Our Cross-Curricular Unit Begins

Through trial and error, false starts, and big flops, we are continually trying to reach
the kids, to get them truly interested in the material. We’ve seen great success with
this in our World War II Unit. This cross-curricular unit is one that the students look
forward to each year. They ask questions about it a year in advance, and somehow
that excitement seems to eclipse the amount of work we ask from them.

A big part of the build-up for this is how we decorate the hallway and our classrooms.
During this unit, we transform our entire hallway into an interactive display. It contains
work from some previous years and morphs each year into something a little different.
The unit centers on our subject areas of English and US History. The students read
The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak, and study people, events, and locations from the
war itself.

Because of the importance of colors in the novel, we add different colored plastic
tablecloths to give the symbolism of the colors a tangible feeling in the hallway.

Death, who is surrounded by the books Liesel finds/steals in the novel looks
on as students walk into their English classroom, while the steam from the train
that decorates the door goes across the hallway to the social studies classroom,
which is blacked out to represent the devastation caused during the war and
serves as a solemn reminder of the lives lost during the Holocaust.

The hall is even more exciting with the addition of R/C model airplanes.

Check back over the next couple of weeks when we show you the display with
the student work from this year added.