Tuesday, May 1, 2018

Religion, Day 5 - Class Recap


Arabic calligraphy that surrounds the entrance to the Taj Mahal, in India. We learned about Islam today in class - this is a famous example of Islamic architecture in the world! Photo taken over Spring Break, 2015. 

Hi everyone,

I hope you are feeling excited for the prospect of the end of the school year coming up! I certainly believe you have earned it! It is a very stressful time of the year for everyone, and I am grateful for some time to grade and then relax a bit, as well. Here's what we did today in class:

Learning Targets: 
Knowledge LT 21: 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: "Spirit in the Sky" by Norman Greenbaum. Selected for today because of our ongoing religion unit. The lyrics also mention Jesus, who we talked about today and last class in regards to Christianity.

AGENDA 5/1/18:
News Brief – Kate
A Christian Nation?
The Pluralism Project
Islam

Homework: Read the blog! Know your grade and how to improve it - Russian Revolution (found on this post), World War I work (found in this post) and finishing Country Profile Project if you have not - revisions needed, as well. Next news brief: Jackson.
---
News Brief: Kate had the news brief today and selected an article about this story to talk about: News.Sky.com - Asthma death rate in UK among worst in Europe, charity warns. We found the United Kingdom in the world map and talked about this story, as well as perhaps some of the causes behind this.

The next news brief was assigned to Jackson.

We also watched the one minute BBC World News update. Here's the link to see the latest one minute update, at any time of day (it will probably be different from what we watched in class):


A Christian Nation?: This was not meant as a debate question in class, but rather a look at how religion impacts and shapes our own society (relating, as always, to the learning target for the unit).

To start, we looked at some information about what Americans currently believe, starting with this link:


Here's another study with more detail:


Then, we watched this opinion/analysis video from The Atlantic, arguing that White Christians are a shrinking number of the people in the United States, and what the impacts of that are and could be:



The Pluralism Project: Next, I passed out this in-class assignment, which is a reading and some questions on the back:


The point here was to see that there are a variety of different religions (and people who don't believe in religion) in the United States, which the article makes the case is a reason our society has been shaped (get it - the learning target again!). Students were expected to read the article and answer the three questions on the back. I called on students randomly to talk about the answers.

Islam: Next, we continued with the religion notes, using the Cornell Notes format. Here is the PowerPoint again:


Today, we finished the last religion in the PowerPoint - Islam. I appreciated your focus on it! I enjoyed, as always, explaining and trying to answer questions from the class. It was also great to have students be able to share and explain more about their own faiths!

No comments:

Post a Comment

Please enter your comment. I will review the comments before posting them to the blog, so do not worry if yours does not pop up right away. Remember, do your best with spelling and grammar! :-)