Elizabeth Wein learning resources

Creative, cross-curricular activities for Code Name Verity, Rose Under Fire and Black Dove, White Raven

CFE Levels 3 and 4 and senior phase (12-16)

Contents

2 Activities for Black Dove, White Raven

5 Activities for Code Name Verity

8 Activities for Rose Under Fire

13 Appendix

About this resource

This resource is full of cross-curricular, creative activities to help you explore Elizabeth Wein’s books in your classroom and library. Activities are mostly pitched at age level 12-14, but some may be useful at senior phase.

The activities for Black Dove, White Raven are intended to be cross-curricular, whereas the Code Name Verity activities are more focused on literacy. The activities for Rose Under Fire are designed to help you and your pupils tell the stories and preserve the memories of the women who lived in the Ravensbrück concentration camp.

The resource has been designed to support our Scottish Friendly Children’s Book Tour with Elizabeth Wein, but you can use it at any point to engage pupils with Elizabeth’s fabulous books. To find out more about the tour, visit http://scottishbooktrust.com/learning/teachers-librarians/scottish-friendly-childrens-book-tour.

About Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein’s itinerant and colourful life is reflected in the scope of her award-winning fiction for young adults. After living in England, Jamaica and the United States during her childhood and early adulthood, Elizabeth eventually moved back to England and then to Scotland with her husband Tim in 2000. Her first novels included the widely praised fantasy novels The Lion Hunter and The Empty Kingdom, and she continued writing fantasy until 2012 saw the release of Code Name Verity, the first in a series of novels about young female pilots. Code Name Verity won a host of awards and was shortlisted for many others, and Elizabeth went from strength to strength with the similarly lauded Rose Under Fire in 2013 and Black Dove, White Raven in 2015. These gripping and powerful novels explore themes of war, friendship and survival, and throw light on the lives of women who have overcome great odds in times of war.

http://www.elizabethwein.com/

Black Dove, White Raven activitiesBlack Dove, White Raven is the story of Emilia and Teo, two American friends whose lives are turned upside down when their stunt pilot mothers are involved in a tragic crash. Emilia’s mother survives the crash and moves with the children to Ethiopia, determined that they should be raised in a country where Teo is not judged by the colour of his skin. All three fall in love with their new home, but when war is declared with Italy, they face a battle to survive life in their suddenly war-torn land.

These activities are designed to involve a number of subject areas across the curriculum.

Stunts and extreme sports Lit 3-14a, Lit 3-02a, Lit 3-09a

Delia and Rhoda are a highly skilled team who thrill audiences with their aerobatics. However, their act is dangerous and leaves Teo without his mother.

Ask your book group or class to find out more about some modern day stunt professionals and their acts. You could point them to some of the following stunts and ask them to find out more about how they were set up, the training that went into them and the careers of the performers:

Travis Pastrana jumps 269 feet in a rally car: http://bit.ly/1Sv0CrJ (find a behind the scenes look here: http://bit.ly/PastranaJumpBehindScenes)

Robbie Maddison’s Las Vegas motorcycle jump, which although ultimately successful demonstrates the very real danger of stunts: http://bit.ly/MaddisonMotoJump

Tightrope walker Philippe Petit is most famous for his daring walk between the twin towers of the World Trade Centre. The documentary Man on Wire is fantastic, but this original CBS news report is also a great source of information: http://bit.ly/PetitCBS

Your pupils can then present their findings to each other! It can be difficult for most people to understand the psychology of those who undertake such dangerous stunts, and this could make for a compelling discussion between you and your pupils. Some insight might be gained from the following sources:

Discovery News examines the brain’s response to extreme sports: http://bit.ly/WhyExtremeSports

For your own perusal (there are references to some adult themes), try this fascinating in-depth explanation of the biological need for extreme thrill seeking: http://bit.ly/ExtremeSportPsych

Extreme sports and stunts are undoubtedly thrilling to watch but are dangerous, and can have consequences not only for those taking part but also their families and others who are influenced to copy what they see. Ask your book group or class to consider whether such activities should be banned. What are the arguments for and against?

This recent footage and article about an accident in Glasgow may help to illustrate the potential dangers involved: http://bit.ly/GlasgCircusStunt

Emigration Lit 3-14a, Lit 3-28a

Rhoda takes a huge step by moving the children to Ethiopia.

As travel has become easier, emigration has become more and more common. Many people who have emigrated to other countries have found the experience very challenging but ultimately rewarding.

