Collection

Common Core Writing Prompts and Strategies Links

Find all of the readings, videos, and online tools referenced in our three Common Core Writing Prompts and Strategies supplements.

Published: June 10, 2015

Collection

Language

English — US

Subject

English & Language Arts
History
Social Studies

Grade

6–12

Overview

This page is designed for educators using the following Common Core Writing supplements:

Gathered here are all of the digital resources referenced throughout these supplements.

This collection contains all of the resources used in our Common Core Writing supplements, which includes:

6 videos
53 readings
Additional recommended digital-tools

Inside this Collection

The resources below provide additional guidance for using strategies in our three Common Core Writing Prompts and Strategies supplements.

Cornell Library Citation Management

Cornell University Library

Strategy: Evidence Logs

Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) Resource and Citation Resources

Purdue University

Strategy: Evidence Logs

Google Lesson Plans

Google for Education

Strategy: Successful Online Research

List of Transition Words

Michigan State University

Strategy: Adding Transitions

Source Evaluation Resource

Project Look Sharp

Strategy: Assessing Source Credibility

Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) Source Evaluation Resource

Purdue University

Strategy: Assessing Source Credibility

Reading

Deepen your understanding of the history of antisemitism with this overview of the persecution, violence, and restrictions Jews throughout Europe faced during the Middle Ages.

A contemporary drawing of the Hep! Hep! riots in Frankfurt am Main in 1819. Notice that both men and women participated in the violence.

Video

Scholars trace anti-Jewish myths, hatred, and violence back to the time of the Roman Empire in this historical overview of anti-Judaism’s roots.

Reading

Learn about the restricted rights and membership of Jews in newly unified Germany, and antisemitism's pervasiveness across Europe during this period.

Reading

Gain insight into the death and destruction of World War I with firsthand accounts from former soldiers.

Painting title Gassed by John Singer Sargent. Shows World War I soldiers with bandaged eyes being led by other soldiers. Many dead and injured soldiers laying at the base of the painting.

Reading

Learn about the concessions that the Treaty of Versailles required from Germany after its defeat in World War I (Spanish available).

German delegates talk in May 1919 during the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in France.

Reading

Investigate how a rumor about the role of Jews in Germany’s surrender in World War I escalated throughout the defeated nation.

German military aircraft being dismantled and scrapped after World War I, according to the terms of the Treaty of Versailles.

Reading

Examine the rights, protections, and democratic aspirations in the constitution of Germany’s newly formed democracy, the Weimar Republic.

A crowd of women standing in line at a polling station in the Weimar Republic in 1919, the first year women were allowed to vote.

Reading

Consider why paramilitary groups such as the Freikorps formed in the aftermath of World War I in Germany.

The Triadic Ballet was created by Oskar Schlemmer, a painter, sculptor, designer, and choreographer who taught at the Bauhaus art school in Germany during the Weimar Republic. Schlemmer’s ballet represented the Bauhaus style–uncluttered, modern, and geometric.

Reading

Consider why the Nazi Party platform and Adolf Hitler attracted followers in the wake of Germany’s defeat in World War I.

A woman takes a basket of banknotes to buy cabbage at a market during the 1933 hyperinflation in Weimar Germany.

Reading

Firsthand accounts from youth in the Weimar Republic shed light on what it was like to come of age during this period of change in Germany.

Reading

Gain insight into the devastating poverty, unemployment, and hopelessness experienced by Germans during the Great Depression.

This German election poster from 1930 says, “Work, Freedom, and Bread–Vote National Socialist!""

Reading

Compare the party platforms of the Communists, Nazis, and Social Democrats in Germany’s 1932 presidential elections, a time of deep economic crisis.

Reading

Consider the motivations and expectations of Paul von Hindenburg when he appointed Hitler to chancellor of Germany (Spanish available).

Freikorps soldiers during their attempt to overthrow the Weimar government and restore the monarchy in an attempted coup known as the Kapp Putsch in March 1920.

Video

Scholars Wendy Lower, Peter Hayes, Michael Berenbaum, Jonathan Petropoulos, and Deborah Dwork describe how Adolf Hitler became a powerful political figure in Weimar Germany in the aftermath of World War I.

Reading

Learn about Hitler’s early measures against "enemies of the state," including the Enabling Act and the first concentration camp at Dachau.

Germans look on as the Reichstag building burns on February 27, 1933.

Reading

Read the text of the Enabling Act, the law many historians argue was the legal basis for Hitler’s dictatorship in Nazi Germany.

The Parade of the Political Administrators in Nuremberg, Germany.

Reading

Learn about the roles of the the SA, the SS, and the Gestapo in Nazi Germany.

Crackdown on Communists and Social Democrats: arrested in the SA-barracks on Friedrichstrasse, April, 1933

Reading

Consider how Nazi ideology influenced the morality of a girl growing up in Nazi Germany.

