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AnonymousSilk Road is a big idea of 7th grade curriculum. We can sneak it in at many different times into the standards. Today I snuck Marco Polo and the Yuan Dynasty into a review on the Renaissance...old Marco really is mentioned in the Renaissance Standards.
Corel has a beautiful photo CD disk called the Silk Road. You can run the CD as a slide show, with titles so you look like you know what you are doing (of course, that is a picture of x located in y.....) I bought my copy (and many other such disks) on ebay, as Clay recommended during our classes. Copyright free photos, so we are free of that Western sense of guilt....
Any Silk Road stuff people have to share would be fabulous....a really nice geography lesson, complete with mapping activity, would be stupendous!
AnonymousHave you been to the Silk Road Encounters site (through AskAsia.org) It's at http://teachers.silkroadproject.org/. There's a really nice curriculum unit FREE to educators. All print, not video like it says, but good stuff. And I LOVE the Spice unit on the Silk Road.
Talk about all Asia all the time: today I snuck in(segue?) Marco Polo in a discussion of Ibn Battuta, and get this, the North Korean army in a lesson about Sundiata king of Mali (you know, the dangers of a large standing army.)
AnonymousOne of the novels we have used at Nightingale for 8th grade students is "Ties that Bind, Ties that Break." It is a story about a young girl who refused to have her feet bound. It is set a few years before this custom was no longer practiced and deals with a number of issues including women's rights and the political changes in China. It sparks a lot of discussion and students seem to become very engaged in the novel. We have taught it along with "The Diary of Anne Frank" as a thematic unit, but I'm considering possibly ending the year with this as part of a unit on solely Asian literature and topics.
AnonymousI'm curious about the reading level for this book. Our students have a difficult time with novels, and it would be nice to have something that deals with Asia at their level.
>One of the novels we have used at Nightingale for 8th grade students is "Ties that Bind, Ties that Break."
AnonymousAccording to Amazon.com, it is appropriate for 11-14 year olds. At Nightingale, we have used it successfully in 8th grade classrooms with a wide range of reading levels. Most of our 8th grade classrooms span several years in reading ability- usually grades 3-9.
Another book along similar lines that might be interesting is by Adeline Yen Mah (not sure about the spelling). She has a book called "Falling Leaves: A Tale of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter." She has two versions. "Falling Leaves" is the adult version. The teen version has a similar title. I think it is something like "A Cinderella Story: A Tale of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter." I have read the adult version and thought it would be interesting for my gifted students. I want to get the teen version and check out its possibilities.
AnonymousMost of us are familiar with the 5-7-5 formula for haiku, and we tend to use it in lessons having students write poetry counting syllables. As Prof. Miyake informed us, Japanese is "pretty much" pronounced like Spanish, so it might be fun to have students do bilingual readings of some of the poems we had. I'm picturing pairs of students standing in front of the classroom, and one reading (or reciting) the original in Japanese, and the other reciting the translation in English. It might give it a new "feel" and bring an added interest/appreciation.
AnonymousControversy breeds interest, and I think the controversy surrounding Marco Polo could be something to attract the attention of our students. Students could be assigned to various groups with the task of 1) Tracing his route with maps 2) Introducing his discoveries 2) Retelling his hardships 4) presenting the views of those who don't believe he made the trip, etc. I think such a project could capture the imagination of our students.
Anonymousi'm a big fan of the History Alive Series(Teachers' Curriculum Institute. http://www.historyalive.com/) for augmenting the text. (and sometimes the other way around!)
Guided/Independent practice. Big picture concepts with attention to important details.
Kinesic activities, graphic organizers, visuals- combined with critical thinking development.
They provide great slides as well, but I read somewhere that the new version changed the slides into overheads?
They sell year long units (grades 6-8) that follow the standards rather faithfully.
AnonymousI went to the History Alive site, and it is great. I'm going to use it as the basis for updating my pacing plan. It would be great if we could get the overheads for our classrooms through this program.
AnonymousDon't forget to add music to your classroom. Yo Yo Ma has a great CD out called "The Silk Road" where he introduces and uses the musical instruments that were used in ancient China along the Silk Road. I use a variety of music in all my classes. It takes the students a moment to get used to different types of music, and then they start to ask for their favorites. I try to add both art and music to my classes, something that I had when I was in school.
AnonymousI like the idea, but where do we get the original Japanese pronunciation?
AnonymousI have been asked to design and teach a new course on "Communication Media". I would like a part of my web site to link directly to media, translated into English, from many parts of the world, particularly: Britain, Canada, China, Egypt, France, Ghana, Greece, Guatamala, India, Italy, Kenya, Mexico, Peru, Singapore, South Africa. I want students on any given day to be able to compare perspectives on the news from around the world. I would appreciate getting the URL for any sites that you think might be good for this.
AnonymousHi, I am sorry not to know your name. I am taking the seminar on line from New Mexico, and teach in San Diego...Asian Studies as a year long class. Please let me know where this Corel cd might be obtained? Sounds excellent. Many thanks, Jan Davis
clay dubeHi Jan --
Corel has produced many cds with royalty-free images you can use for web sites and classroom projects. These are now offered by a number of dealers at greatly varying prices. An internet search will turn these up (use corel china photo or a similar search string). I've just done so and noted prices ranging from $10-$30 for a single disk. A friend has purchased about 30 of these disks via eBay at about $7/disk. She draws upon them in illustrating presentations.
Curious about seeing thumbnail versions of the images on these disks? Check out this Berkeley resource:
http://elib.cs.berkeley.edu/photos/corel/
Choosing one of the disks (e.g., "Exotic Hong Kong") and hitting search will produce several pages showing the images contained on the disk.
AnonymousMultimedia is the way to go. I'm constantly trying to expand my use of computers, on-line resources, and music or videos to the class. In the past I have been limited by the size and resources in my classroom, but the addition of music and taped readings from the text really enrich the experience. I will look for the Silk Road recording, sounds interesting.