It has been a year of pain and hardship for the survivors of the earthquake.  They lost their health, homes and loved ones in it.  They have been very tough and brave.  We should not forget them and their suffering.

Green Dragon Stream 2008 October

When you are challenged to do a seemingly impossible task, what will be your response?  Will you embrace it or avoid it?  Have you ever thought of the satisfaction that will be derived from it, or will you only think of the unberable misery if you fail to accomplish it?  It is never easy to summon up enough courage to meet a challenge.  What do you think?

Are you afraid of reading newspaper and bored of writing up a feedback? Now you have no need to go through a thick pile of newspaper for news. You can gain access to online news easily. You will find it lots of fun to write and post your ideas after reading the news on your blog. Most important of all, you will be able to share your ideas with your blog mates getting spontaneous feedback from them. How encouraging it will be! Why don’t you give it a try? For more ideas, please read this.

Curriculum integration: News Comment on a blog

Newspaper cutting

Traditionally, newspaper cutting requires students physically cut and paste the newspaper article on their assignment. If you ask students to write news comments using their blogs, they can write their feedback, comments in the blog. Here is an example. The link of the newspaper article is also shown in the same post. You can embed the news link and paste to your blog and start commenting on it. A lot of online newspaper (MingPao) and websites (Yahoo HK) offer instant news blogging function. You can click the blog button at the end of the news and blog right away.

Students can keep all their work in a blog nicely and tidily. They will not lose it again and it will become their learning portfolio.

Discussion

What are other advantages of doing news review using blogs?

Do you know anything about Takraw?  Watch the Busan Asian Games – Sepak Takraw and get some ideas about this game!

Did you watch the musical?  Please think of 3 adjectives to describe it!  If you have more to say, why don’t you write a journal on it! 

Mother Teresa was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in Skopje*, Macedonia, on August 26**, 1910. Her family was of Albanian descent. At the age of twelve, she felt strongly the call of God. She knew she had to be a missionary to spread the love of Christ. At the age of eighteen she left her parental home in Skopje and joined the Sisters of Loreto, an Irish community of nuns with missions in India. After a few months’ training in Dublin she was sent to India, where on May 24, 1931, she took her initial vows as a nun. From 1931 to 1948 Mother Teresa taught at St. Mary’s High School in Calcutta, but the suffering and poverty she glimpsed outside the convent walls made such a deep impression on her that in 1948 she received permission from her superiors to leave the convent school and devote herself to working among the poorest of the poor in the slums of Calcutta. Although she had no funds, she depended on Divine Providence, and started an open-air school for slum children. Soon she was joined by voluntary helpers, and financial support was also forthcoming. This made it possible for her to extend the scope of her work.

On October 7, 1950, Mother Teresa received permission from the Holy See to start her own order, “The Missionaries of Charity”, whose primary task was to love and care for those persons nobody was prepared to look after. In 1965 the Society became an International Religious Family by a decree of Pope Paul VI.

Today the order comprises Active and Contemplative branches of Sisters and Brothers in many countries. In 1963 both the Contemplative branch of the Sisters and the Active branch of the Brothers was founded. In 1979 the Contemplative branch of the Brothers was added, and in 1984 the Priest branch was established.

The Society of Missionaries has spread all over the world, including the former Soviet Union and Eastern European countries. They provide effective help to the poorest of the poor in a number of countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and they undertake relief work in the wake of natural catastrophes such as floods, epidemics, and famine, and for refugees. The order also has houses in North America, Europe and Australia, where they take care of the shut-ins, alcoholics, homeless, and AIDS sufferers.

The Missionaries of Charity throughout the world are aided and assisted by Co-Workers who became an official International Association on March 29, 1969. By the 1990s there were over one million Co-Workers in more than 40 countries. Along with the Co-Workers, the lay Missionaries of Charity try to follow Mother Teresa’s spirit and charism in their families.

Mother Teresa’s work has been recognised and acclaimed throughout the world and she has received a number of awards and distinctions, including the Pope John XXIII Peace Prize (1971) and the Nehru Prize for her promotion of international peace and understanding (1972). She also received the Balzan Prize (1979) and the Templeton and Magsaysay awards.

From Nobel Lectures, Peace 1971-1980, Editor-in-Charge Tore Frängsmyr, Editor Irwin Abrams, World Scientific Publishing Co., Singapore, 1997

This autobiography/biography was first published in the book series Les Prix Nobel. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.

 

For more information, please refer to:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Teresa

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1979/teresa-bio.html

 

Read the above article and think of 3 adjectives to describe Mother Teresa.  Give reasons to support your ideas.

You are also encouraged to search for more information about Mother Teresa online and write up a journal of your own after watching the film and reading the article.

THE PRAYER OF ST. FRANCIS

 

Lord, make me a channel of thy peace,
that where there is hatred, I may bring love;
that where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness;
that where there is discord, I may bring harmony;
that where there is error, I may bring truth;
that where there is doubt, I may bring faith;
that where there is despair, I may bring hope;
that where there are shadows, I may bring light;
that where there is sadness, I may bring joy.
Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted;
to understand, than to be understood;
to love, than to be loved.
For it is by self-forgetting that one finds.
It is by forgiving that one is forgiven.
It is by dying that one awakens to Eternal Life.

At the end of the film, this poem is cited.  To what extent do you think this poem reflects the life and work of Mother Teresa?  Give reasons to support your ideas.

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