Anne Frank Diary Unit: Best Diary Units Anywhere

The Ultimate Diary Lesson Plan: Anne Frank and More

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by Alan Haskvitz national inservice presenter

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Haskvitz

The complete unit and all links are here
http://www.reacheverychild.com/lessonplans/plan8.html

This unit is designed to enhance the student’s understanding of The Diary of Anne Frank and enable students to better understand the situation as it might relate to them. To this end, excerpts from other historically significant essays are included. It also can make journal writing more important to the student as he or she sees the relationship between feelings and actions.

The objective of this unit is to expose the student to a variety of ways a diary can be interpreted to gain insight into the writer’s state of mind, the time period the diary was written, and the important of diaries to gaining an understanding of historical events as primary sources. In addition, the unit will make journal writing a more meaningful experience.

The student should be able to produce an essay that compares the various stressful situations that Anne Frank went through and be able to compare and contrast that with other diarists. They should also be challenged with an integrated lesson. For example, if Anne Frank had one poster in her hiding place what would you think it would be of and why?

Overview and Background

Students often assume that a diary is just a means of recording personal observations. Using this unit, students will be able to see that the diary, as opposed to the memor, is a primary source document providing insights into the culture, society, and stresses of the writer and thus a valuable piece of history. Studying this material should provide them with the ability to gather new energy for their diaries, as well as idenfity with the conditions of others throughout time. There is another puzzle to solve. Because diaries aren’t written for other people to read, characters aren’t introduced but just appear with no explanation. You get to figure out who’s who and what’s what. In other words, you can build a picture of the writer yourself. You may wish to have the students draw pictures of what they feel these writers looked like.

Duration: Two weeks for major reading of diaries at the most and related resources. This includes time for discussion, analysis of quotes and linking of past to present. This unit can be done in much less time by reducing variables. There are many links to other diaries from other time periods to help to a compare and contrast unit, too. Very complete unit.

Please note: Due to the length of this lesson I have moved it to http://www.reacheverychild.com/lessonplans/plan8.html

It is easily one of the best units of study. If you want more information you can email me through the site by clicking on the author’s name at http://www.reacheverychild.com