Teaching <em>Night</em>
This guide interweaves a literary analysis of Elie Wiesel’s powerful and poignant memoir with an exploration of the relevant historical context surrounding his experience during the Holocaust.
Section 1: Pre-Reading: The Individual and Society
These are the resources we recommend using in Section 1 of Teaching Night.
Big Paper: Building a Silent Conversation
Students have a written conversation with peers and use silence as a tool to explore a topic in depth.
Identity Charts
Use identity charts to help students consider the many factors that shape their own identity and that of groups, nations, and historical and literary figures.
See, Think, Wonder
Guide students’ analysis of a photograph, artwork, or video with this simple critical-viewing strategy.
Human Timeline
Use this interactive timeline activity to help students understand and remember the chronology of events.
Pre-War Sighet Visual Essay
Enrich your reading of Night with photos depicting daily life in Elie Wiesel's hometown.
Step By Step: Phases of the Holocaust
Scholar Doris Bergen describes the phases of events that led to the Holocaust.
Historical Context for Night
Explore the history of events that shaped the world of Wiesel’s memoir with this interactive timeline.
Section 2: Introducing Night
These are the resources we recommend using in Section 2 of Teaching Night.
Iceberg Diagrams
Encourage students to recognize the multiple causal factors behind an event from history, the present, or literature, using the visual of an iceberg.
Connect, Extend, Challenge
Deepen students' understanding of a topic by having them connect to their prior knowledge.
Section 3: Separation and Deportation
These are the resources we recommend using in Section 3 of Teaching Night.
Found Poems
Students compose poems using only words, phrases, or quotations from a text that they find meaningful.
Marched to the Ghetto
Holocaust survivor Barbara Fischman Traub describes the reactions of her neighbors as she and her family were marched through their hometown of Sighet, Hungary, to the ghetto during the Holocaust.
Section 4: Auschwitz-Birkenau
These are the resources we recommend using in Section 4 of Teaching Night.
The Auschwitz Album Visual Essay
View a famous collection of photographs from the Holocaust of a transport arriving in Auschwitz from Hungary in early summer 1944.
Section 5: Moral Complexity
These are the resources we recommend using in Section 5 of Teaching Night.
Pick a Number
Introduce students to several perspectives on a topic by having them pick a quotation to explore with their classmates.
Think-Pair-Share
Think-Pair-Share activities facilitate thoughtful group discussions by having students first reflect individually and discuss their ideas with a partner.
Resistances in Auschwitz
Holocaust survivor Anna Heilman recalls her part in a revolt at Auschwitz-Birkenau, where she was a prisoner, and describes the aftermath of the revolt.
Section 6: Faith and Survival
These are the resources we recommend using in Section 6 of Teaching Night.
Color, Symbol, Image
Invite students to nonverbally communicate something they have read or watched, using a color, a symbol, and an image.
Section 7: Final Days
These are the resources we recommend using in Section 7 of Teaching Night.
Socratic Seminar
A Socratic Seminar invites students to facilitate a discussion in order to work together toward a shared understanding of a text.
Eyewitness to Buchenwald
Leon Bass, an African-American soldier, describes his experiences entering the Buchenwald concentration camp in April 1945.
Section 8: Post-Reading: Memory and Responsibility
These are the resources we recommend using in Section 8 of Teaching Night.
Benjamin Ferencz: Watcher of the Sky
This film focuses on Benjamin Ferencz, a former prosecutor of the Nuremberg trials who is dedicated to preventing mass atrocities.