Ask the members of your book group or class to find a city or country they might like to emigrate to. Ask them to produce a guide for people looking to emigrate there, thinking

about the following things: local cultures and traditions, common phrases in the local language, what kinds of jobs are available, what procedures they need to follow, and ultimately what the benefits and drawbacks of the move might be.

Your pupils can produce guides for younger children in your feeder primaries. You could then ask the younger children to read the guides, pretend they went to one of the countries, and write a postcard back to the older pupils!

Modern languages MLAN 3-13a

Papa Menotti is a peripheral figure in the children’s lives: he lives in Italian Somaliland, rarely sees Emilia or Teo and can understand very little of what they say.

Ask your pupils to imagine they are Emilia, and ask them to write a letter to her father in Italian. They can choose the subject matter and timing of the letter: for instance, they could choose to write a letter a few months after Delia’s death, telling Papa Menotti about the accident and what life has been like on Emilia’s grandparents’ farm.

Sample the food of Ethiopia HWB 3-30a

If you and your pupils want to try cooking some Ethiopian dishes, the following recipes provide a great starting point:

Injera (flat bread): http://bit.ly/InjeraRecipe Ethiopian-style lentils with yams or sweet potatoes: http://fd.cm/1gZYIBV Kidney bean soup: http://bit.ly/KidneyBeanSoup

If you loved Black Dove, White Raven... Lit 3-11a

Check out our list of books set in Africa: http://scottishbooktrust.com/reading/book-lists/teen-books-set-in-africa

Code Name Verity activities

Code Name Verity is the story of Julie and Maddy, two British women who become involved in a thrilling tale of espionage, hardship and survival during World War II. The novel appeals to readers on a number of levels: the unlikely friendship between the two main characters is captivating, and the twisting and turning dual narrative keeps the action moving at a fast pace towards its thrilling climax.

Women agents in the War Lit 3-14a, Lit 3-09a

The character of Julie came from the stories of female Special Operations Executive agents during World War II. The stories of these women make for inspiring reading. Your pupils could do a research project on them, and present their findings to other classes.

The Wikipedia list of female SOE agents is a great starting place, but a search for “British female special operations executive” will yield lots of relevant information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_female_SOE_agents

After this, you could ask pupils to produce a creative text based on the lives of these women. Ask your pupils to create a character based on what they’ve read about the women. After they’ve come up with a character, ask them to mind map some possible storylines. The best way to do this is to think about conflicts – what possible problems might happen to their character, and how would their character go about dealing with them? For example, could they be stranded in a foreign country, disowned by their government?

One possible format for telling their stories might be through a series of journal entries, but whichever direction your pupils go in, they might find our creative writing masterclass series with writer Phil Earle helpful: http://www.scottishbooktrust.com/learning/learning-resources/resource/phil-earles-creative-writing-masterclass

What does friendship mean to you? Eng 3-27a, Lit 3-29a, Tch 3-04a

The main theme of Code Name Verity is friendship and how much friends will do to help each other in times of trouble. Ask your pupils to produce a digital text, possibly a slideshow with images and text, in response to the question, “What is friendship?”

Check out this video for a lovely example from Perth Academy: http://bit.ly/WhatIsBeautyYT

You could give your pupils the following questions to help stimulate their thinking (alternatively, you could ask pupils to come up with the questions they want to ask about friendship):

Do friends need to have lots of things in common? How do you know that someone is a good friend? Do you need to be able to talk to someone about anything in order to consider them a

good friend? What kinds of things will test a friendship? How should friends respond to these

challenges? In the digital age, has the word ‘friend’ lost some of its meaning with the advent of

social media?

Writing historical fiction Eng 3-31a, Lit 3-15a, Lit 3-14a, Lit 3-25a,

Some pupils will be interested in what it was like to live in occupied France, particularly as a member of the resistance.

You could get several classes involved in a writing project: one way to do this would be to get them to collaborate in the writing of short stories. One class could do the research necessary to write a short story from the point of view of a resistance member, then the other class could write the stories.

Here are some good starting places:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/28/a2970128.shtmlhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/08/life-in-occupied-france-nazihttp://spartacus-educational.com/FRresistance.htm

Code Name Verity and traditional spy novels Eng 3-19a, Lit 3-04a

Code Name Verity is a book about spies, but there are notable differences between the book and more traditional spy novels.

