Wednesday, April 25, 2018

Religion, Day 3 - Class Recap


Today, I wanted students to envision themselves at a beach. This is one of my favorite beaches in the world: Maho Beach, St. Martin, in the Caribbean. Home to one of the greatest places to photograph planes on Earth! Photo taken in 2009. 

Hi everyone,

It was a fun class today! Thanks for participating in our class activities! 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: "Beach Chair" by Jay Z and Chris Martin. Selected for today because of the breathing exercises we did, envisioning ourselves at the beach! Lyrics here.

AGENDA 4/25/18:
News Brief - Michael
Buddhism in Myanmar
Breathing
Judaism

Homework: Read the blog! Know your grade and how to improve it. Finish Country Profile Project if you have not and submit ASAP.

If you would like to attend Ryenn's Period 8 class on Peace during your Study Hall (apologies, this only is for students with Period 8 as a Study Hall), please fill out her survey, here:


Next news brief: Skyla.
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News Brief: Michael had the news brief today and selected an article about this story to talk about: BBC.com - Iran nuclear deal: Rouhani says West has no right to make changes. We found Iran in our world maps and talked about this story, which will definitely be a big deal in the next couple of weeks, as the United States might withdraw from the agreement.

The next news brief was assigned to Skyla.

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):


Buddhism in Myanmar: As part of this section, I showed this clip of a Daily Show episode about the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar being pushed out by Buddhists (including the president, who is a Nobel Peace Prize winner):


This is another relationship of religion to society, which is our learning target for this unit. I showed this article explaining the Rohingya crisis: AlJazeera.com - Rohingya crisis explained in maps. We have been seeing this crisis play out all year on BBC World News, so I thought it would be important to highlight in class.

Here is another video that goes into some more specifics about exactly what is happening, which I showed in class:


Breathing: I was really excited to try this today! Thank you for being willing to participate in doing some breathing and meditation type exercises! The whole point of this was to just relax. Hopefully, it did the trick! We did the guided breathing exercise on the third page of this document (which I altered slightly for context):

Judaism: With the shortened Community schedule, we continued with the religion notes before the end of class, using the Cornell Notes format. Here is the PowerPoint again:


Please make sure you are working hard to review your notes, and improve your grade if at all possible! Let me know if there is anything that I can do to help! Thank you!
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Monday, April 23, 2018

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 experiences I have had around the world! 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.
Behavior LT 3: I can communicate and work effectively within a team or group.

Soundtrack: "What Goes Around... / ...Comes Around" by Justin Timberlake. Selected for today because we continued looking into Hinduism, in which the concept of karma is very important. Lyrics here.

AGENDA 4/23/18:
News Brief - Jaycee
Mad About Cows
Modi and Hindu Nationalism
Religions PowerPoint

Homework: Read the blog! Know your grade and how to improve it, if possible. Finish and turn in the Country Profile Project if you have not. Next news brief: Michael.
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News Brief: Jaycee had the news brief today and selected an article about this story to talk about: TimesLive.co.za - Angolan president sacks armed forces, spy bosses in latest purge. We found Angola in our world maps and talked about this article for a bit, before moving on.

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):


The next news brief was assigned to Michael.

Mad About Cows: This was a group activity designed to try and understand how Hinduism is playing a role in Indian society. To begin, we watched this video from the New York Times:


This was the article we looked at after, which relates to the unit learning target of how religion helps shape society: NYTimes.com - Indian State Is Expanding Penalty for Killing a Cow to Life in Prison.

The directions were: Get into groups of FOUR (there may be 1-2 groups of three). Read the article together and try to summarize the article as a group. Then, answer the questions below, before we watch the video:

1) What impact is Hinduism having in shaping India’s society in this article?
2) Why was this law passed? What are the benefits to the Hindu nationalist B.J.P.?
3) Are there any religious practices that similarly shape our own culture? If so, what are they?
4)  “Protection of cows is the single-most important principle towards saving the whole world from both moral and spiritual degradation” – why would this be, in the eyes of Hindus and the B.J.P.?
5) How is religion being used as a force for nationalism in India?

We had a fair amount of time in class to go through this together, then we moved on to the next section.

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 (the Bharatiya Janata Party) is shaping society through religion in one way or another.

Another example (we did not go over this in class) is 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 visited during Spring Break in 2015, 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:


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 Country Profile Project as well. Let me know if there is anything that I can do to help! Thank you!
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Thursday, April 19, 2018

Religion, Day 1 - Class Recap


We started going over some of the world's major religions today in class. The first one in the PowerPoint was Hinduism. This is a Hindu temple in New Delhi, India! Photo taken over Spring Break, 2015.

Hi everyone,

Today, we started our religion unit. I really enjoy talking about religion and learning more about different religions, which always happens when I teach it! Hopefully this is an interesting unit for students, too. 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.
Behavior LT 3: I can communicate and work effectively within a team or group.

Soundtrack: "Congratulations (Clean)" by Post Malone. Selected for today because the Country Profile Project was due, and if you are done, you deserve a hearty congratulations!

AGENDA 4/19/18:
News Brief - Jaden W.
Respect
What is Religion?
Religions PowerPoint

Homework: Read the blog! Know your grade and how to improve it. Please turn in the Country Profile Project if you have not. Next news brief: Jaycee.
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News Brief: Jaden W. had the news brief today and selected an article about this story to talk about: CNN.com - North Korea drops withdrawal of US forces as condition of denuclearization, Moon says. We found North Korea in our world maps and talked about this development with possible peace.

The next news brief was assigned to Jaycee.

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):


Respect: To start the religion unit, I went back to our class Ground Rules that we made at the start of the year and noted that respecting each other was a big part. When we are talking about religion, it is important to know that we are not going to be debating religion as a topic or in specific religions and which is the best, or correct one, or anything like that. The goal with this unit is to simply learn as best as we can about religions around the world, so we can understand how they impact society, and students can make up their own mind about them.

What is Religion?: We started the religion unit by completing a pre-assessment in class, which students turned in after completing. Remember that there are no right or wrong answers when it comes to what you personally believe. Our study of religion is based on simply understanding what people think about spirituality around the world, which has a huge impact on life. Here's the pre-assessment:


It seemed like most students were interested in talking about religion, which was good to see! If you would rather remain private about your own religion, I totally understand that, too. It is a very personal decision! Here's the video we watched for the end of the pre-assessment, which does a great job of going over five of the major world religions:


The point here was to learn some new information about major religions! I think it is a really good overview video.

Religions PowerPoint: Next, we started (it will take us a long time to finish) the religion notes, using the Cornell Notes format. These are particularly famous in Ms. DeFrance Gilman's classes. I spiced them up a bit with photos from my travels as a part of the slides! Here is the PowerPoint:


We made it through Hinduism (the first religion covered) today, and will keep going with learning about it next class. If you want to get ahead of the game at home, go ahead and check out the rest of the slides!

There is definitely a lot to learn about! We are going to keep moving forward with new material. If you are needing to improve your grade, please work hard on that, too! I am here to help! :-)
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