Places to (re)visit

As a memory exercise and a name game, our 7th grade students created an ever-expanding list of places that began with the first letter of their last name. They surprised themselves by keeping in mind almost two dozen place names, including two of the republics that emerged from the fall of the Soviet Union.

Building upon that exercise, we asked each of the students to prepare a 20-30 second oral presentation on their place. We are firm believers that anything we assign to our students we should be willing to do ourselves. Of course, since we teach three different social studies classes and wouldn't think of repeating the same place in each class, we have given ourselves three times the amount of work we assigned.

Two of my "F" places, Frankfurt and France, are places I've visited once only, for less than 24 hours apiece, on the same 6-countries-in-8-days trip in 1980. I'll pass on delivering to you my 30 second anecdote about each, but will at least allow you to see one image from each, courtesy of flickr.com, that may give you some idea as to why those days remain in memory.

Main River, Frankfurt, Germany




Strasbourg Cathedral