News Watch

Grade Levels: 6 through 12

Goals:

• To identify newspaper articles that deal with human rights issues, prejudice, ethnic wars, antisemitism, racism, and inequality.
• To relate recurrent themes of prejudice existent in our society today with the Holocaust.

Sunshine State Standards:

• Grades 6-8
  • SS.A.2.3.2, 3.3.4
  • SS.C.2.3.4, 2.3.7

• Grades 9-12
  • SS.A.1.4.4, 3.4.9
  • SS.C.1.4.1, 2.4.4

View all Sunshine State Standards

Materials:

• newspaper
• scissors
• oaktag paper
• index cards
• glue

Procedure:

Over a two-week period, students are to scan the newspaper for articles that deal with human rights issues and prejudices. They then paste their articles to a piece of oaktag, and on an index card, write a summary of the article, identifying the types of prejudices or issues they discovered in the article.

At the end of the two weeks, students may share their posters with the class. As a class, compare today's prejudices with those that initiated the Holocaust. How are the two worlds the same? How are they different? Why is prejudice and inequality ever present? Are there any solutions?

Variation:

Search the Web for current human rights stories instead of using newspapers.

Assessment:

Evaluate students based on completion of assignment (number of related articles found) and their discussion, whether written or oral, describing how the article relates to the Holocaust. You may wish to develop a rubric specifying the criteria you will be assessing.

Resources:

The Amnesty International site maintains a library of past news releases and offers an excellent page of links to related human rights Web sites.

A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust
Produced by the Florida Center for Instructional Technology,
College of Education, University of South Florida © 2005.