Ask your pupils to compare the character of Julie and the plot of the novel with other spy novels or films. You could focus on the following areas:

How Julie behaves in captivity;

Julie’s friendship with Maddy, compared with the solitary existence of other spies; The complex personalities of Julie’s captors; What makes Julie human compared to less rounded spy characters – her fear of

torture with kerosene, her resignation to the hopelessness of her situation, etc.

Comparing book covers Lit 3-02a, Lit 3-03a, Lit 3-01a, Lit 3-09a

Code Name Verity has had a number of different covers:

Hardback cover: http://bit.ly/CNVcover2

Old paperback cover: http://bit.ly/CNVcover1

New paperback cover: http://bit.ly/CNVcover3

Ask your pupils to compare and contrast the three covers, and discuss which one they feel is the best representation of the book and likely to appeal most to its target audience.

Writing Julie’s obituary Lit 3-09a,

Ask your pupils to imagine that they are writing an obituary for Julie.

This task can be made more challenging by changing the point of view. For instance, you could ask pupils to image how an obituary written by the British authorities might differ from an obituary written by Maddy.

Also, giving pupils a smaller word limit could lead them to make more critical decisions about what to put in the obituary. For instance, would Maddy focus on Julie’s biographical details? Or would she choose to focus more on Julie’s personality?

This task can also encourage pupils to think about representation. Would Maddy choose to paint Julie as whiter than white, a hero of war? Or would she choose to paint a more honest picture, of Julie as an interrogator and a spy? What would Julie want to be known about herself?

Rose Under Fire activitiesAbout Rose Under Fire

These activities are focused on helping you and your pupils to tell the story of what happened at the Ravensbrück concentration camp and celebrate the memory of the remarkable women who endured the hardship of life at Ravensbrück.

Rose Under Fire tells the story of Rose, an American ATA (Air Transport Auxiliary) pilot who is captured and sent to Ravensbrück. There she meets a group of Polish political prisoners known as ‘The Rabbits’ who were subjected to horrific medical experiments at the concentration camp. It is The Rabbits’ determination that their story is heard and that what they have suffered is not forgotten which ultimately saves Rose’s life.

Although Rose's story is fictional, it is based on the real testimonies of survivors. Women suffered horrendous treatment in Ravensbrück, many were beaten, tortured and forced to do physical labour under horrendous conditions. Groups of women were also singled out for sterilization and other inhumane medical experiments.

However there are also stories of great resilience, bravery and friendship from the women who were imprisoned there.

About Ravensbrück

The Ravensbrück Concentration Camp, situated near the town of Fürstenberg in North-East Germany, was the largest concentration camp for women under the Nazi regime. By the time of its liberation by Soviet troops in 1945, more than 132,000 women and 20,000 men had been registered as imprisoned there. It is estimated that 80% of those imprisoned in Ravensbrück were murdered or died due to the horrendous conditions in the camp.

Historians use the term Holocaust specifically to describe the mass murder of approximately 6 million Jewish men, women and children by the Nazi regime and its collaborators during the Second World War. Many other groups were also victims of mass murder and even more were persecuted. The women prisoners in Ravensbrück came from over 40 countries including France, Germany, Poland, Russia and Romania. They included Jewish people, Roma Gypsies, disabled people, people with learning difficulties, political prisoners and members of the resistance from many different countries.

Activities

Learn about Ravensbrück through witness testimonyOverview

In order to write Rose Under Fire, Elizabeth Wein did a lot of research about Ravensbrück and the experience of the prisoners there. This included reading memoirs of women who have survived the camp.

In this activity pupils will discover different types of witness testimony and discuss what they tell us about Ravensbrück.

Activity Lit 3-04a, Lit 3-07a, Lit 3-14a

Explain to your pupils that much of what we know about Ravensbrück and the Holocaust comes from the testimonies of survivors.

In the Appendix of this resource you will find a number of video interviews, written testimonies and poems from Ravensbrück survivors. There is also a link to the testimony of a prison guard.

Ask your pupils to split into small groups and give each group either a copy of a written testimony to read or an oral history video to watch.

Once they have read or listened to the testimony ask the pupils to discuss these questions in their groups:

Do they think it is important to read and hear first-hand witness testimony? Why?

Did you get a well-rounded view of life in Ravensbrück from this testimony? Why/ why not?

What did you previously know about concentration camps? Does this testimony change your idea about concentration camps?

Next show your pupils the testimony from a prison guard.

