ESL etc.

Global Issues and Activism in English Language Teaching

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Entries Tagged as 'food and hunger'

My Life as a Turkey

November 19th, 2011 · No Comments

My wife and I just watched a great documentary on PBS called My Life as a Turkey. It tells the story of naturalist and wildlife illustrator Joe Hutto and his experience as “mother” to a brood of wild turkeys. The video powerfully reveals the complex and sophisticated lives of wild turkeys. I think this should [...]

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Tags: animal rights · blog · food and hunger · global issues activities · the environment · vegetarian / vegan · video · visual prompts

Youth Xchange: Training Kit on Responsible Consumption

October 24th, 2011 · No Comments

Youth Xchange is produced by UNEP and UNESCO, and it has links to loads of educational resources aimed at young people. Topics include the environment, consumption, body image, nutrition, and much, much more. I haven’t nearly explored it all, but there is a lot of good stuff here. It is mostly profiles of people and [...]

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Tags: blog · climate change · consumerism · cultural issues · food and hunger · global issues resources · health · k-12 · poverty & wealth · statistics

Spent

September 27th, 2011 · 1 Comment

Spent is an educational game that attempts to give users the experience of living on the edge of poverty. You make a series of choices, trying to keep your head above water financially. It is text-based, providing lots of reading opportunities with plenty of life-skills-related vocabulary. I particularly like how they demonstrate that financial pressures [...]

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Tags: blog · consumerism · financial crisis (2008) · food and hunger · global issues activities · health · poverty & wealth · reading · statistics · teaching with games · video games

Florida Agriculture in the Classroom

July 1st, 2011 · No Comments

I just received a letter in the mail asking me to sign up for a Florida Agriculture in the Classroom license plate that comes complete with the slogan “Agriculture Keeps Florida Green”. I immediately assumed that the educational materials promoted by this plate probably pushed an industrial agriculture point of view. I was right. They [...]

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Tags: blog · food and hunger · global issues activities · health · k-12 · lesson plans · reading · water

Global Eye

June 10th, 2011 · No Comments

Global Eye is a (now defunct) magazine aiming to bring global issues to primary and secondary schools. Thus, the language is pretty accessible and a lot of it could be used with English language learners. As a magazine, the materials are primarily readings and pictures / graphics, but there are some writing activities in there, [...]

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Tags: blog · climate change · fair trade · food and hunger · global issues activities · global issues resources · infographics · k-12 · lesson plans · natural disasters · politics · poverty & wealth · reading · the environment · visual prompts

Developing a Global Perspective for Educators

June 2nd, 2011 · No Comments

Developing a Global Perspective for Educators (DGPE) is a website based out of the University of Ottawa that has a bunch of K-12 lesson plans created by students in the education program. These include a handful of thematic packages, which are sets of lesson plans spanning multiple grades that cover similar themes. A lot of [...]

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Tags: blog · climate change · conferences · consumerism · cultural issues · fair trade · food and hunger · global issues activities · global issues resources · health · human rights · k-12 · poverty & wealth · the environment · water

“The Economics of Happiness” and “I AM”

April 20th, 2011 · No Comments

I just became aware of two documentaries that would fit nicely into a unit on happiness. The first is The Economics of Happiness. This documentary links a number of global issues (climate change, terrorism, etc.) with personal issues (depression, loneliness, etc.). I haven’t seen the whole thing, but the trailer brings up a lot of [...]

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Tags: blog · climate change · consumerism · cultural issues · fair trade · food and hunger · global issues activities · happiness · health · human rights · listening · politics · poverty & wealth · the environment · video · visual prompts

Where Children Sleep

October 19th, 2010 · 2 Comments

Where Children Sleep is a slideshow from the Telegraph that shows children and their bedrooms. They tend to focus on somewhat extreme examples, but the differences are powerful. I find the images of the children themselves particularly striking. The brief descriptions that accompany each photo relate to global issues like child labor, human rights and [...]

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Tags: blog · child labor · environmental justice · food and hunger · global issues activities · health · human rights · poverty & wealth · slideshow · visual prompts

Gapminder

July 13th, 2010 · No Comments

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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Tags: blog · climate change · finance · food and hunger · global issues activities · health · human rights · natural disasters · poverty & wealth · slideshow · statistics · the environment · visual prompts · war · water

Take Our Jobs

June 25th, 2010 · No Comments

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 [...]

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Tags: animal rights · cultural issues · fair trade · financial crisis (2008) · food and hunger · global issues activities · human rights · poverty & wealth · racism · reading · the environment · vegetarian / vegan