Three Holocaust Resources You Can Use Tomorrow

Teaching and learning about the Holocaust, and about the society that allowed these crimes to occur, is crucial to build awareness about current episodes of hatred in our own communities. We must learn to stand up for human rights for all people. We need to act against hatred in our society before intolerance approaches the level evident during the Holocaust. As the philosopher George Santayana said, “Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.” 

~ Educator’s Resource Toolkit on Lessons from the Holocaust

A week rarely passes that a teacher doesn't reach out to me requesting more resources for teaching about the Holocaust, especially in connection with powerful novels such as Prisoner B-3087 or Night. With that in mind, I recommend three extremely thought-provoking yet accessible resources which you can use in your classroom tomorrow.

The first is an Educator’s Resource Toolkit on Lessons from the Holocaust created by the Center For Literacy Studies at The University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Although the entire resource weighs in at a daunting 127 pages, you'll quickly see that individual pieces of this packet can be utilized effectively in the classroom. My sixth graders were able to read and understand the text with little difficulty, needing prompting and additional help with only those terms you might expect (scapegoat, collaborator, propaganda, inevitable, etc.).

The first selection of the packet titled “Over Twelve Years of Fear” provides students with a well-organized historical context of the period from 1933 to 1945. My class uses this reading as a paired activity following a more general introduction. Students read each page together and then take notes using the Keywords Strategy. Simply explained, the Keywords Strategy requires that students select three to seven terms from the page that they feel are crucial to the reader’s understanding of that page. These three to seven terms are then used to compose a summary sentence for that page. Since the entire reading is roughly twelve pages long, you could stop frequently to either review a page as a group, or do a pairs squared check-in. I prefer individual monitoring and checking (over students’ shoulders), however, as students “in the flow” of the activity seem to prefer this to being interrupted. 

Another portion of this packet which emphasizes interaction with text is the "Sentence Structure Exercise" which begins on page B23. Students read a paragraph (which is already familiar to them in terms of content) and then dissect that paragraph, placing facts in a chart according to who, what, why, when, and where. The resulting notes in that table can then be read across horizontally to give a single-sentence summary of that passage. This activity emphasizes the note-taking strategy previously used in “Over Twelve Years of Fear,” while additionally emphasizing the need to be factually complete when writing summaries.

Are these activities time-consuming? Yes. But in my opinion, students need a strong background in this period in order to better understand any novel which they read. Teachers who need to continually stop mid-reading to provide context are doing their students, and themselves, a disservice.

Take time to look through the entire toolkit as it contains many wonderful resources for student learning across all disciplines. You will find, for example, several activities which could be incorporated into Math class. For all teachers involved, I suggest reading the Methodological Considerations from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, thoughtfully included in the packet as Appendix A.

I would additionally recommend that teachers seek out first-hand accounts of survivors and other Witnesses. One such piece is “A Factory of Death” by Jeff Jacoby, originally published at Aish.com. I copied and reformatted that particular piece to allow students to take notes more easily and engage with those notes via a subsequent class discussion. In a previous post I discussed the ways in which you can add line numbering to a Google doc; this is key to keeping everyone on the same line as classroom discussions develop.

Students were directed to read “A Factory of Death” from beginning to end, without pause. At the end of the article, students are then instructed to “Read through the article again, and annotate (comment on) the specific tools, techniques, or text features the author uses to build his argument.” For some students, this was a reflection on the corroborating facts of the article; for other students, their notes reflected an appreciation for the language which the author used, including word choice and metaphor.

When students arrived with the completed annotation in hand for our class discussion, I gave them the new instruction to underline every fact or line in the account which confirmed a fact we previously read elsewhere. This helped them see that a personal account can confirm historical records while at the same time elaborating upon them. During this short time underlining, several students added additional notes of discovery from their third reading.

As a follow-up, students read the New York Times piece “Out of Auschwitz” in order to discuss the legacy of this tragedy. If students aren’t asking, “What can we learn from this?” then we’ve likely failed them as teachers and as human beings.

