ESL etc.

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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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Dropbox is free software that helps you keep your files synced. I like Google docs, but if you ever want to edit them in something else, the formatting is a mess. Instead, I find myself emailing documents back and forth between home and work, trying to make sure I’m always working on the latest version. [...]

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