Teacher notes
Ontario requires Holocaust learning, and this unit is built so you can teach it well. Students follow Yanek's route through ten camps and look at choices, memory and the people who helped, watched or harmed. There are no simulations and no student is ever given a number. The history notes explain what in the novel is true and what is changed, so you're ready for students' questions.
Quick answers
When is a good time to teach it? Holocaust Education Week in November, or any time of year.
How long is it? Seven weeks, or three with the shorter option.
Priced in Canadian dollars, so it costs less here than the US-dollar price on TPT. Instant download after checkout.
Full details
Yanek Gruener is ten when the German army reaches Kraków. Over the next six years he survives the ghetto and ten Nazi camps, and the number put on his arm at Birkenau becomes the title of the book. This Prisoner B-3087 novel study never asks students "what happened?" Every prompt asks what it means, why people did what they did, how Alan Gratz told it, and what students think. The unit is built around the words Uncle Moshe gives Yanek in Plaszów: "We cannot let these monsters tear us from the pages of the world." It follows Yanek's route in six parts, each named for something he holds on to: The Pigeon Coop (Kraków), The Loose Board (Plaszów), Salt and Stone (Wieliczka and Trzebinia), The Wooden Horse (Birkenau and Auschwitz), The Bread (the death march and four more camps) and The Toothbrush (Dachau and Munich). Each part has a menu of prompts, a hands-on activity, and trackers. The trackers follow every vow to remember, every choice between his father's rule and Uncle Moshe's, the Nazis' lying language, Yanek's route through ten camps, and the people who help, watch or harm. It is built for teaching the Holocaust with care: there are no simulations or role-plays, no student is ever given a number, perspective prompts stay with the victims, survivors and witnesses in the book, and the debate prompts look at the system that forced impossible choices instead of blaming the people trapped in it. The teacher guide includes content notes by part, support lines, and a page of history notes on what is true and what the novel changes. WHAT'S INCLUDED (59 pages, letter size) Student booklet (45 pages) • 6 part menus with 36 prompts (6 per part). Students pick two per part from five lenses: Witness, Every Name, The Choice, How It's Told and Remember. • 6 hands-on activities everyone does: Step by Step (how persecution grew, rule by rule), Moshe's Rules (test his survival rules), What Counts as Fighting Back?, Name, Not Number (what the camp knew vs. what it never knew), One Piece of Bread (map Chapter 22's choice) and Two Tables (the first chapter's table against the last). • 5 trackers: Pages of the World (memory and names), Two Rules (choices), Their Words (Nazi language), The Route (ten camps, time and place) and Who Helps? (helpers and bystanders). • Pre-reading hook (If I Had Known), Know Before You Go background, and an anticipation guide with a sealed prediction. • Organizers: On the Record (claim, evidence, so what), Chain Reaction, The Silences, Taken + Given Back, and a relationship web. • Socratic seminar prep ("Big Questions") with 9 questions and a moves tracker. • 6 final project choices: a Name, Not Number portrait with a quote key, an annotated map of Yanek's route, a two-voice poem, One More Name (a page for a class memory book), a book talk for Holocaust Education Week, and an Upstanders research project. • 6 profile pages (Yanek; Uncle Moshe; his parents; Fred and the nameless boy; the Judenrat director and Moonface; Jack Gruener and Alan Gratz), 5 toolkit templates (debate builder, craft spotter, two-voice poem, storyboard, interview + research planner) and a 24-word vocabulary page. • 6 exit tickets, a project planner, a single-point rubric and two Level 1–4 rubrics. Teacher guide (14 pages) • Visual implementation map: the whole unit on one page, week by week, with the chapters, the shared activity, and the chapters to read with care • Start-here checklist, unit map, and a 7-week plan (3-week option included) • Teaching with care: content notes by part, do's and don'ts, terminology, and 24/7 support lines • History notes: what is true, what the novel changes, rumours to correct, key facts, Canada's part in the story, and free museum sources • Full story key, plus how the ending is planted • Look-fors for all 36 prompts and 6 activities, with extension prompts • Tracker and vocabulary keys, and a parent letter • Ontario Language (2023) curriculum links, assessment plan, and Social Studies and History connections WHY TEACHERS LIKE IT • No recall questions, so students can't answer by skimming. • The same routine every part: read, activity, two prompts, trackers, exit ticket. • Built around the book's big question: what does it take to survive, and what does it take to stay human? • Made for Holocaust education: no simulations, no graphic images, guidance for the hardest chapters, and history notes for the questions students ask. • Fits Ontario's required Holocaust learning, Holocaust Education Week in November, or any time of year. • A one-page implementation map shows the whole unit at a glance. Pin it up. • Every page number is a clickable link in the PDF, so it works on paper or on screen. • White pages, designed to photocopy in black and white. PLEASE NOTE Students need their own copy of Prisoner B-3087 by Alan Gratz (Scholastic Press, 2013). References use chapter numbers and short quotes, not page numbers, so any edition works. The book includes shootings, hangings, a suicide, starvation and death in the camps; the teacher guide flags each one by part. This is an independent teaching resource and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the author, the Gruener family or the publisher.
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