Seeking additional Holocaust resources? See my post on Jewish Resistance in the Holocaust.

Destruction, Disruption, and Defiance: Jewish Resistance in the Holocaust

In discussing the persecution of European Jews in the years before and during World War II, my students would often ask, "How could they let this happen?" Meaning, how could the rest of the world stand by and do nothing? For all the answers I can help students to find, I still can't answer this question myself.

The question asked nearly as often, however, is this: "Why didn't the Jews fight back?" But to that question I can readily answer, "They did. They did fight back. But realize that it wasn't just with guns; even children your age found ways to disrupt and defy the Nazis who tried to exterminate them."

In teaching the topic of Jewish resistance, I've found a great resource in an impressive series of six books from Enslow Publishing titled True Stories of Teens in the Holocaust. This series explores, through hundreds of primary documents and photographs, the diverse experiences of Jewish and non-Jewish youth caught up in the Holocaust.

Another terrific single-volume resource for any middle or high school classroom is Doreen Rapapport's Beyond Courage: The Untold Story of Jewish Resistance During the Holocaust, published by Candlewick Press.

Check out the books below, and then read on for suggested sites for helping students learn history through analyzing primary sources.

Courageous Teen Resisters: Primary Sources from the Holocaust

The popular title Courageous Teen Resisters: Primary Sources from the Holocaust documents both violent and nonviolent defiance of Nazi terrorism, from the increasingly overt persecution of early 1930s Germany to resistance efforts in France to the twenty-seven days of the Warsaw uprising. Readers learn how subtle and secretive efforts by Jews and Gentile sympathizers disrupted and distracted occupying enemy troops in some circumstances, while outright armed resistance and acts of sabotage wreaked chaos and destruction in others.

From Courageous Teen Resisters:

Courageous Teen Resisters is recommended as a stand-alone volume for students seeking to learn more about Jewish Resistance, as well an informational text companion to Heroes of the Holocaust: True Stories of Rescues by Teens (available from Scholastic).

The remaining five titles in the Enslow series are described below with a short publisher's summary or excerpt as well as recommended companion titles. This series is especially useful in text pairings not only to meet demands of the Common Core emphasis on informational texts, but to provide students with the necessary historical and social contexts needed to truly appreciate biography and historical fiction rooted in the Holocaust. (If you're seeking Holocaust texts for lower-level readers, be sure to check out my Annotated List of Holocaust Picture Books).

Youth Destroyed - The Nazi Camps

"Alice Lok was deported to Auschwitz, a Nazi death camp, in 1944. Upon her arrival, she faced a "selection." Alice had to stand in line as a Nazi doctor examined the new camp inmates. If the doctor pointed one direction, it meant hard labor—but labor meant life. If the doctor pointed the other way, that meant immediate death. Alice was lucky. She survived Auschwitz and two other camps. However, millions of Jews were not so lucky."  ~ from the publisher

Youth Destroyed - The Nazi Camps is recommended as an informational text companion to The Devil's Arithmetic (gr. 6-8), Prisoner B-3087 (gr. 6-9; see my review here), Four Perfect Pebbles: A Holocaust Story (gr. 4-6), Hana's Suitcase (gr. 4-5), Elly: My True Story of the Holocaust (gr. 5-7), I am a Star: Child of the Holocaust (gr. 5-7), Surviving Hitler: A Boy in the Nazi Death Camps (gr. 5-8), I Have Lived A Thousand Years: Growing Up In The Holocaust (gr. 8-12), and Night (grades 9-up).

Trapped - Youth in the Nazi Ghettos

"(M)any Jewish youth living in the ghettos in Europe... faced death, fear, hunger, hard labor, and disease everyday. Millions of Jews were forced into ghettos, where the Nazis kept them until they could be deported to the death camps."  ~ from the publisher

For this title I'd recommend Children in the Ghetto, an interactive site which describes itself as

"...A website about children, written for children. It portrays life during the Holocaust from the viewpoint of children who lived in the ghetto, while attempting to make the complex experience of life in the ghetto as accessible as possible to today’s children.