German military recruits swear allegiance to Adolf Hitler.

Reading

Explore bystander behavior, conformity, and obedience in a German college professor’s account of how he responded to Nazi policies and ideology.

Reading

Reflect on the choices and actions of two Germans who had to decide whether or not to pledge an oath of loyalty to Hitler (Spanish available).

Video

Scholars Timothy Ryback, Wendy Lower, Jonathan Petropoulos, Michael Berenbaum, and Peter Hayes discuss Adolf Hitler’s final steps in securing total power in Germany.

Reading

Learn about the laws that redefined what it meant to be German in Nazi Germany, and that stripped Jews and others of citizenship.

In 1933, Jewish businessman Oskar Danker and his girlfriend, a Christian woman, were forced to carry signs discouraging Jewish-German integration. Intimate relationships between “true Germans” and Jews were outlawed by 1935.

Reading

Investigate a primary source text that outlines the Nazis' vision for women in German society.

This mid-1930s poster says, “The NSDAP (Nazi Party) protects the people. Your fellow comrades need your advice and help, so join the local party organization.”

Reading

Explore a curated selection of primary source propaganda images from Nazi Germany.

Hubert Lanzinger Der Bannerträger (The Standard bearer)

Reading

Reflect on these firsthand experiences of former members of the Nazi Youth.

The League of German Girls was the girls wing of the Nazi Party youth movement. A typical activity for members was to go on walks while their mothers were working.

Reading

Get a glimpse into the daily lives of children in Nazi Germany, and consider how the Nazis “educated” Germany’s youth.

Leni Riefenstahl's documentary-style film Triumph of the Will glorified Hitler and the Nazi party. It was shot at the 1934 Nazi Party congress and rally in Nuremberg.

Reading

Learn how the Nazis transformed German schools to advance their nationalist and racial ideologies.

This propaganda poster from 1933 reads, “Hitler’s fight and Luther’s teaching are the best defense for the German people.”

Reading

Learn what incited Kristallnacht and get insight into the experiences of Jews in Germany on the night of horrendous violence in November 1938

Jewish men are arrested by the SS during Kristallnacht in Baden-Baden, Germany, and forced to march through the streets to a nearby synagogue to see it destroyed.

Reading

Examine firsthand reports of the theft committed against Jews during the chaos and violence of Kristallnacht.

What remained of the synagogue in Dortmund, Germany, after the Kristallnacht pogrom in November 1938.

Reading

Learn about a family who assisted their Jewish neighbors after Kristallnacht, and the consequences they faced for this decision to help.

Pedestrians in front of the demolished businesses of Jewish residents on Potsdamer St., Berlin. November 10, 1938.

Reading

Read a report from the disciplinary hearing of a German college student who chose to help his Jewish neighbors after Kristallnacht.

The German military parades through Vienna on March 15, 1938, after the Anschluss.

Reading

Consider a Swiss merchant’s account of how his German colleagues responded to the events of Kristallnacht.

Reading

Consider how leaders like FDR, clergy members, and ordinary people around the world responded to the news of Kristallnacht.

In the Chicago Daily News, November 23, 1938, the cartoonist Cecil Jensen pleaded for world leaders to help Europe’s Jews.

Reading

Consider why countries including the United States refused to accept Jewish refugees aboard the St. Louis who sought escape from Nazi-occupied Europe.

Passengers aboard the St. Louis, seeking refugee from Nazi-occupied Europe, wait to find out if they will be allowed entry into Cuba in June 1939.

Video

Scholars discuss the events of Kristallnacht, a series of violent attacks against Jews in Germany, Austria, and part of Czechoslovakia in November, 1938.

Reading

Consider why the residents of Hartheim kept silent about the evidence of mass murder they witnessed in their town throughout World War II.

Jews wearing Star of David badges in the Lódz ghetto. Established in 1940, the Germans crowded 160,000 Jews from the Polish city, more than a third of its population, into the ghetto.

Reading

Examine how Nazi Germany's army targeted both the Polish army and the people of Poland as it waged war.

The Jewish population in Poland being "resettled" by German soldiers, circa 1940-41.

Reading

Learn about the Nazis’ plan to rearrange the population of Poland, which resulted in the displacement of more than a million ethnic Poles and Jews.

An exhibit at a Berlin school persuades Germans to help colonize the Warthegau area of Poland. The exhibit says “The land calls you!,” and the painting shows a settler’s car passing by a Polish border sign that has been knocked down.

Reading

Build your understanding of the Nazis’ devastating treatment of the Jews in Poland during the German occupation.

Kurt Dreyer, a German soldier who fought in World War II.

Video

Scholar Doris Bergen discusses the ideologies of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.

Reading

Investigate perpetrator behavior with historian Christopher Browning’s study of the men of a police unit that killed Jews during World War II.

