Our English II classes are exploring the question “What is my role in the world to prevent atrocities like the Holocaust from happening again?”  They are reading Eli Wiesel’s biography Night and exploring the idea of Human Rights.  A teacher shared with me last week that her students were having a hard time coming up with topics to research, so we are working together today to help them better understand the idea of human rights and what it looks like when they are violated.  I am using Blendspace to organize a video, a padlet wall, and a link to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  If you haven’t tried Blendspace, you should .  It keeps everything in one place for easy transition from videos to websites to word documents.  It also gives students a place to go if they forget, need a copy of the handout or need remediation.

We are going to watch a video on the history of human rights, explore the UN document, define and explain each article using some Kagan strategies for cooperative learning (specifically round robin and rally robin)  then create a list of possible topics on Padlet.  I’ll download the padlet wall, print it and copy it for students to keep as a reference when they are ready to choose a topic.

‘If time allows, we are going to write on a banner (I’ll upload a picture later) where each student shares an image, phrase or idea about human rights that they learn today.