Mar 23, 2009
Mar 18, 2009
Life Under Stalinist Russia
Today was a good day at school. I mean, I have lots of good days at school. But sometimes there's just a story to share.
We have been studying Communist Russia in this last unit, and today I had a series of short readings on various aspects of life under Joseph Stalin. some of the categories included the Cult of Stalin, Religion, Family Life, etc. Once they had the hand out, they were broken up into groups and they were assigned various stations around the room.
Each station had a series of questions on one particular topic. After the questions was an activity. For instance, for Cult of Stalin, students had to write a birthday party announcement for Stalin's birthday celebration, or compare and contrast Family in Russia to Family in Bahrain.
Unfortunately, each station took longer than I expected. Students were only able to complete two sections in the reading (out of three). So near the end of class, I tell them to return to their seats.
"But there's still one left!" exclaimed one student.
"I know, but the bell will ring in a minute."
It was nice to know that they wanted to continue with the activity.
Its nice to know that sometimes the activities engage them.
We have been studying Communist Russia in this last unit, and today I had a series of short readings on various aspects of life under Joseph Stalin. some of the categories included the Cult of Stalin, Religion, Family Life, etc. Once they had the hand out, they were broken up into groups and they were assigned various stations around the room.
Each station had a series of questions on one particular topic. After the questions was an activity. For instance, for Cult of Stalin, students had to write a birthday party announcement for Stalin's birthday celebration, or compare and contrast Family in Russia to Family in Bahrain.
Unfortunately, each station took longer than I expected. Students were only able to complete two sections in the reading (out of three). So near the end of class, I tell them to return to their seats.
"But there's still one left!" exclaimed one student.
"I know, but the bell will ring in a minute."
It was nice to know that they wanted to continue with the activity.
Its nice to know that sometimes the activities engage them.
Mar 9, 2009
A Day Off
I heard a few months ago that there is only one country in the world that gets more school holidays than Bahrain. Lebanon. I'm not sure if that's true or not, but I imagine that Bahrain is near the top of the list.
Such hard lives that Alison and I live.
Today is the Prophet Mohamed's birthday, so today is a holiday. Alison and I slept in, ate pancakes, went to the gym, and I am now sitting in the facility's lounge area, using free, unlimited internet (I have cap on the gigabytes I can download each month at home). I am currently downloading all the NPR, How Stuff Works History Stuff, and LOST video podcasts I can in the time that I have.
In other news, I've joined the world wide web in other ways. I've started a class website. I haven't debuted the site to my students yet, but that will come soon enough. There's a schedule for them to follow for tests and major assignments, important documents and a link to a discussion blog (which will be part of their assignments). There are even a countdown to graduation!
This is my third attempt at some sort of online interaction. We'll see if it works out.
Such hard lives that Alison and I live.
Today is the Prophet Mohamed's birthday, so today is a holiday. Alison and I slept in, ate pancakes, went to the gym, and I am now sitting in the facility's lounge area, using free, unlimited internet (I have cap on the gigabytes I can download each month at home). I am currently downloading all the NPR, How Stuff Works History Stuff, and LOST video podcasts I can in the time that I have.
In other news, I've joined the world wide web in other ways. I've started a class website. I haven't debuted the site to my students yet, but that will come soon enough. There's a schedule for them to follow for tests and major assignments, important documents and a link to a discussion blog (which will be part of their assignments). There are even a countdown to graduation!
This is my third attempt at some sort of online interaction. We'll see if it works out.