Along with the description of the hardships of ghetto life, it also presents the courage, steadfastness and creativity involved in the children’s lives. One of the most important messages to be learned is that despite the hardships, there were those who struggled to maintain humanitarian and philanthropic values, care for one another, and continue a cultural and spiritual life."

By examining writings, artifacts, and first hand interviews, students gain an understanding of the "anything-to-survive" mentality which the ghetto created, and demanded, of its inhabitants. Students can explore freely, taking advantage of the interactive elements, or respond to prompts in writing using the printable handouts (I downloaded the handouts, available in Word format, and adapted them according to my lesson objectives).

Once students have interacted with this site, they will have a mental bank of sites, sounds, stories, and symbols from which to draw upon, greatly increasing their understanding and appreciation of this nonfiction text as well as any novel with which they're working.

Trapped - Youth in the Nazi Ghettos is recommended as an informational text companion to The Island on Bird Street (gr. 4-6), Milkweed (gr. 6-8), Yellow Star (gr. 5-8), and Daniel's Story (gr. 4-8).

Escape - Teens on the Run

"Thousands of Jews lived on the run during the Holocaust. Some were able to escape Germany before the war started. Others had to move throughout Europe to flee the Nazis. And many more could not escape at all."  ~ from the publisher

From Escape - Teens on the Run

Escape: Teens on the Run is recommended as an informational text companion to Number the Stars (gr. 4-5), The Night Spies (gr. 3-5), When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit (gr. 4-6), Escape: Children of the Holocaust (gr. 5-7), Run, Boy, Run (gr. 5-8), Once (gr. 6-10), and Survivors: True Stories of Children of the Holocaust (grades 5-8).

Hidden Teens, Hidden Lives

"(T)housands of Jews went into hiding during the Holocaust. Barns, trapdoors, bunkers, secret attics, forged identity papers, and fake names became tools for survival."  ~ from the publisher

The fate of Jews who were hidden is of special interest to students. Even in a classroom that chooses not to embark upon a full Holocaust unit, time can certainly be devoted to learning about Jews who went into hiding rather than face extermination by the Nazis.

The uncertainty of such a choice is reflected in this diary entry from Anne Frank which appears in the book:

Hidden Teens, Hidden Lives is recommended as an informational text companion to Number the Stars (gr. 4-5), Jacob's Rescue (gr. 3-5), The Upstairs Room (gr. 4-5), Hidden Like Anne Frank: 14 True Stories of Survival (gr. 4-6), Anne Frank (10 Days) (gr. 5-7), The Hidden Girl: A True Story of the Holocaust (gr. 4-6), Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl (gr. 7-up), and The Book Thief (gr, 8-up).

Shattered Youth in Nazi Germany

"Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party's rise to power in the 1930s changed life dramatically for all people living in Germany. Hitler used propaganda, fear, and brutality as his main weapons. Jewish children faced strong antiSemitism in their schools and on the street, and saw their families ripped apart. Non-Jewish children deemed "undesirable" suffered a similar fate. "Aryan" children were forced to enter Hitler Youth groups or endure humiliation."  ~ from the publisher

This book is a real stand-out as it not only chronicles the experience of Jews in Nazi Germany, but also Gentiles who were reluctant to submit to Nazi ideologies.

Shattered Youth in Nazi Germany is recommended as an informational text companion to The Big Lie (gr. 3-5), The Boy Who Dared (gr. 6-8), The Boy on the Wooden Box: How the Impossible Became Possible . . . on Schindler's List (gr. 5-9), Someone Named Eva (gr. 6-9), Parallel Journeys (gr. 6-8), The Book Thief (gr. 9-up), Hitler's Youth: Growing Up in Hitler's Shadow (gr. 6-12), and The Berlin Boxing Club (gr. 9-12).

Beyond Courage: The Untold Story of Jewish Resistance During the Holocaust

If you're looking for a single-volume resource for any middle or high school classroom, I recommend Doreen Rappaport's multiple award winning Beyond Courage: The Untold Story of Jewish Resistance During the Holocaust, published by Candlewick Press.

