What's a fun way you've got to teach about the major world religions in a one or two days?

You're in a tough spot because you're dealing with a topic where there's a lot of information and the potential to oversimplify a student's dearly-held beliefs. I go back and forth at the beginning of the year as to whether it's better in my 1200 class to hit on the major religions all together or look at them in context as they arise.

If push came to shove, I would flip it on the students to design some sort of group competition. You could have each group select a different religion to look at and design 3-5 MC/short answer questions as they learn about their topic. The 1200 course has a solid anchor text (https://www.oerproject.com/OER-Materials/OER-Media/PDFs/1200/Unit2/World-Religions-Prior-to-1450) but it only covers the big 5.

Then, on day 2 you could either do brief, informal presentations or mix up the groups to spread the knowledge around. Give them the full quiz (which you vetted but didn't have to write) to tackle in their teams and give the highest scoring group some petty prize. If it were me, I would do a Google Arts & Culture Art Selfie (https://artsandculture.google.com/camera/gen-selfie) of the winning group and post it on your class page or print it out and "put it on the fridge". Egyptian Pharaoh or Holi Celebration would be good filters to try.

Sorry for the book, I'm putting off doing some planning of my own. Best of luck!

When I have a large amount of info for my students to digest, and not a lot of time on my class schedule ... I jigsaw! I used the activity in the AP course with great success with my students, do you think this could be adapted with BHP & your trimester schedule constraints, Bryan Dibble ? 

 Will Nash Brilliant!  I like competitions, and student directed research is another plus.  I think the big 5 will be enough, and thanks for that link to the OER materials.   

This chart is great.  I've set up groups like this many times, but this visual is perfect.   Gwen Duralek 

I'm not sure what grade level you are teaching, but here's what I do for my AP World students as part of our Unit 0.

• Religions and Power = Zoroastrianism, Christianity, Legalism
• Religions and Society = Hinduism and Confucianism
• Spread of Religions = Buddhism, Christianity, Islam

Judaism could easily go with Religions and Power. Jainism could maybe go in society.  I would do Sikhism in spread as an interactions between Hinduism and Sikhism or possibly in power as a reaction against it.

You could easily give the basics of each religion each day, and then have students compare/contrast as to how each religion functions in that theme.  Again, not sure it would work with middle school students, but this is how I handle it with freshman in my AP World class.

Love this graphic Gwen.  Something I can share with my undergrad education students when we work on jigsaw lessons. Thanks. 

Love this graphic, Gwen Duralek Thanks for sharing! Do you ever assign specific roles or provide a template or notetaking document for students?

I am a big fan of the jigsaw in terms of divide and conquer, and because I like to allow students to be experts within smaller groups. However, one worry is if I have a student who is unfocused or struggles with reading comprehension, and they don't bring the necessary information to the group when they are sharing.

Ahhhh, yes Melissa Nowotarski . Then maybe it's a digital or paper note-taking document that continues to be revisited where students can add notes. Once all have been covered, you could do something with them Bryan Dibble ?

Great question Bryan Dibble . 

Well for starters I definitely am transparent with my students that, when it comes to religion and belif systems, the reality is that any one of them could be an entire PhD and that the lessons we're doing in the classroom are barely scratching the surface. 

That said - I would recommend like the Silent Conversation Gallery Walk with Confucianism, Daoism and Legalism. I've adapted it to to do similar activities comparing Judaism, Christianity and Islam as well as Buddhism and Hinduism. I think doing days where you're comparing does a lot to show how these religions and belief systems answer the same types of questions for human beings while also demonstrating the overt and subtle differences in belief / practice. 

 Gwen Duralek thank you for sharing the video on the different types of Jigsaw activity. It is very useful to understand how the activity works. I never implemented it. Which version of the Jigsaw do you use with your students?