Children of Willesden Lane

This project is a partnership between Facing History and Ourselves and Mona Golabek’s Hold On To Your Music Foundation.

Our teacher's resource for The Children of Willesden Lane (funded by the Milken Family Foundation) is designed for use with middle and high school students with a focus on Language Arts, Social Studies, and Music classes. It includes pre-reading activities and seven sections that each focus on a part of the book. Each section includes overviews, suggestions for discussion, activities, writing prompts, and historical sidelights. The final section includes suggestions for final projects and assessment.

Use this guide to teach the memoir The Children of Willesden Lane and its powerful story of a woman who escaped Nazi-occupied Vienna on the Kindertransport.

Facing History's A Teacher’s Resource to The Children of Willesden Lane is designed to deepen and enrich students’ understanding of both the book and the music. It can also be used to support teachers in meeting the Instructional Shifts called for by the Common Core State Standards for Literacy in the Content Areas (adapted from Achieve the Core). Learn how this resource aligns with common core standards, including close reading of challenging texts, critical analysis, and the development of critical thinking, writing, and speaking skills.

Our online companion to the book features musical selections to accompany the text and a study guide for middle and high school classrooms. There is also a series of videos from Annenberg Learner featuring educators as they model instructional activities for the book and reflect on its impact.

On Tracks 1-11, Golabek places the selection in its historical context and plays a brief portion of the selection. The exception is track 10, which was recorded by Lisa Jura herself in 1944.

On Tracks 12-21, Golabek plays each selection in its entirety.

On Tracks 22-25, two of Lisa Jura’s granddaughters, Michele and Sara Golabek-Goldman, play “Clair de Lune” and “Rhapsody” at a gathering in London to mark the 60th anniversary of the Kindertransport. The girls’ mother Renée Golabek-Kaye performs "Prelude in B Minor" by Abram Chasins. The concert, which was aired live on the BBC, was the family’s way of thanking the British people for their kindness to Lisa Jura. Activities and discussion ideas for the music can be found in A Teacher’s Resource to The Children of Willesden Lane.