Timothy Snyder's road to unfreedom

Over the coming weeks, we're studying contemporary history - looking at what's happened to Russia and also to western countries since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990.

We're working from this article by Timothy Snyder: "Vladimir Putin’s politics of eternity" but I'm breaking it down into smaller parts to make it easier to identify the key ideas and see how well they can be applied to our domestic politics.

Christiane Amanpour conducted a good interview with Snyder, in which he outlined the major themes of the article and latest book, "The Road to Unfreedom". It's a great starting point for exploring this topic and you can watch it here:

Exploring the deep questions posed in pop songs

Lots of songs contain questions that are fun and interesting to reflect upon and discuss.

Lately, we've been ransacking our memories, playlists and search engines to find good questions. When students find questions, they write them up in a shared document: Important questions posed by songs

Each student then prepares a short talk (2-5 minutes) based on their question. So far, students have taken different approaches to this, e.g. scientific, philosophical, personal and imaginative. Then we pass the question around the class to get everyone's thoughts.

It's a simple exercise that leads to some surprising insights, memories, good stories, creative thinking and which also points us forward towards new avenues of exploration in the future.

Interesting conference about sustainable development - Tuesday 24th April

Both in English classes and Global profil we've been learning about the UN sustainable development goals - Agenda 2030. In our "Better tomorrow" project, we presented ideas on how to realise these ambitious goals.

Now, Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) are organising an exciting conference on this theme.

It'll take place in Stockholm at Meeting Room, Alströmergatan 20, 112 47 Kungsholmen

SEI have planned a full program with over 16 speakers from 4 continents. Read more here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/sei-science-forum-2018-innovating-for-a-sustainable-future-tickets-43834457041

A few of us have already got our tickets - it'd be great if you could join us!

Canine tales

We're looking at the canine community of Chernobyl, inspired by this video:


We've also read this article in the Guardian:

Julie McDowal, "Meet the dogs of Chernobyl – the abandoned pets that formed their own canine community" The Guardian Monday 5th February 2018

We have a worksheet too.

Then we're writing stories about dogs to both tell to the class and post on the wall. The first step is to add or claim a dog in this presentation: Canine stories

You can then write a dog story by hand or on a computer and share it with your teacher.

A Better Tomorrow - 7th Feb 2018 10:30-11:45

Think of a specific situation in our world that could be improved with the help of technology and/or good policy decisions so that the next generation can have a better future.


Create a short talk (like the space expo talks) in which you describe the current situation and then describe the technology and/or policies that could mitigate this problem.

You could look at electricity generation, lung cancer, homelessness, education, employment, shopping, farming, household pets, batteries, death... whatever you feel passionate about. If you need inspiration, look at the 17 sustainable development goals of Agenda 2030. 

This should be a "Yellow and Green hat" talk: optimistic and creative in solving problems. But don't neglect the other "thinking hats" - include statistics, hard facts, emotions and risk awareness.

Share your presentation/manuscript from the outset so your teacher can see your progress. If doing group work, take extra care to work in one (1) Google document and share all that you do. Good communication with your classmates and teachers is essential for this to work.