Like all of Candlewick's titles, this text is supported by a number of resources available from the publisher's site, including a full page spread, a teacher's guide, an interview with a survivor, and an audio excerpt. The book itself includes primary source excerpts, maps, a pronunciation guide, timeline, index, and sources.

In speaking of her accomplishment (which took five years to research and write), author Doreen Rappaport says,

"How Jews organized themselves in order to survive and defy their enemy is an important but still neglected piece of history. I present a sampling of actions, efforts, and heroism with the hope that I can play a role in helping to correct the damaging and persistent belief that Jews ‘went like sheep to the slaughter.’"

Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation

A key resource for teaching Jewish resistance, and for discovering a multitude of primary sources, is the web site of the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation, whose key mission is "to develop and distribute effective educational materials about the Jewish partisans and their life lessons, bringing the celebration of heroic resistance against tyranny into educational and cultural organizations."

Over 30,000 Jewish partisans, or “members of an organized body of fighters who attack or harass an enemy, especially within occupied territory,” joined the hundreds of thousands of non-Jewish resistance fighters who fought the Nazis. Interestingly, however, their assistance was not always welcome, as antisemitism was often common in non-Jewish resistance groups.

This comprehensive and well constructed site offers teachers and students myriad free resources including:

• Professional Development modules which can be completed for continuing education credits (CEUs)  (I highly recommend that prior to using this site you complete at least the first module to better understand how to best access the site's videos, articles, lesson plans, student hand-outs, and more);
• An extensive film collection, containing 3 to 20 minute films through which students can "witness the Jewish partisans' stories of endurance, victory, and struggle;"
• Interactive maps of Jewish partisan activity;
• A Virtual Underground Bunker;
• An Image Gallery (captioned and sourced); 
• Downloads for the classroom and a Resource Search option; and
• A very unique tool called Someone Like Me, where a students enter a combination of personal characteristics; the site, in turn, presents a partisan who matches those characteristics. Students can then explore the life and work of that partisan through any of the resource links above.

Primary Sources

Because the impact of Holocaust education relies heavily upon students learning the true events of this tragedy, primary sources should play a role in every Holocaust unit. The JPEF site described above provides a wonderful collection of sources from which to choose, but below I have compiled a number of additional resources which educators may find useful in planning their instruction. As always, please reach out and let me know what other sites, books, and documents you've found useful.

Why Should I Use Primary Sources?

Reading Primary Sources: An Introduction for Students
From Learn NC, a step-by-step guide for students examining primary sources, with specific questions divided into five layers of questioning.

Primary Document Webinar
This hour long recorded webinar present teachers with not only reasons for using primary sources, but also ten really easy-to-implement ideas for starting with primary sources in the classroom.

Making Sense of Evidence
This is a highly recommended collection of articles written by experts in the field on how to make sense of films, oral histories, numbers, maps, advertisements, and more. While written by the experts, students will find the language they use to be accessible. From the site:

“Making Sense of Documents” provide strategies for analyzing online primary materials, with interactive exercises and a guide to traditional and online sources. “Scholars in Action” segments show how scholars puzzle out the meaning of different kinds of primary sources, allowing you to try to make sense of a document yourself then providing audio clips in which leading scholars interpret the document and discuss strategies for overall analysis.

Because of the career connections, this site is a valuable tool for achieving College and Workplace Readiness goals.

Engaging Students with Primary Sources from Smithsonian’s History Explorer site
A 64 page pdf that serves as an excellent introduction to using primary sources.

Primary Sources Fitting into CCSS
Brief article showing how instruction with primary docs helps fulfill CCSS.

Teaching the Holocaust with Primary Sources
From Eastern Illionis University, a Holocaust Unit utilizing resources provided by the Library of Congress.

Library of Congress: Why Use Primary Sources?
Very brief pdf discusses reasons in bullets; good for making your point when discussing unit plans with others.

Primary Sources Cautionary Tales (pdf article)
Considerations and concerns surrounding primary sources.

Where Can I Find Lesson Plans with Primary Sources?