The guard does not believe that she was responsible for the atrocities which occurred at Ravensbrück. Ask your pupils what they think of this. If you witness something terrible happening and do not speak out or do anything to stop it are you just as responsible as the person who is committing the crime?

Finally ask your pupils to discuss how these first-hand accounts might differ from secondary source material such as text books. Do your pupils feel that a secondary account is more likely to be unbiased? What can a secondary account offer us that first-hand testimony cannot and vice versa?

The Ravensbrück 'Rabbits' – Documentary Film TaskOverview

In Rose Under Fire, Rose is befriended by a group of women nicknamed 'The Rabbits'. The rabbits were a group of 74 women, most of them Polish political prisoners, who were subjected to medical experiments at the Ravensbrück Concentration Camp.

Although the friends who Rose meets are fictional, their stories are inspired by the testimonies of survivors. The four Polish women who give evidence at the Doctor's Trial in Nuremberg at the end of the book are real. Their names are Marie Broel-Plater, Jadwiga Dzido, Wladyslawa Karolewska and Maria Kusmierczuk.

In this task pupils will research the life of one of these survivors and then create a short documentary film using photographs, video archive materials and other information they have discovered.

Making a Documentary Film Lit 3-24a, Lit 3-28a, Tch 3-04a

To make a documentary film the first thing the pupils will need to do is research their subject.

Split your pupils into groups and ask each group to research the life of one of the four women who gave evidence at the Doctor’s Trial – what happened to them before, during and after their imprisonment at Ravensbrück? Can they find photographs, witness accounts, video footage or other information about their lives?

Good places to start looking are:

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

http://www.ushmm.org/information/exhibitions/online-features/special-focus/doctors-trial

The Steven Spielberg Film and Video Archive

https://www.ushmm.org/online/film/search/simple.php

You can watch archive footage of the trial here:

http://www.ushmm.org/online/film/display/detail.php?file_num=1960

You can read a transcript of Wladyslawa Karolewska's testimony entered as evidence in the medical case at:

http://www.ushmm.org/information/exhibitions/online-features/special-focus/doctors-trial/testimony-vladislava-karolewska

Ask the pupils to think about how they want to convey the information they have gathered. What do they want to include? Do they want to talk about the whole of this person's life or just focus on a small aspect of it?

They can use archive images and video they have discovered and then write a script to be recorded as a voice-over to accompany the photographs and video recordings.

Rock Your World has a resource for producing documentaries with your pupils.

http://www.rock-your-world.org/curriculum/take-actions/producing-documentaries

Remembering Through RecipesOverview

Throughout Rose Under Fire the prisoners help each other and try to make life more bearable by sharing small gifts, poems and recipes which remind them of happier times.

Often the recipes were shared orally, but sometimes the women were able to write down their remembered recipes. Creating recipe books was a form of resistance unique to women and was a way of staying connected to their memories of home.

This task will encourage your pupils to think about the importance of memory. Pupils can create a class recipe book, preserving their own memories of home by gathering recipes which are special to them, as well as researching traditional European recipes from the 1930s/1940s which the women at Ravensbrück might have shared.

Special Recipes Lit 3-28a, HWB 3-01a

Ask pupils to think of what food or special meal particularly reminds them of home. They can then write down their recipe to add to a class recipe book.

Pupils could also ask family members and friends for recipes which hold special memories for them and add these to the recipe book.

Researching food from the Second World War Lit 3-14a, Lit 3-28a

What kinds of recipes do you think the prisoners at Ravensbrück would have shared? Ask pupils to research foods from different European countries popular during the 1930s and 40s. These recipes can then be added to the class recipe book.

For both of these tasks emphasise that these recipes are being written to be shared so their instructions should be clear and easy to follow.

Make and Share! HWB 3-29a

Have a go at cooking some of the recipes your class has gathered – ask your pupils individually or in groups to pick a recipe from the book which is not their own to cook. You could have a celebration with each pupil bringing in a dish to share.

Hold a Memorial Gathering HWB 2-13a

Have a memorial celebration in which you screen the documentary films they made, share the stories of survivors they have discovered, and make food from the recipes which they have created. This memorial can underline the importance of remembering and you could invite the whole school, pupils from your local primary schools, and members of the community.

