Week 6: Mrs. Bailey's Class

Only two more weeks until their first presentations!! Today Josh, Cait, Gitsy, Rebecca, and I met with Mrs. Bailey's class. We separated the students into their groups right away. Each student had to present the work they had done over the past week. Group leaders offered constructive comments and assigned additional tasks to the group members. We anticipated that most of the students would not come to class prepared, so we surprised them by making two groups present at the end of class. This way the students actually felt what it was like to be in front of the class and hopefully were motivated to construct well-designed and well-researched presentations.

Here is a brief description of the presentations:

What is genocide?

• Genocide web
• Definition of genocide
• Slide show
• Hotel Rwanda clip

History of Darfur/Current Situation/International Response

• Power point presentation
• Timeline
• Poster board: maps

What you can do?

• Survey (to be distributed by middle school students, collected on the second day of presentations, analyzed by Mrs. Bailey's class, and then sent to local newspapers/TV stations)
• Poster listing 6 things a middle school student can to help end the genocide
• Pamphlet with basic facts about Darfur, relevant resources, and ways to take action
• Middletown Press op-ed letter template

Next week the other two groups will present. The rest of the class is supposed to offer advice and ask questions while observing the presentations. We are now communicating over email with our students, so we can offer them feedback during the week and answer any questions.

The Darfur refugee from Voices from Darfur is going to speaking at Middletown High School on May 7th!