Tuesday, April 18, 2017

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 4/18/17:
News Brief - Skyler
Mad About Cows
Modi and Hindu Nationalism
Religions PowerPoint

Homework: Read the blog! Know your grade and how to improve it. Finish and turn in the Historical Investigation if you have not. Next news brief: Carson.
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News Brief: Skyler had the news brief today and selected an article about this story to talk about: BBC.com - Theresa May to seek general election on 8 June. We found the United Kingdom in our world maps and talked about why the Prime Minister is able to call for new elections, and what advantage that may give to their political party.

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 Carson.

Mad About Cows: This was a group activity designed to try and understand how Hinduism is playing a role in Indian society. This was the article we were looking at, 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 B.J.P.?
3) Are there any religious practices that similarly shape our own culture?
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 just 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 Historical Investigation, as well. Let me know if there is anything that I can do to help! Thank you!

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