Tag: Summer Series of Saves

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Saving Summer: Let’s dance.

What about an enduring understanding about the history of dance as an answer to societal issues?

Possible Teaching Point: Music and dance are considered humankind’s earliest language. Dance speaks with the whole body and the whole community. In order to understand culture, society, and communication in physical forms we must study the effects and purposes of dance in social justice, protests, and acknowledgment of community’s needs.

Question: Do you think people should focus on dance over violence, and if yes, how should the message spread?

Here are some resources that may help you if you wish to put together a unit on dance and its place in human communication. This could easily lend itself to a Humanities/Physical Education cross-content unit.

Beyonce’s Formation is annotated in this article in the Washington Post by Yanan Wang.

Published on Apr 14, 2016

Shakiah Danielson leads Northwest Tap Connection dancers as they practice in Rainier Valley for a show Friday, part of EMP Museum’s ongoing Black History Month programming. (Erika Schultz and Corinne Chin / The Seattle Times)

Seattle Dances in Solidarity with Standing Rock.

Though these movies get a lot of play, I’m including them as a contrast for discussion with students. What is being ‘protested’ in these movie clips? Does the majority of white actors influence the lack of gravitas or does it make any difference?

One idea that lingers for me is the dance scene from the Titanic: the third class steerage looks like they’re having so much more fun than the stuffy dinner party:

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Saving Summer: Fake News (Revised)

 

via GIPHY

(Northwestern me in the summer…)

For summer, between walks and mini extensional crisis, I shall produce a series of posts designed to curate some of the key and critical ideas.

First up: Fake News.

A few weeks ago, I fell trap to a fake news story. As my husband says, the amygdala is the boss. Wait. The Amygdala is the Boss. My amygdala took over, after the daily onslaught of anxiety-dipped 31-flavors of horrors froze my brain, and I posted a story (about a hate crime that may or may not had taken place) and a friend (whom I frequently joust with regarding politics) called me out on it. Imagine my embarrassment. However, our unwavering vigilance needs reinforcement, what with the take-over of multiple news outlets spouting the same thing, the news is no longer journalism but continued, biased rhetoric.

The Resources and Lessons:

Possible teaching point:

Gathering credible, verifiable information is critical in making decisions, including life or death decisions. Understanding how writers and sources manipulate readers into believing falsehoods and lies are critical to survival. In order to know the difference between truth, facts, and opinions, and fake news from credible journalism, many factors must be understood and analyzed. 

  1. Find four news stories, two fake or questionable, and two from a reputable site.
  2. Review Fact, Opinion, and Truth.
  3. Discuss how fake news uses all three to bolster their credibility.
  4. Use the Fact, Opinion, and Truth annotation/note document. Change the left column into the articles you’re using.

[embeddoc url=”https://blog0rama.edublogs.org/files/2017/07/fact-opinion-truth-2ignpez.docx” download=”all” viewer=”microsoft” ]

And I got this link from the Notice and Note site:

http://factitious.augamestudio.com/#/

 

Other ideas:

  1. Have teams of students challenge each other with fake and credible news stories and determine which ones are which.
  2. Students find important articles and discuss why people want to believe them. What is the nature of these beliefs? Fear? Cultural? Monetary? Then – have students write credible journalism to counter the fake.
  3. Make it matter: students need to be able to share what conspiracy theories they think might be real and do the research.

Disrupting Thinking: Why How We Read Matters by Kylene Beers and Robert Probst

 

Add graphic literacy, too!