Finish all pages for units 8 and 9.
Be ready to take the two quizzes.
Right now we are studying The Diary of Anne Frank. We are reading the play and watching a documentary called Dear Kitty, which is an interview with Miep, one of the people who helped hide Anne and the others. The goal is to think like a playwright and a director. How does one transfer lessons from the Holocaust? There are so many mediums? We will start with a play and a documentary. We will be doing more later.
Sections 3 and 4:
Finish all pages for unit 8.
Be ready for the quiz.
Don't forget the students can earn 3 extra credit points for doing unit 15 and getting a 75% or better on the quiz.
Right now we are watching the movie Gettysburg. The purpose of the movie is threefold. First, the information about the battle and the Civil War is cross-curricular. When the students study the unit in Social Studies, they will have great background knowledge. Secondly, we are preparing for a research project. Mrs. Jamison is having the students pick a character from the movie to research. The students will then write a brief paper using proper citations and bibliography. Third, I want to look at the movie as a piece of historical fiction. We will discuss plot elements along with characterization. The movie is based on the book The Killer Angels. The book was created from detailed research. However, the movie is not a documentary. The events of the battle are presented in story format. Like the movie Titanic, not everything in the movie is meant to be accurate because, again, the movie is not a documentary.
The movie is long- four hours! The movie is tedious at times. The plot moves along slowly. It reminds me of Lord of the Rings in a way, but it's not that good. :)
The movie does have battle scenes, and it is rated PG, but I assure you that the battle scenes are tame in comparison to the realism available today. The battles are recreated by Civil War reenactors. There is little blood and no gore. Men who are shot merely fall down. The emphasis of the movie was on what happened, not to show the true horror of war in the way Saving Private Ryan did. The movie looks like it was created so that everyone could know what happened on those three important days in our country's history.
As a side note, Mrs. Jamison's dad worked on the production of the film. He is a Civil War expert who helped make sure the sets and the battles were accurate. Mrs. Jamison knows a lot about the battles because of her dad.
