ESL etc.

First time? Check out the site overview.

Facing the Future is offering Buy, Use, Toss, a 10 lesson unit on consumption, for free download. It looks very good, and features some old favorites like The Story of Stuff and Chris Jordan. It’s aimed at grades 9-12, and seems like it would be perfect for adult ESL learners.

The lessons ask students to look at their own role in these issues, which I think is an important thing to do when addressing global issues. The readings are interesting, and not overly long or complicated. There is also a good variety of activities.

The only criticism I have is an apparent lack of awareness about issues relating to animals. For example, the handout “Hamburger, Fries and a Coke” in Unit 2 details the resources used in creating this stereotypically American meal. We are told about the fertilizer and water used for the grain to feed the cow, the gas used to ship the patties, and even about the poor working conditions at the slaughterhouse. At the same time, no mention is made of animal cruelty, the pollution runoff from factory farms, or the chemicals like hormones and antibiotics that the cows are pumped full of. To me, this is a strange omission.

Overall, though, I think this is a really useful set of lesson plans, and I’m not sure if the plan is to keep it free forever, so be sure to download it soon.

The Choices Program has just published a free lesson on the Gulf oil spill based on political cartoons. I love using political cartoons with students, as they are often very efficient ways to understand complex issues. The lesson includes a handout on analyzing political cartoons, a slideshow of the eight cartoons, and links to a variety of informative resources about the spill from a range of sources: PBS, Al Jazeera, the BBC, the Wall Street Journal, etc.

I think this is a great way to make this issue accessible to ESL learners at a variety of levels. I also think that the critical media literacy skills addressed in the handout on analyzing cartoons could be used with cartoons on any issue.

Via World727

At our last teacher development day, my wife gave a presentation on helping LGBTQ students and instructors feel comfortable and respected in our classes, and in our program as a whole. Below, you can find PDFs of the different materials she used. Her presentation was based in part on USF’s Safe Zone program.

We started with a vocab exercise, giving us a sense of what we already did or did not know. Then we did this activity from the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, asking us to put events in LGBT history in chronological order.

We next went through this handout summarizing GLBT laws and introducing how these issues were manifest in ESL classes and materials. One of the most striking things for me was realizing how heteronormative some activities are. For example, I have done “write a personal ad” type activities without including non-hetero examples, or considering how students might feel about expressing their sexual preferences in class.

For further reference, we were all given a glossary of terms, a map illustrating international homosexuality laws, and a map showing laws for same sex couples in the US.

Overall, it was a great addition to our teacher development program, and brought up issues that I really hadn’t thought much about. A lot of these materials could also be adapted for use in class, too.

Thanks Krista!

I’ve long been a fan of visual prompts. I like materials that enable quick understanding of issues, so that students can move into discussion, writing, etc. Gapminder is a great site that shows a range of statistics in very accessible ways.

The main section of the site is Gapminder World. The default graph compares life expectancy with GDP, with the dot representing each country sized according to its population, and the dot color representing the geographic region. The power comes from the fact that all of these can be reassigned. There are many, many statistics that can be assigned to the x-axis, the y-axis, dot size and even dot color. It is also possible to view each graph as an animation, seeing how things have changed over time. Play around with it, or check out the tutorial or example graphs.

Another neat resource on the site is the collection of animations illustrating Human Development Trends in 2005. In addition to conveying some interesting information, these animations also would be useful in a unit on understanding graphs. For example, the animation on Differences within Countries illustrates how important information can be lost in averages. For English language learners, a good feature of these animations is that they operate as slideshows, meaning each part can be read at any speed.

Gapminder can be used to quickly create easily comprehensible graphs on a very wide range of issues. Many of the prepared animations would also work well in an ESL / EFL classroom.

I was recently asked in an email how I approach planning a lesson. At first, I struggled to put it into words. I don’t really think there is any one right way.

For me, I usually approach lesson plans the same way I approach planning courses. I start from the big picture. What are our goals for the day? Maybe we want to practice a particular skill, or increase our knowledge about certain content, or make progress on a long-term project. Once I have the main goal(s) in mind, I decide what our big activity will be.

Let’s say, for example, that I want to give the students a chance to learn some new vocabulary words, while practicing figuring out meaning from context. So I need to find / make a reading that has vocabulary words whose meanings can be figured out. What then?

Once I know some of the activities I want to include, I think about different approaches. There are tons of ways to “do a reading” or “introduce vocabulary words”. Personally, I usually try to do each activity in a way that maximizes student interaction, with the goal of meaningful communication. Sometimes, I might do readings as homework, and have small group, student-led discussions (like this). Another approach would be to have students take turns reading sentences or paragraphs, discussing vocabulary as we go.

If I really want to concentrate on the content, I might give the students a worksheet that asks some content questions, and includes the vocabulary words I want to target. I could read the reading aloud, before handing it out, and ask the students to do their best to fill out the worksheet. Next, I could give them the article, and have them check their answers and fill in the blanks in small groups. I might ask each group to come up with another content question based on the reading, and see if they could stump the other groups. It really just depends on what skills we want to work on. For homework, we could do a writing activity that asks students to reflect on their own experience with / opinions of the topic, giving them a chance to use the vocabulary in a more meaningful way.

