Explaining Wiesel’s “Night” with the Whiteboard

This week, the students in my 9th grade class began reading Night.

Before I began teaching this semester, my mentor teacher played audiobooks for the students during class so that they could listen and follow along in the text. Many of them have trouble reading at home, so they liked the idea of reading in class and they came to accept the audiobooks as a suitable form of reading. I found, however, that although they seemed to be paying attention, many of them got into the habit of using that audiobook time to rest their brains and not really listen to what was going on in the story. I suspected this was the case when I was still observing, because many students didn’t seem to have a full grasp on the last book even after listening to it, reading it, and completing worksheets about it. My suspicions were confirmed when I played Section 1 of Night for them and then asked for volunteers to summarize what they had just heard. After hearing crickets as I waited for an answer, I took a step back and began to ask simple questions about the text such as “How old is the narrator?” and “Who is Moishe the Beadle?”. A few students were able to make guesses, but it was clear that many of them hadn’t been listening or absorbing the story at all. Since the period was nearly over, I didn’t have much time to discuss Section 1 in detail, so I decided to use the next day to break the story down step by step.

After re-reading the first section and typing up a quick summary in the morning, I got to school a little earlier and drew simple pictures on the board to illustrate each major part of the plot from section 1. Drawn in a very loose comic strip form, I numbered each step of the story so as not to confuse the students. When the students began filing in, they looked with fascination at my strange mural on the whiteboard and asked what was going on. The bell rang, and I explained that I was going to thoroughly explain Section 1 with pictures, because I find it easier to understand a story when I can diagram it and see it in picture form. The students looked and listened with rapt attention as I pointed to the picture numbered “1” on the board and introduced the book’s narrator, 12-year-old Eliezer. I explained where the book was set, and the fact that Eliezer was a very religious young man who studied the Talmud and Kabbalah regularly. We talked about the meaning of the words “Orthodox” and the phrase “deeply observant,” and I told them to pay attention to the narrator’s references to his faith, because it proves to be a large theme in the book as he questions it during his experiences in the death camps. The lesson continued in this way for a while, with me pointing to the pictures in sequence; explaining, asking questions, and answering their inquiries about the story line and themes in the book. I think it was a very successful lesson because I could tell by the end that the students had a firmer grasp on the first section of Night. From them on, I decided to take the book slowly and make sure they understood it every step of the way. Knowing that the students had a stronger understanding of the beginning gave me confidence that they would be able to build upon that foundation for the rest of the semester, which will make the lessons much more rewarding for both me and the students.