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 be required Thanksgiving viewing (preferably before dinner).

I’ve embedded the first chapter above, but you can watch the whole video for free on the PBS website. I would absolutely use this as part of a Thanksgiving lesson, or in a unit that addresses animal intelligence. In our program, we use the Quest series of books by McGraw-Hill. In Quest 1(which we use in some of our low-intermediate classes), there is a unit on biology that covers animal behavior, communication and learning. This video would fit in perfectly.

If I were planning a unit on one of the issues covered by this website, I would definitely check out the links they suggest.

I think this game is an engaging way for students to learn about many of the issues that poor families struggle with. I would certainly consider using it in a unit on poverty and wealth. It doesn’t take very long, and could serve either as an introductory or review activity. It also touches on a number of other issues, including education, health and nutrition.

They have lots of materials for download and I haven’t looked at all of them yet, but one in particular caught my eye. It’s called Food Production: Fact or Fib. The stated objective of this lesson is to clear up misconceptions, focusing especially on making sure students understand the difference between fertilizer and pesticide. The unstated objective, though, is clearly to make sure that students understand how necessary both of these types of chemicals are, while completely omitting any mention of harmful side-effects.

The main activity asks students to determine whether statements are facts or fibs. Here are some samples:

8. If your family pet were infested with disease-causing insects you would take them to a veterinarian to get treatment.

18. Antibiotics prevent diseases in humans, animals and plants just as vaccines do.

19. Controlling insects is one way to prevent diseases in humans, animals and plants.

And here’s the bonus question:

A doctor would prevent many diseases in a patient by making sure he/she got vaccinations. A Veterinarian would make sure every dog and cat received a rabies vaccination to keep them and their owners safe from rabies. How would a farmer protect his or her crops or animals from diseases or pests? Give more than one example.

Drawing an equivalency between how an industrial farmer feels about his or her crops and how a person feels about their pet is disingenuous. These facts are chosen to steer students into favoring the pro-chemical methods of industrial agriculture. There is literally no mention of no mention of harmful side effects, either in terms of human health or the environment. There is no mention of eutrophic deadzones or of the illnesses suffered by farm workers. There is no mention of organic farming. And there is no mention of the necessity of insects or how pesticides kill them all indiscriminately (not just the “disease-causing” ones).

Obviously, I am not recommending these materials, but I do think they could be useful an in activity that engages true critical thinking. Having students compare these materials with material that gave a truer picture of the pros and cons of fertilizers and pesticides would be interesting. I’m going to contact some local groups and ask if they have any materials like that, and if you know of any, please share them in the comments below.

It’s a real shame that, as we cut educational funding, it is increasingly likely that overworked and underpaid teachers will turn to ready-made materials produced by special interest groups.

Thank Tom (via IATEFL’s GISIG)

In addition to the lesson plans, DGPE offers links to a lot of educational resources on the environment, human rights, development and peace and justice. Many of the resources are reviewed but, strangely, they continue to be listed even if they are reviewed as “Not Useful”. See the review of EECOM (the fourth environmental resource) as an example.

The DGPE website also has information on seminars and courses, which might be of interest if you’re in the Ottawa area.

If one of the lesson plans catches your eye, please let us know in the comments!

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 great stuff: true cost economics, the wastefulness of our “efficiency” of scale, and the importance of local communities. For more information, there is a recent review in Yes Magazine.

The other movie (thanks Khalid) is I AM.

It’s directed by the director of The Nutty Professor and Ace Ventura and the trailer is a little melodramatic, but the premise is interesting. He went to a wide variety of people (including personal favorites like Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky) and asked them two questions:

1. What’s wrong with the world?
2. What can we do about it?

The ultimate conclusion seems to be that we are all very interconnected, and that we find happiness and health through taking care of each other. I think both of these movies (or at least clips from them) would work well in a unit on happiness and global issues.

Thanks Larry

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.

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.