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.