Step 3: Adding to Evidence Logs, 1 of 4

Remind students of the final course assessment prompt: 

How can learning about the choices people made during past episodes of injustice, mass violence, or genocide help guide our choices today? 

Explain that they will add to the thinking they have already done in previous assessment steps by considering the unique historical lens of the Weimar Republic.

• Ask students to reread their journal responses from Assessments Step 2: Introducing Evidence Logs and then respond to the following question:
  • How can learning about the choices individuals, groups, and nations made during the Weimar Republic help guide how we respond to injustice in our communities and in the world today?
• Have students share their ideas with a partner or small group, or you might use the Concentric Circles strategy by having students arrange their desks across from one another in two circles. Encourage students to add new ideas to their journal responses that expand or challenge their thinking about the prompt.

• Facilitate a class discussion in which students suggest documents or videos from Lessons 8 and 9 that are relevant to the assessment prompt. Write the list on the board.
  • For classes focusing on the CTP project option, consider modeling how the evidence collected can highlight choices people made throughout history to take action (or to not take action) toward justice. One way to do this could be to have students return to using the Handout: Map the Internal World of an Upstander to create a character map for the new historical actors they have explored in Lessons 8 and 9.  
• Depending on your students’ experience working with primary and secondary source evidence, choose a piece of evidence from the list and one or more activities from Strategy 9: Evaluating Evidence (pages 45–46) or Strategy 10: Relevant or Not? (pages 47–48) of the Argumentative Writing Prompts and Strategies resource to help students develop their skills for working with evidence. Then have them practice the skills in small groups with other pieces of evidence from the list.
• Have students break into pairs or groups to collect and evaluate new pieces of evidence on their evidence logs or their character map handouts. They should first review the documents on the list, adding to their annotations, and then write relevant pieces of evidence that they have evaluated on their handouts.
• After groups have gathered and assessed their evidence, use the Give One, Get One or Two-Minute Interview strategy to have students share the evidence they collected and identify questions they have about what they are learning.

• Have students spend a few minutes reviewing their initial responses from Assessments Step 1: Introducing the Assessments and evidence logs from Assessments Step 2: Introducing Evidence Logs.
• Then, in a final journal response or on Exit Cards, ask students to respond to the following questions:
  • Has any evidence that you recorded confirmed your initial thinking about the assessment prompt?
  • Has any evidence that you recorded conflicted with or challenged your initial thinking about the assessment prompt?
  • Which choices by individuals, groups, and nations in the history that you have learned about so far in this unit seemed most significant? What made those choices powerful or impactful?

• What tools and resources have others used throughout history to make a positive difference and strengthen their communities and society?