I Witness
From the USC Shoah Foundation, this site contains over 1300 video testimonies and other digital resources, as well as assistance for educators seeking to use these tools in Holocaust education.

Response to the Holocaust: Resistance and Rescue(Holocaust and Human Rights Education Center)
A pdf format document filled with original writings and suggested student activities; you can also download the entire curriculum from the Holocaust and Human Rights Education Center.

Jewish Resistance: A Curriculum from The Holocaust Memorial Resource and Education Center of Florida
Lesson plans include original documents, along with suggested student questions to help analyze them.

The Power to Choose: Bystander or Rescuer?
Popular set of plans that has been online for some time; used by many educators as a good starting place for planning units.

Where Can I Find Additional Sites for Primary Sources?

PBS Learning Media - Interviews with Survivors and Rescuers
A good online source for interviews.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Offers an ever-changing variety of resources, as well as searchable pages for research. Educators can often request free teaching materials as well.

PBS Resources on the Holocaust 
The search page of PBS provides a vast number of resources, including excerpts from shows which have appeared on public television.

Oral History from Virginia Holocaust Museum
Oral History Project provides witness of survivors and rescuers.

Dr. Seuss Went to War
Before becoming Dr. Seuss, Theodore Geisel was a political cartoonist who urged America to join "Europe's war," in large part due to the oppressive policies of Hitler's Nazi party. But are Geisel's cartoons themselves a type of propaganda? See an earlier post here on Propaganda and Persuasion.

What Strategies or Tools are Available to Assist Students in Analyzing Sources?

SOAPS Primary Document Strategy
This pdf provides information about the SOAPS acrostic, which students can easily recall for use in analyzing primary sources of information.

Primary Source Analysis Tools from the Library of Congress
Several different tools in pdf form for analyzing oral histories, manuscripts, maps, movies, and more.

Document Analysis Worksheets from National Archive
These pdfs allow for blank printing or for students to type directly on them and then print out or save; very handy for conducting analysis online.

Analyzing a Primary Source Rubric
A rubric for scoring student efforts in using primary sources.

Responding to Holocaust Readings

If you're interested in ways that students can respond to Holocaust readings, be sure to check out this post which provides four writing prompts to use before, during, and after a Holocaust unit.

Courage Has No Color

What is courage? What is strength? Perhaps it is being ready to fight for your nation even when your nation isn't ready to fight for you.

It is 1943. Americans are overseas fighting World War II to help keep the world safe from Hitler's tyranny, safe from injustice, safe from discrimination. Yet right here at home, people with white skin have rights that people with black skin do not. 

~ from Courage Has No Color

We've all heard some variation of the saying that "respect isn't given; respect is earned." That adage rings resoundingly true in Courage Has No Color: The True Story of the Triple Nickles. This engrossing story of America's first black paratroopers knits together interviews, images, and countless source references to create a you-are-there chronicle of one battalion's struggle to win equality and opportunity, a struggle that black soldiers would wage as tenaciously on the homefront as any struggle fought on a foreign battlefield.

When Tanya Lee Stone states in a wonderful example of chiasmus, "Perhaps it is being ready to fight for your nation even when your nation isn't ready to fight for you," she encapsulates the frustration felt by black servicemen who wanted to serve their country in positions other than "building roads, driving trucks, sweeping up, unloading cargo, cooking, doing laundry, serving meals, or guarding facilities."

When the opportunity to contribute meaningfully finally came, many black servicemen jumped at the chance. Clarence Beavers, one of the original Triple Nickles, voices the sentiment of many when he states, "I had a grandfather who ran away from his master as a slave and joined the Union Army and fought as a soldier... And here I am coming down almost a hundred years later and I cannot even fight in a war that's about to eat up our whole world."

The apparent misspelling of the word "Nickles" above is explained on the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion's Official Site:

The 555^th Parachute Infantry Battalion was nicknamed the "Triple Nickles" because of its numerical designation and the selection of 17 of the original 20-member "colored test platoon" from the 92nd Infantry (Buffalo) Division. Hence, the origin of the term Buffalo Nickles; the spelling derives from old English. Three buffalo nickels joined in a triangle or pyramid is the identifying symbol.