Reading

Learn about psychologist Stanley Milgram’s experiments on obedience and the insight they offer into the motives of Nazi perpetrators.

This illustration by Bedrich Fritta, a prisoner at Terezín, depicts the “beautification” of the ghetto-camp undertaken by the SS before the Red Cross visit in 1944.

Video

This documentary describes the social science experiment known as The Milgram Experiment.

Reading

Learn about the Nazis’ creation of death camps designed exclusively to carry out mass murder.

Jewish resistance fighters who fought against the SS and German army during the Warsaw ghetto uprising between April 19 and May 16, 1943, are captured.

Reading

Read eyewitness accounts of the killing process at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi death camp.

Hans Scholl, Sophie Scholl, and Christoph Probst in June 1942.

Reading

Get insight into how a commander at a Nazi death camp viewed his victims and coped with his actions.

SS guards portrait at Dachau Concentration Camp

Reading

Consider how two people in occupied-Poland responded to the persecution and murder of Jews in their community.

Three members of the Jewish Fighting Organization caught after the Warsaw ghetto uprising.

Reading

Diary entries from a Jewish woman imprisoned in Bergen-Belsen shed light on how prisoners in camps and ghettos were deprived of dignity.

A memorial at Auschwitz of shoes taken from prisoners of the camp.

Reading

Investigate different examples of protest and resistance by Germans against the Nazi regime in the 1940s, including the White Rose resistance group (Spanish available).

Reading

Marion Prichard reflects on rescue, heroism, and the choices she and others in German-occupied Amsterdam made during the Holocaust.

Marion Pritchard holds Erika Polak, one of the children she saved from the Nazis. Working with the Dutch resistance, Pritchard helped save more than 150 children during World War II.

Reading

Explore rescue during the Holocaust with the story of a community in Southern France that sheltered and hid thousands of Jews fleeing Nazi persecution (Spanish available).

Jews living at a children's home in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, France, with their director, Juliette Usach, 1941. The people of Le Chambon and surrounding villages hid nearly 5,000 people fleeing Nazi occupation.

Reading

Read the stories of two diplomats who chose to use their status to rescue Jews from the Nazis during World War II.

Reading

Consider what people around the world knew about the mass murder occurring during World War II, and the role of journalism in the spread of information.

Reading

Learn how the Nuremberg defendants' argued that German leaders were following orders when committing atrocities during the Holocaust.

On the right two benches of the accused leaders stretch away from the foreground to the centre of the painting. Behind the defendants stands a line of white-helmeted military police who guard the benches and separate them from the court beyond....

Reading

Learn about the doctors, engineers, and technicians who helped develop the tools that were instrumental in the mass murder of millions of people during the Holocaust.

International Military Tribunal Nuremberg Chief American prosecutor Justice Robert Jackson delivers the opening speech of the American prosecution at the International Military Tribunal trial of war criminals at Nuremberg.

Reading

Learn about the use of slave labor by German companies and manufacturers during World War II.

After American soldiers liberated Dachau in 1945, an inmate of the camp attacks a German soldier.

Reading

Explore three stories of choices people made during World War II and consider their complexities, their impact, and what they can teach about human behavior.

Reading

Reflect on the challenges posed by making moral judgments about the actions of people in the past.

The city of Nuremberg with a building in ruins, 1945.

The resources below provide additional guidance for Common Core Writing Prompts and Strategies: Choices in Little Rock.

Philander Smith College

National Park Service

Daisy Bates House

National Park Service

Women's Emergency Committee

National Park Service

Transcript of Road to Brown

California Newsreel

Activity

Students reflect on a meaningful, inspirational, or thought-provoking quotation.

The back of a white book with a quote from Brianna Wiest which reads "I thought becoming myself was improving each part piece by piece. But it was finding a hidden wholeness seeing the fractures at the design."

Activity

The Rose, Thorn, Bud exercise increases students' self-awareness as they reflect on recent successes, challenges, and opportunities.

Activity

Students communicate how they are feeling in response to a chosen prompt, giving teachers a pulse on the class’s opinions or well-being.

A person holding a rectangular white photo frame near a body of water.

Activity

Read aloud a chapter of a book your students are interested in to build community around stories and storytelling.

Person sitting on the floor while holding a book.

Activity

Students identify their strengths and areas for growth in a journal reflection.

A student in a grey sweatshirt looks down at a paper with a pencil in hand.

Activity

Students get an opportunity to give feedback about the class and communicate their needs and worries.

A person holds a compass in their hand with the ocean in the background.

Activity

Students share how they are feeling, what their needs are, and what goals they’d like to set in an exit card.

A person holds a glass door open with a backpack over one shoulder.

Collection

These opening and closing classroom routines will set a welcoming tone, allow students to connect with one another, and encourage goal setting.