Further ResourcesThe Holocaust Educational Trust has teaching resources and lesson plans and guidance notes for teachers which are available to download for free.www.het.org.uk/index.php/education-general

The USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education makes audio-visual interviews with survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust. The Institute offers a variety of programmes and resources for teachers to use testimony in the classroom.http://sfi.usc.edu/teach_and_learn/for_educators

BBC Historyhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/genocide/

Kennesaw State University Museum has produces a 'Teacher's Guide' on Ravensbrück, available to download for free from the museum's website.http://historymuseum.kennesaw.edu/educators/teachers_guide.php

A study guide to accompany Rose Under Fire is available from Elizabeth Wein's websitehttp://www.elizabethwein.com/study-guides

Appendix - Testimonies from Daily Life in RavensbrückVideo interviews:

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has video interviews with Ravensbrück survivors.

Ruth Meyerowitzb 1929 Frankfurt, Germanyhttp://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/media_oi.php?ModuleId=10005199&MediaId=2490Blanka Rothschilldb. 1922, Lodz Polandhttp://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/media_oi.php?ModuleId=10005199&MediaId=2481

Doris Greenbergb. 1930, Warsaw, Polandhttp://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/media_oi.php?ModuleId=10005199&MediaId=2482

The USC Shoah Foundation has many more testimonies from survivors of the Ravensbrück Concentration Camphttp://iwitness.usc.edu/SFI/Search.aspx?term=ravensbruck

Written testimonies:

Workshop Yard

“Margarete (Buber-Neumann—ed.) took me to the SS sewing room, where they sewed SS uniforms…There were women sitting on an assembly line who had to make 29 pairs of trousers in one shift. All I really had to do was sew up the seams. But my machine did what it wanted and not what I wanted…Try as I did, I could not get it to work. The other inmates were very fair during the first couple of days. They helped me do my work, explained this or that, but then no more from the third day. Why? Because we were given half a slice of bread and half a slice of sausage more if we reached our quota. This was vital if you wanted to survive…So we didn’t reach our quota, and Opitz tried to find out why—and decided that I was the one who’d wrecked the entire program. Then, a really ugly thing happened. My head wasn’t shaven. He took me so strongly by the hair and threw my

head against the machine, against the prong on top—the machine has one or two prongs on top. I now have a silver plate in my chin and a cannula running through my nose…I was not allowed to go to the infirmary. My fellow inmates helped me. For a long time, I could only eat soup taking extreme care through one side of my mouth. I couldn’t manage the chunks. My fellow inmates squashed them up for me and inserted them into the one side of my mouth - everything was wrecked, everything.”

Lieselotte Thumser-Weil, Through the Eyes of the Survivors, 33

Camp Road

“Within the monotony and hardship of day-to-day life, the need to find intellectual activity was especially strong among the political prisoners. Some comrades felt a need to communicate with fellow inmates from other countries, systematically learning the other’s language. This was difficult without any books. The inmates were assigned to the blocks according to their nationality, so they could only communicate during meetings on the camp road.”

Charlotte Müller, Through the Eyes of the Survivors, 31

Road of Nations

Story 1: “’Available’ for road construction—that was my first labor assignment, and also the toughest. My squad comprised around 20 prisoners. I am unable to recall whether it included foreign women, because we were not allowed to talk to each other. We were guarded by two female guards with dogs. There were a number of gangs there forced to dig sand, cart around rocks and pull the road roller. And the whole time being screamed at by the guards and forced to work faster. My whole body ached so much that I could only just about drag myself back to the camp after hours of work…It carried on like this for three or four months. The work wasn’t even the worst part. What was really terrible was having to see fellow inmates next to me unable to carry on and left lying wounded until we marched back to the camp. Once, I witnessed a woman left behind on the ground and being run over by the roller. I saw her blood. We could do nothing to help her.”

Poem:

‘Untitled’ Alexandra Sokova

I want to tell of a fireplace,

Not the kind that pleasantly warms the feet

In the parlors of the bourgeoisie

Where the flames dance loudly.

I want to tell of a different fireplace that

Was built

In the chastely concentration camp.

Here, they call it a crematorium.

And the ill and the weak are burned in it.

This fireplace-crematorium burns day and night

Its red flame rises into the sky

Here, the last mothers or daughters

Are burned,

Their lives fly away with the black smoke!

This is a path that hundreds of thousands have gone,

They were led into the gas chambers…

Mothers, fathers, even infants too.

They were killed in their hundreds,

Their bodies were used

To fuel the fire again and again.

The hot flames mixed with the smoke…

Innocent human blood boiled

But from that same flame, revenge was born.

Guard testimony:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/21/AR2006022101413.html