Hidden Letters: Resources for Educators and Youth

First and foremost, Philip “Flip” Slier’s letters are powerful reading on their own. Readers should be encouraged to share their personal responses to Flip’s letters and the context in which they were written. Educators can invite readers to make text-to-self connections that can deepen students’ empathy for Flip and for all people who are the victims of persecution and genocide. Readers can discuss, blog, journal, or use other means to record and share their responses and connections to this text.

The Teaching Tools: Curriculum Guide provides seven learning engagements. These are additional suggestions for ways to integrate this book into the language arts and history curricula. Educators can pick and choose from these. The learning engagements do not have to be done in any particular order, and each one can stand alone.

The WebQuest is designed as an inquiry-based project in which students, working individually, in partners, or in small groups, apply their learning from reading the Hidden Letters to an investigation into other 20th- and 21st-century genocides. At the end of the WebQuest, inquirers are asked to share their knowledge and opinions with authentic audiences.