Author Tanya Stone's writing reads like pure storytelling, from the engrossing second-person point of view that opens the book (read that entire preview chapter here) to later third person exposition, such as this excerpt which describes one black unit's forays into battle, and its effect upon white troops:

On March 13, 1945, a company from the 99th Infantry Division was in serious trouble. The Germans surrounded them. Casualties were high. The number of living dropped every hour. The wounded - including their commander - lay bleeding, unable to be evacuated. Ceaseless gunfire had trapped them all. Then, in the distance, the company heard men coming. Cautiously they looked and listened for signs that the approaching men were American and not the enemy. But even when they saw the telltale American uniforms, the faces they saw confused them for a moment. Only two were white. The reaction that came next stuck in the mind of one of the black soldiers walking toward them, Harold Robinson: "They were all Southern boys, but they sure were glad to see us." Although the trapped white soldiers couldn't risk giving away their exact location by shouting, they couldn't contain themselves completely. They cheered and waved anyway, as quietly as they could.

Did such encounters between races change perspectives on integration of the armed forces? It seems so, as the author reports:

Before the Battle of the Bulge, only 33 percent of white soldiers had a positive response to including blacks in their companies. Afterward, a whopping 77 percent felt favorably about the idea.

Unfortunately, the 555th would never see the combat action they so desperately desired, but would instead fulfill a crucial role in combating a little known attack on America's West Coast by Japanese balloon bombs. The American press was asked to keep all the incidents quiet, in an attempt to fool the Japanese into thinking that the balloons weren't reaching America. The dangerous jumps made into remote wooded areas to battle fires earned the 555th another nickname: Smokejumpers. The video below shows the smokejumpers in training exercises.

In addition to her faithful chronicle of the 555th, Tanya Lee Stone includes fascinating background pieces on racial tensions in the civilian sector, stereotypes in movies and advertising, ignored photographs of black units in action, and finally, integration in action.

Courage Has No Color brings long-overdue recognition to a victory which was at least as important as any other of World War II:

The 555th had a double burden to shoulder. They had to prove to the world that they had the bravery and skill it took to succeed, and they had to do it while reacting to the prejudice they ran into around every corner..."We fought segregation and discrimination and intolerance. They tried to burn us out...It made us stronger. It made us angry. It made us persevere."

At the Candlewick companion site for Courage Has No Color, you can view an inside spread, download a teacher's guide in pdf format (complete with CCSS alignments), listen to an audio book sample and more.

Additional Recommended Reading:

In response to my War Stories post, some readers (okay, two readers) asked for recommendations for nonfiction texts on World War II that would be appropriate for middle graders. So happy to comply! Providing students with historical trade books is an excellent way to encourage independent exploration into nonfiction reading, a much-discussed area of focus in our new Standards.

My first recommendation for middle schoolers and up, World War II by Sean Callery, comes from the Scholastic Discover More series of books which provide a multimedia "bonus" digital book to accompany each nonfiction title.

These digital books aren't simply online versions of the print book in hand; instead, each supplemental digital text contains audio, video, and in-depth topics that compliment the print book. The introductory video below illustrates the concept.

Scholastic Discover More World War II includes a bonus digital book detailing WWII Heroes and Heroines. By visiting the Scholastic Discover More site, you can download and sample complete chapters of this or any other book in series.

The sample World War II chapters include Child Heroes and Animals Heroes. Four chapters available through the book's code include Secrets and Spies, On the Front Line, Heroes at Home, and Everyday Heroes and Heroines. In all, the digital book contains 67 additional pages of text, images, and video, perfect for sharing on laptops, devices, or even a projection screen.

Both texts include a fantastic assortment of nonfiction text features including headings, subheadings, photos, diagrams, timelines, maps, captions, pull quotes, sidebars, tables, infographics, glossary, index, and more. Fast facts, anecdotes, and oversized data bits help to make this book exciting to browse. Chapters are constructed in a Q and A format, priming readers with thought-provoking questions.

