Greetings, all!
After a lot of paperwork over the summer and some exciting (read: stressful!) moving I am now writing this post from my new apartment in the Nansha District of Guangzhou, China! I've been fortunate enough to take a position teaching Social Studies I and II (9th and 10th grades, respectively) at Nansha College Preparatory Academy, where Chinese students continue their secondary studies in a standards-based and English-immersive environment. This, of course, presents many challenges related to language proficiency, particularly at the beginning of the year (students return next week!).
I've long been a fan of Chimamanda Adichie's Danger of a Single Story talk and have found it to be particularly effective for students to embrace some core concepts of historical thinking. The challenge I find myself facing this year is that it is far too much: at nearly 19 minutes long it isn't really feasible to have the freshman year students watch it and expect them to comprehend much; overall, most will be very new to English and still be in need of much strong scaffolding.
So, with that limitation in mind, I turn to the OER Community: what alternatives or supplements have you used that still accomplish the same ends as Danger of a Single Story with less language fluency demands? Has anyone else been in a similar position before?
