Create interview questions, practice and be prepared to present in front of the class. Another journal response can be to Create a mock interview between yourself and a character.This puts the students through the thought process of what empathy is like. Tell them something you admire about them and why. Tell them how you are similar or different. Some of the examples are to write a letter to a character.Second, I have multiple journal responses that I use throughout the unit that are engaging and assess student comprehension. Teach A Night Divided by Jennifer Nielsen: Journal Responses I like to keep definitions as simple as possible because when you use long definitions there is a low chance of student retention. Students are to write a simple synonym for the definition.

I start by passing out a vocabulary sheet in which students have the page number and the vocabulary word. Teach A Night Divided by Jennifer Nielsen: Vocabulary There are nail-biting-on-the-edge-of-your-seat-moments in this wonderful novel. Due to the East Berlin government, the father decided his family should move to West Berlin, but the mother didn’t want to leave behind the life they built in the East. Teach A Night Divided by Jennifer Nielsen is about the story of a young girl and her brother who go on a quest for freedom with many obstacles on the way. But even if you weren't interested in any of that, it still offers a fascinating, suspenseful tale of a thoughtful, courageous 12-year-old girl's determination to escape an oppressive life for something better.Teach A Night Divided What it’s about: Click HERE for the full lesson The result is an incredibly thoughtful, provocative, and very human look at a distant moment in history that will raise interesting questions for readers about what it means to be free and how we define the good life, all with a deeply nuanced understanding of what it means to do the 'right' thing in complicated situations where not only political alliances but lives, futures, and happiness all are at stake. Nielsen weaves in the geopolitical factors that led to the creation of the Berlin Wall and shows why people had divided loyalties - to Germany, Russia, their own city, and even at times their own families. A NIGHT DIVIDED is fast-paced and simply written, and it moves the complex story along in an engaging way without getting bogged down in the history. This powerful book humanizes historical events by creating a story about people's struggle to live with autonomy and their efforts to live honorably in an unjust system.

A night divided by jennifer nielsen