Religion, Day 2 - Class Recap

At the end of class today, we took notes on the aspects of Buddhism. This is a statue of Buddha at the Monkey Temple in Kathmandu. Photo taken on Spring Break 2015.

Dear class,

I am enjoying our new religion unit, especially because this I get to use a lot of the photos I have taken and experience I have had around the world! Here's what we did today in class:

Learning Targets: 
Knowledge LT 22: I can explain how religious ideas impact the shaping of societies.
Critical Thinking LT 2: I can explain connections between events, issues, problems and concepts.

Soundtrack: "Karma" by Alicia Keys. Selected because we were continuing to talk today about Hinduism, which has the idea of karma as a central idea. Lyrics here.

AGENDA 4/15/15:

News Brief - Jurnee

Mad About Cows
Modi and Hindu Nationalism
Religions PowerPoint

Homework: Read the blog! Know your grade and how to improve it - Russian Revolution (found on this post) and finishing Historical Investigation if you have not. Next news brief: Clara.

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News Brief: Jurnee had the news brief today and selected an article about this story to talk about: BBC.com - Libya migrants: Hundreds feared drowned in Mediterranean. This is unfortunately a story that has been repeated over and over, around the world, as desperate people try to seek better lives. I also brought up this article about the Kardashians visiting Armenia to bring attention to the 100 year anniversary of the Armenian Genocide starting.

We also watched VICE News for the day, before moving on.

The next news brief was assigned to Clara.

I showed the blog from last class to highlight all of the Russian Revolution links and we also reviewed and made questions/summary on the Cornell Notes from last class.

Mad About Cows: This was an interesting sort of Language Arts style activity to analyze a newspaper article. Before looking at the article, I showed the class a list of words from it, and asked if anyone knew all of them. Nobody did, which was the point - it's okay to not know and try your best to guess! Here's the list:

Erstwhile:
Chauvinist:
Pantheon:
Bucolic:
Conundrums:
Burgeoning:
Syncopated:
Nominally:
Draught:
Bemoaned:
Lineages:
Indigenous:
Curdle:
Inanities:
Sententious:
Masqueraded:

The directions were to get into groups of FOUR (there may be 1-2 groups of three). Select someone to be the designated writer of vocabulary guesses. Select someone to be the designated speaker. All group members collaborate on trying to guess what the vocabulary words mean through the context of the article.

This was the article we were looking at, which relates to the unit learning target of how religion helps shape society: NYTimes.com - Cow Mad in India. Like I said, it was a somewhat challenging article as far as vocabulary goes. I do like the point about beef exports, though!

The groups had about 20 minutes in class to read the article and try to come up with their best guesses for definitions of words. This was a literacy strategy to help in the future! Then, we went through and made guesses in each group with the class, before I revealed the actual definition online using Dictionary.com. I enjoyed seeing many students get really excited if they had a close definition! Thanks for participating in this new way to read an article together. :-)

Modi and Hindu Nationalism: After reading the article, I played this video (warning: some graphic descriptions of violence) about the history of India's new Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. Again, we were looking at how society is impacted by religion, and it is clear that Modi's Hindu Nationalist Party is shaping society through religion in one way or another.

The last example I gave of this was this recent New York Times editorial about Modi and how India is promoting mass conversions of Christians and Muslims to Hinduism: NYTimes.com - Modi's Dangerous Silence.

With over a billion people, India is the world's largest democracy. Having just visited during Spring Break, I was especially interested in focusing on it!

Religions PowerPoint: At the end of class, we continued the religion notes, using the Cornell Notes format. Here is the PowerPoint again:

Google Drive: Major Religions of the World PowerPoint

Today, we finished the second religion in the PowerPoint - Buddhism. Next class, we will look at how Buddhism shapes society and then move on to taking notes on Judaism. See the pattern here? :-)

Please make sure you are working hard to review your notes, and improve your grade if at all possible! I have updated your grades online to reflect whether or not you have turned in your Historical Investigation, as well. Let me know if there is anything that I can do to help! Thank you!