ESL etc.

Here’s a neat poem from 1933. It would be great to use as part of a discussion about how the world has / has not changed over the last 75 years. It also reminds us that environmental concerns and dissatisfaction with modern industrial life are not new ideas. Plus, it kind of foreshadows climate change. [...]

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Letters of Note recently posted a letter from a freed slave to his former master. The former slave was living and working on Ohio, when his former master wrote to him asking him to return to work on his farm. His response is a spectacular blend of sincerity and sarcasm. In my experience, students are [...]

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Slavery Footprint is a visually engaging survey that roughly determines how many slaves were involved in producing the goods we consume. It’s similar to carbon footprint calculators in terms of the questions it asks, asking about your home, electronics, diet, clothing and so on. On several of the questions, it allows you to really delve [...]

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Occupy Wall Street is a protest in New York City that has been going on for 18 days. On Saturday, 700 protesters were arrested, following the arrest of 80 protesters the week before. The occupation involves members of a number of different groups, and the main thrust is a frustration with the fact that American [...]

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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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One of the fundamental problems with capitalism as it is currently practiced in many countries around the world is that it relies on continual growth. Obviously, this is not sustainable. The Center for the Advancement of Steady State Economy (CASSE) is an organization that seeks to explore the true costs of growth-based economics, as well [...]

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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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I just came across the January 2011 issue of English Journal (vol. 100, num. 3), which had the theme of Green English. The journal is aimed at middle and senior high school English teachers, but a lot of the ideas and activities are totally relevant to ESL or EFL contexts. Several of the articles discuss [...]

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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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Forbes just released their list of the top ten highest paid athletes for 2010. I’ve used this as the basis of a lesson plan in the past and found it to be one that students are pretty interested in. The lesson plan is pretty simple: I start with some pre-discussion questions (asking students to guess [...]

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