For readers seeking to learn more about those who played important roles in World War II, I'd recommend World War II: Ten Greatest Heroes from Scholastic's America at War series (available through Scholastic).

This simpler 32 page book features full spread profiles of Doolittle, Patton, and Nimitz, in addition to those of lesser known heroes such as British commando Major Tony Macpherson (who armed and trained French resistance fighters) and Lt. Colonel Henry Mucci (who rescued 500 U.S. and Filipino POWs, the sole survivors of a Japanese death marches which had killed over 53,000 of their their fellow prisoners).

Easy to understand text accompanied by photographs, maps, and biographical data combine to make this a winner with your younger history buffs.

For general background materials and teaching units appropriate for the two books above, see the World War II and Holocaust Resources at the Scholastic site.

Finding Flow in Writing

Recommended Reading! See Review below.

If you're like me, you have read tons of student essays where you've found it hard to follow the train of thought, due to the fact that it has already derailed in the student's own mind.

So the the question is, "How can we improve the flow of ideas in student writing?"

Outlining and organizers and transitions can play a critical role in focusing writing, but once the words hit the page they tend to form sentences which stand only shoulder to shoulder, rather than arm in arm, with one another, failing to effectively carry the reader from one point to the next.

I stumbled upon a piece of the puzzle recently while reading a pdf on Paragraph Writing from The University of Adelaide Writing Centre. What that guide calls following "the natural order of information in English – i.e. the position of the ‘theme’ of a sentence and the ‘new’ information that follows" is illustrated in the excerpt below from the Learning Guide:

As you can see, the new idea introduced at the end of each sentence becomes the "theme" of the next. It's a simple way to keep the reader (and the writer!) on topic.

I pulled a similar example from our sixth grade social studies textbook, which I've paraphrased here:

Sumerians found a way to use symbols instead of picture to stand for words.

These symbols came to be known as cuneiform.

Cuneiform, or wedge shaped writing, could be combined to stand for words or sounds.

Once I pointed out this "natural order of information" to students, they began to see it in many of their content texts, and in fiction as well. In Cynthia Lord's Rules, for example, the author begins the second chapter with this passage:

When David was three and starting to come to the clinic for occupational therapy, I tagged along because I was too little to stay home alone. Now I'm twelve and I can stay home if I want, but I still like to come. I like talking to Mom on the ride over and back and shopping in the stores across the street, and I love the road between our house and clinic.

When I asked students if the author had written this way on purpose, their answers revealed that they were beginning to understand the purpose of this structure:
  
"She might have done it on purpose, but only because it sounded right."

"I think she wanted the reader to follow her thoughts."

"It keeps you reading because you see that for each new idea she mentions, she'll explain it more in the next sentence."

"Since she's the narrator, we can't ask her questions, so she needs to tell us what we need to know. And the more she tells us, the more we might get confused if we can't follow what she's thinking." So? "So it's important that she writes like this so she doesn't let us get confused."

This same classroom conversation led a students to ask, "Can't you create flow in other ways?" This in turn led us to a discussion of parallel structures, as well as simple repetition within writing.

In The Palace Thief (the story which inspired The Emperor's Club), author Ethan Canin describes how a young Sedgewick Bell arrives at a new school to discover his new classmates "wearing the togas they had made from sheets and safety pins the day before, spreading their knees like magistrates in the wooden desk chairs." When Bell unhesitatingly treats the boys and the lesson with disdain, he is rebuked by his new master:

"Young man," I said, "this is a serious class, and I expect that you will take it seriously."

"If it's such a serious class, then why're they all wearing dresses?" he responded, again to laughter...

Students liked this example, since the repetition of ideas in this instance was very true to life in how such a conversation might take place.

They also enjoyed hearing the very short chapter "A House of My Own" from The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. The combination of simile, personification, repetition, and rhyme make the prose so rhythmic that students couldn't believe it wasn't a poem until I showed them the words on the page.