Two students in conversation while looking down at a laptop computer.

Activity

Students explore the relationship between our names, identities, and the societies in which we live.

A pile of "Hello my name is" nametags and sharpie markers sit on top of a desk.

Activity

Students identify an object that holds special meaning and learn about each other by sharing the stories of these special items.

Activity

Students analyze a poem in order to determine the qualities of a classroom community where members are seen, valued, and heard.

Two students look at each other in conversation. One student is also taking notes.

Mini-Lesson

Use these activities to help students reflect on the themes in Amanda Gorman’s Inauguration Day poem and consider how their unique experiences and voices can help America “forge a union with purpose.”

Photo of Amanda Gorman at Biden's Inauguration.

More Like This Teaching Resources Learning & Events

Facing History & Ourselves is designed for educators who want to help students explore identity, think critically, grow emotionally, act ethically, and participate in civic life. It’s hard work, so we’ve developed some go-to professional learning opportunities to help you along the way.

Professional Learning

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Listen to #DisruptTexts founder Julia Torres about taking a critical lens to text selection in ELA classrooms.

Three students at table, working on a project

Professional Learning

On-Demand

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Issues of equity and education have long existed in our country and continue to manifest today. How can writing and the power of one's voice help us respond to these disparities? Listen to writer and educator, Dr. Clint Smith, where we hear his poetry and reflections on working for justice, equity, and civic agency in our schools.

Professional Learning

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Virtual

Explore approaches to centering student voice, building authentic relationships and cultivating community with Molly Josephs, the creator of This Teenage Life, a youth-driven, story-sharing podcast that started as a school club.

More Like This View Upcoming Events View On-Demand Events

Using the strategies from Facing History is almost like an awakening.

— Claudia Bautista, Santa Monica, Calif

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Common Core Writing Prompts and Strategies Links

At a Glance

Language

Subject

Grade

Overview

About This Collection

Inside this Collection

Resources to Use with Strategies

Resources for the Choices in Little Rock Supplement

You might also be interested in…

Notable Quotable

Rose, Thorn, Bud

Fist to Five

First Chapter Fridays

Maintain and Modify

Compass Points

Exit Cards

Establishing Opening and Closing Routines

What’s In a Name?

Frame a Special Item

Envisioning Our Classroom Space

Reflecting on Amanda Gorman's "The Hill We Climb"

Common Core Writing Prompts and Strategies Links

At a Glance

Language

Subject

Grade

Overview

About This Collection

Save this resource for easy access later.

Inside this Collection

Resources to Use with Strategies

Source List for the Holocaust and Human Behavior Supplement

Anti-Judaism before the Enlightenment

The Ancient Roots of Anti-Judaism

From Religious Prejudice to Antisemitism

The Brutal Realities of World War I

Negotiating Peace

Rumors of Betrayal

Creating a Constitutional Government

In Search of Meaning

The Beginning of the Nazi Party

Youth and Belonging in the Weimar Republic

A New Economic Crisis

Hard Times Return

Hitler in Power

Hitler's Rise to Power: 1918-1933

Outlawing the Opposition

Enabling Dictatorship

Storm Troopers, Elite Guards, and Secret Police

Learning to Be a Good German

No Time to Think

Do You Take the Oath?

Hitler's Rise to Power: 1933-1934

The Nuremberg Laws

Women and the National Community

Visual Essay: The Impact of Propaganda

Joining the Hitler Youth

“Heil Hitler!”: Lessons of Daily Life

Schooling for the National Community

The Night of the Pogrom

Opportunism during Kristallnacht

A Family Responds to Kristallnacht

Thoroughly Reprehensible Behavior

A Visitor’s Perspective on Kristallnacht

World Responses to Kristallnacht

The Voyage of the St. Louis

"Kristallnacht": The November 1938 Pogroms

Bystanders at Hartheim Castle

The War against Poland: Speed and Brutality

Colonizing Poland

The War on Jews in Poland

Hitler's Ideology: Race, Land, and Conquest

Reserve Police Battalion 101

A Matter of Obedience?

Obedience: The Milgram Experiment

Establishing the Killing Centers

Auschwitz

A Commandant’s View

Difficult Choices in Poland

A Basic Feeling of Human Dignity

Protests in Germany

Deciding to Act

Le Chambon: A Village Takes a Stand

Diplomats and the Choice to Rescue

What Did the World Know?

Obeying Orders

The Technology of Mass Murder

The Business of Slave Labor

Choices that Define Us

Moral Luck and Dilemmas of Judgment

Resources for the Choices in Little Rock Supplement

How are you planning to use this resource?

You might also be interested in…

Notable Quotable

Rose, Thorn, Bud

Fist to Five

First Chapter Fridays

Maintain and Modify

Compass Points

Exit Cards

Establishing Opening and Closing Routines