In terms of time, one important thing that I’ve learned is not to schedule my “big” activity for the end of the lesson. Often, that results in it being rushed, or cut entirely. Even if I’m able to get through it, we might not have enough time to reflect on it as a class afterward. In a two-hour class, I would typically begin the main activity right after our break. Obviously, though, it depends on the activity.

I almost always go into class with more planned than I expect to have time for. That way, if something isn’t working (like, if a set of discussion questions falls flat) I can cut it and adjust the lesson on the fly. I tend to be very flexible, and try to give my activities time to breathe if students are getting a lot out of it.

In writing this, I can see that I rely a lot on intuition in my teaching, and that makes me doubt whether or not this type of “advice” is helpful to novice teachers. Any other suggestions on approaching lesson plans? Any questions on what I’ve shared here?

Take Our Jobs is a project by the United Farm Workers offering harvesting jobs to unemployed Americans. The idea is to contend the allegation that illegal immigrants take “our” jobs, while also raising awareness about the food chain. Asking students to look at this initiative could be a great way to bring up issues of immigration and food consumption.

This website could also be used in critical thinking exercises, as students could parse out the different motivations behind the site, and look at the different ways these issues have been covered in mainstream and progressive media outlets.

There are two issues facing our nation–high unemployment and undocumented people in the workforce–that many Americans believe are related.

Missing from the debate on both issues is an honest recognition that the food we all eat – at home, in restaurants and workplace cafeterias (including those in the Capitol) – comes to us from the labor of undocumented farm workers.

If I were doing this in class, I might also bring in materials (like this or this) on the lives of undocumented workers in the slaughterhouse industry, inviting students to look further look at the food chain we currently rely on.

Downfall is a new gameshow on ABC that tosses un-won prizes off the side of a building. Cars, TVs, motorcycles smash on the street below. It is unbelievable that, in 2010, ABC thought a show glorifying such environmental and economic waste was a good idea. To make it even more surreal, it’s hosted by a professional wrestler.

Owell. At least the name is appropriate.

Teach UNICEF is a new website that shares a bunch of UNICEF teaching materials by topic and grade level. Topics include child labor, armed conflict, poverty and sanitation, to name a few. Most topics offer materials for grades 6-8 and 9-12, and some include K-2 or 3-5. You can also browse by media type.

I haven’t used any of these materials yet, so to get a better understanding, I took a look at one topic in particular. I chose the 9-12 unit on Microfinance. The lesson plan itself is 37 pages, with detailed descriptions of the standards met, and several page-long readings on women and microfinance. It starts with a set of visual aids, a collection of photos and maps that help introduce the issues.

Next, students watch a short (2 min.) video clip profiling a woman in Aceh, Indonesia who is rebuilding her business after the tsunami. There is also a reading that gives additional information on her story, and discussion prompts are included with the visual aids. Many ideas for extension activities are also given, including reading graphs, understanding laws, and learning about gender inequality in the US.

The second part of the lesson uses a 2 min. interview with a woman from the International Food Policy Research Institute. She discusses how improving the economic status of woman also benefits children. Slides in the visual aids take students through a summarizing activity and a discussion of the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals. Again, many extension activities are given.

Based on this lesson, I would absolutely look to use these materials in class. They are full of great vocabulary, and engaging activities. And I think the range in grade levels available would make it easy to find something that would work with a class at a variety of English proficiencies.

Via World727

This great infographic from Our Amazing Planet ties together a lot of interesting facts. Scrolling town from the upper edge of the atmosphere to the bottom of the deepest ocean trench, a lot of things are put in perspective. For example, I found it amazing to see just how close to an airliner the highest flying birds go, or how tiny manmade buildings really are.

It is also interesting to follow the path of the leaking Deepwater Horizon oil rig from the ocean’s surface, down to the seafloor, and beyond. This infographic could make a great discussion or writing prompt, and could be used to introduce or review a wide range of issues, including the oil spill.

Thanks Larry

The Money Gusher, George Monbiot’s latest column, draws interesting parallels between the financial crisis and the ongoing Gulf oil spill.

Pollution has been defined as a resource in the wrong place. That’s also a pretty good description of the company’s profits. The great plumes of money that have been bursting out of the company’s accounts every year are not BP’s to give away. They consist, in part or in whole, of the externalised costs the company has failed to pay, and which the rest of society must carry.

Does this sound familiar? In the ten years preceding the crash, the banks posted and disposed of stupendous profits. When their risky ventures failed, they discovered that they hadn’t made sufficient provision against future costs, and had to go begging from the state. They had classified their annual surplus as profit and given it to their investors and staff long before it was safe to do so.

I also like this line, about the fact that (while clearly not being a Marshallese company) the rig is registered in the Marshall Islands.

Flags of convenience signify more than the place of registration: they’re an unmistakable sign that responsibilities are being offloaded.

A lot of students aren’t aware of the underlying assumptions in traditional economics, how corporations are allowed to externalize costs and avoid liability. Business is always a popular topic, and an introduction to alternative economic points-of-view (like these) can be really engaging for students.

And for more on the Gulf oil spill, be sure to check out this list of resources by Larry Ferlazzo. As usual, it’s quite comprehensive and includes a lot of good stuff.