Curriculum / ELA / 8th Grade / Unit 2: Encountering Evil: Night / Lesson 27
ELA
Unit 2
8th Grade
Lesson 27 of 28
Jump To
Lesson Notes
There was an error generating your document. Please refresh the page and try again.
Generating your document. This may take a few seconds.
Are you sure you want to delete this note? This action cannot be undone.
Give and receive peer feedback, self-assess using a rubric, and make final revisions to an informational essay.
Rubric: Informational Writing Rubric (G8, U2)
We participate in the Amazon Associate program. This means that if you use this link to make an Amazon purchase, we receive a small portion of the proceeds, which support our non-profit mission.
Unlock features to optimize your prep time, plan engaging lessons, and monitor student progress.
Tasks that represents the peak thinking of the lesson - mastery will indicate whether or not objective was achieved.
In July 1944, just weeks before she was captured by the Nazis and sent to die in a concentration camp, Anne Frank famously wrote in her diary, "In spite of everything, I still believe people are really good at heart." Throughout this unit, you have studied the innumerable horrors of the Holocaust. You have considered the different ways that people behave in times of extreme crisis and seen in Elie Wiesel's memoir Night some of the very worst aspects of human nature. Among these stories of extreme cruelty, suffering, and indifference, it can be difficult to find many examples of human goodness at all.
However, those stories are there if you look for them. In this writing assignment, you will research a person who actively resisted the Nazis and took significant action to save lives during the Holocaust. In a four-paragraph informational essay, you will explain how this individual Resister exemplifies the idea that "people are really good at heart."
You should:
Upgrade to Fishtank Plus to view Sample Response.
Bring your most engaging lessons to life with comprehensive instructional guidance, detailed pacing, supports to meet every student's needs, and resources to strengthen your lesson planning and delivery.
W.8.2 — Write informative/explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas, concepts, and information through the selection, organization, and analysis of relevant content
W.8.5 — With some guidance and support from peers and adults, develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach, focusing on how well purpose and audience have been addressed.
Standards that are practiced daily but are not priority standards of the unit
L.8.2 — Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing.
L.8.2.b — Use an ellipsis to indicate an omission.
L.8.3 — Use knowledge of language and its conventions when writing, speaking, reading, or listening.
L.8.3.a — Use verbs in the active and passive voice and in the conditional and subjunctive mood to achieve particular effects (e.g., emphasizing the actor or the action; expressing uncertainty or describing a state contrary to fact).
L.8.6 — Acquire and use accurately grade-appropriate general academic and domain-specific words and phrases; gather vocabulary knowledge when considering a word or phrase important to comprehension or expression.
W.8.2.b — Develop the topic with relevant, well-chosen facts, definitions, concrete details, quotations, or other information and examples.
W.8.2.c — Use appropriate and varied transitions to create cohesion and clarify the relationships among ideas and concepts.
W.8.2.d — Use precise language and domain-specific vocabulary to inform about or explain the topic.
W.8.2.e — Establish and maintain a formal style.
W.8.2.f — Provide a concluding statement or section that follows from and supports the information or explanation presented
W.8.4 — Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.
W.8.6 — Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and present the relationships between information and ideas efficiently as well as to interact and collaborate with others.
W.8.7 — Conduct short research projects to answer a question (including a self-generated question), drawing on several sources and generating additional related, focused questions that allow for multiple avenues of exploration.
W.8.9 — Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research.
W.8.10 — Write routinely over extended time frames (time for research, reflection, and revision) and shorter time frames (a single sitting or a day or two) for a range of discipline-specific tasks, purposes, and audiences.
Next
Explain what happened during the Holocaust and analyze the major events and ideas in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s that led to it.
Standards
RI.8.2RI.8.3
Apply background knowledge about the Holocaust and the features of plays/dramatic performances to cite evidence from the text that establishes the setting of The Diary of Anne Frank.
RI.8.3RL.8.3
Explain how the playwrights develop the reader's understanding of Anne as a character in The Diary of Anne Frank.
Explain how text features and structures specific to dramatic works develop the reader's understanding of characters, plot, and setting in The Diary of Anne Frank.
RL.8.5
Explain how specific events and lines of text reveal aspects of characters and character relationships in The Diary of Anne Frank.
RL.8.3
Explain how the playwrights use specific words and phrases to develop mood, tone, and meaning in The Diary of Anne Frank.
RL.8.4RL.8.6
Explain how events in Night reveal aspects of characters and suggest larger truths about human nature.
RI.8.3
Analyze the meaning and impact of specific words, phrases, punctuation, and symbols in Wiesel's writing.
L.8.5RI.8.4
Draw conclusions about the passengers in the cattle car—and human nature more generally—based on the incident with Mrs. Schächter.
Analyze how Wiesel makes connections between individuals, ideas, and events to convey the dehumanization he endured in the concentration camps during the Holocaust.
RI.8.3RI.8.4
Evaluate and analyze how being imprisoned in concentration camps impacts characters' thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Analyze what these changes reveal about human nature.
RI.8.3RI.8.5
Explain how specific words and phrases develop meaning and tone in Night, and how they affect the reader.
RI.8.4
Unpack a prompt, gather evidence, and outline a two-paragraph response.
RI.8.3W.8.1W.8.1.aW.8.5
Draft and revise a two-paragraph response, including a transition sentence between paragraphs.
RL.8.3W.8.1W.8.1.aW.8.1.bW.8.1.c
Explain how specific plot events in Night influence characters' thoughts, feelings, and decisions.
Explain how Wiesel uses figurative language and specific word choice to develop mood and meaning in Night.
Explain how specific incidents in Night reveal aspects of characters, as well as larger truths about human nature.
Analyze the preface to Night to determine Wiesel’s purpose for writing.
RI.8.6
Explain how Wiesel develops central ideas in his speech, The Perils of Indifference.
RI.8.2
Demonstrate a deep understanding of the texts and topics in a Socratic Seminar by posing and responding to questions and providing evidence to support ideas.
SL.8.1SL.8.1.aSL.8.1.cSL.8.4
Unpack the prompt, study a Mentor Text, develop guiding questions, and begin to gather evidence for a research-based writing task.
W.8.7W.8.8
Use search terms effectively, assess the credibility of online research sources, and continue gathering evidence in preparation for writing an informational essay.
Gather evidence from multiple sources, draft a claim statement, and create an outline for a multi-paragraph informational essay.
W.8.2W.8.2.aW.8.7W.8.8
Outline an introduction and conclusion and determine the difference between passive and active voice.
L.8.1L.8.1.bW.8.2W.8.2.aW.8.2.b
Draft strong introduction and conclusion paragraphs.
W.8.2W.8.2.aW.8.2.cW.8.2.f
Create a bibliography and add at least one appositive to an informational essay.
W.8.2W.8.2.cW.8.5W.8.8
W.8.2W.8.5
Gauge student understanding of unit content and skills with one of Fishtank's unit assessments.
Create a free account to access thousands of lesson plans.
Already have an account? Sign In
See all of the features of Fishtank in action and begin the conversation about adoption.
Learn more about Fishtank Learning School Adoption.
Yes
No
We've got you covered with rigorous, relevant, and adaptable ELA lesson plans for free