Hi, welcome back to my blog. This post is about my most recent project Hidden Chapters of History. In this project, we learned about WWII and even made our very own podcast. As a class, we all made one episode and combined them to make a podcast series about WWII. I made my episode about the concentration camps in WWII. We also read a book about WWII. I read The Cage by Ruth Minsky Sender. It was about a Jewish kid named Riva and her life throughout WWII and how she survived the ghetto and concentration camps. Throughout this project, we added to our zettlekasten. As we watched videos about WWII I made new literature notes. Adding to my zettlekasten created new connections and allowed me to further my knowledge of the subject.
In the early stages of this project we read a book, you could pick between four books Maus, The Cage, Salt to the Sea and All The Light We Cannot See. I chose the cage because I thought out would be interesting to read about a girl’s life throughout the war and how everything changed for her. Once we all got our books we were put in groups with the other people reading the same book as you. My group consisted of Annie, Julien, Quinn, Nya, Nathan, and Erin. We had book chats every week and sometimes twice a week. In these chats, we all had roles that changed every time. The roles were summarizer, connector, artful artist and discussion director. Each person would have three minutes to present their work that they did for the week. Some book chats were different one time we had a silent book chat. During a silent book chat, we made a question then wrote it down, you would rotate around your group mate’s questions and write your answer, at the end you would look at the answers to your question. Reading this book was key to our podcast because our podcast had to connect in some way to our book. It also helped me figure out some consequences that came from WWII. Reading this book surprised me because I did not expect it to be fun and interesting to read. If you want to learn more about the Holocaust and what people went through in WWII I recommended this book.
Throughout the entirety of this project, I was adding to my zettlekasten. I made literature and permanent notes on things that I saw on the news and videos I watched in class. When I add to my zettlekasten it builds connections to other notes from other projects and furthers my knowledge in each subject. In this project, we also had a zettlekasten conference with our teacher. During this conference we looked over my zettlekasten and what I have added so far from this project. We also went over ways that I can improve and further deepen my zettlekasten. In my zettlekasten, it was interesting to see how there were connections between the conflict with Ukraine and Russia and WWII.
The final product of this project was a class podcast. In this podcast, we each made 1 episode about a topic in WWII. In our episode, you had to talk about your topic as well as connect it to your book. We also had to include our answers to the driving question and talk about the causes and consequences of WWII. The first step in creating my podcast was to do lots of research on concentration camps and make notes on them. After that, I started making my script while making the script I did more research on smaller things that I wanted more information on. Once I made my script I went into school and we did a peer critique. I took that feedback and improved on my script. Then I did a recording of my script to make sure it sounded good and was the right length. Next, I added music fading in and out of my podcast. Finally, I got more peer feedback on my podcast then improved on it from the feedback. While making this podcast episode I learned a lot about the causes and consequences of WWII. I found it grim learning about just how bad the conditions in the camps were and how many people were killed.
After all of my learning throughout this project, I got the answer to the driving question. The driving question for this project was How might we use stories to better understand the causes and consequences of WWII? I think we use stories to understand the causes and consequences better because through the story you can see the effects the events have on the people in the story. It also helps because through stories they can show how things changed all of a sudden and how the character’s life got affected by the causes of WWII. We can use stories to educate people on all aspects of WWII including the causes and consequences. Overall I found this project very interesting. I thought it was cool was to show your learning through a podcast.
