitter". Have the "sitter" remember the feelings. Change "sitters" to allow the entire class the opportunity to experience this feeling. Share the experiences, the feelings- was it comfortable? Smothering?

Reflect back to the word list. What has the class experienced today?

At the end of Act 1, the families celebrate Hanukkah and Anne expresses her ideal of hope. Introduce the idea of celebration in the Jewish community and teach an Authentic Hora folk dance (Weikart, Hora Medura). Explain that the families could possibly have danced this very quietly at night but then again it may have been too dangerous. Have the students execute the Hora. Experience the joy of the dance, the hope for a future.

Culmination/ Final Forming
Return to the word list. Identify what words the class had experienced. Ask the students to explain why this was a class on The Diary of Anne Frank, or why this was not. What did the students learn from these experiences?

Ideas for Extending the Lesson
Additional Jewish dances could be introduced, providing cultural background. Students could write about their personal experiences pertaining to this lesson, in narrative or "diary" form. Students could create visual art pertaining to this lesson.

Resources
Teaching Movement and Dance, Phyllis Weikart

ANNE FRANK

• WORD LIST
  Family, friends, fear, strangers, maturity, greed, responsibility, love, closeness, danger, hope, crowdedness, hunger, goodness, silence, evil, empathy

• EXPERIMENTS (2-3)

• 25 months

• CONSTRUCTIVE REST - strangers, family, noise, "safe" sounds, lack of space, lack of freedom, every sound - cough, sneeze, BOOK

• Discuss feelings - Gestapo, gunshot

• CLOSENESS - silence, entire class- move as one - close always, touching

• Discuss feelings

• "HOVERING" - smothering/threatening, no contact - one person in center

• Discuss feelings

• End of Act I - "hope" = Hora Medura- #3,13 PW

  • 8 intro

  • R Side, close, s, c, s, c, s, c (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)

  • In 2,3,4 Out 2, 3, 4 (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8)

  • Repeat side close and in/out

  • Grapevine (1+2+3+4+5+6+7,8) Rt X, side, X, side, X, side, X, side, X, side, X, side, heel, heel.

  • Repeat

Discuss: was this or was this not a language arts class, why or why not.