Public domain speeches are another terrific source for finding examples of flow, and many of these documents have been identified as exemplary texts for study in the Common Core Standards. One such text is Sojourner Truth's "Ain't I a Woman" speech of 1851, which like the Cisneros text incorporates repetition to build a flow:

I think that ‘twixt the Negroes of the South and the women at the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what’s all this here talking about?
    That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have plowed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man-when I could get it-and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?
    Then they talk about this thing in the head; what's this they call it? [member of audience whispers, “intellect”] That’s it, honey. What’s that got to do with women’s rights or Negroes’ rights? If my cup won't hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn’t you be mean not to let me have my little half measure full?

Martin Luther King, Jr.'s I Have a Dream speech is another beautiful example of flow created through repetition, alliteration, metaphors, and familiar literary sources.

Putting It Into Practice

For one of our first attempts at creating flow, I asked students to respond to a question based upon Island of the Blue Dolphins, our current classroom novel. The prompt read, "Why would the dogs, which were previously owned by the villagers, attack and kill Ramo?" A class-sourced response read:

When the men of the tribe were killed by the Aleuts, the village dogs lost their alphas, or leaders. Without leaders, the dogs ran off to join the wild pack that already lived on the island. Because this wild pack didn't fear Ramo, who was just a boy, they killed him. They most likely killed him to show dominance, and not because they were hungry. The reason didn't matter to Karana, however, who took her brother's death as a huge blow.

Later that same evening, in responding to an article about Facebook on Tween Tribune, one student attempted to create flow between nearly all of her sentences:

In response to "Is the Problem Facebook or You?" I definitely agree that people shouldn't be blaming their problems on Facebook. Facebook wasn't made for you to blab your whole life story. Your life should be private and only shared with friends. But even your so called "friends" on Facebook might not be your friends, and they'll tell someone you're going away Friday night. You shouldn't tell anyone online that you were going away and your house was empty! If you tell someone your house is empty, your house could be robbed! Finally, Facebook shouldn't be blamed for your addiction to be on 24/7. It's your choice to post everything you do on the web. Even though some people might disagree with me, I think that it's not Facebook's problem that you "ruined your life!"

It's a start. 

Lessons on transitions, sentence variety, and opposing viewpoints are in order, but this writer was certainly able to help the reader follow her train of thought.

In Conclusion

This idea of flow holds a lot of promise for helping students develop and elaborate upon ideas in their writing. What they need to get started is just a few good examples and some practice with controlled, familiar topics. As they experiment further, the concepts of transitions and the need for greater sentence variety will likely become self-apparent, and the time will then be ripe for teaching them.

Recommended Reading

For some time now, readers have asked that I begin recommending books in addition to simply mentioning them in passing in my posts. I'm happy to oblige

This Girl is Different
by JJ Johnson
Peachtree Publishers

In a bold experiment, homeschooled Evensong Sparkling Morningdew chooses to spend senior year in a public high school. Book smart yet naive to the "social minefield" of high school, Evie soon finds herself increasingly ensnared in a struggle for power and freedoms which she, herself, initiated. Her attempt to give students a voice backfires as the voices become cruel and out of control. In no time at all, Evie has endangered not only her college future, but also the new and fragile friendships she has forged. Someone else might give up under these trying circumstances, but this girl is different.

In a style of writing which is John Green meets John Hughes, JJ Johnson crafts a funny and engaging battle of wits and wills which keeps the reader engaged until the very end, which in my opinion came too soon. For ages 14 and up, I recommend this title for book groups or as a welcome addition to any classroom library.

You  might also want to check out this author's most recent book, The Theory of Everything, which explores one teen's struggle to deal with the loss of a friend. While everyone else is ready to move on with their lives, Sarah still needs to find some meaning to it all. From the publisher: "But Sarah's not ready to move on... Her grades are plummeting, her relationships are falling apart, and her normal voice seems to have been replaced with a snark box. Life just seems random: no pattern, no meaning, no rules - and no reason to bother." A last ditch effort might just rescue Sarah from sadness, and from herself.