ESL etc.

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 [...]

[Read more →]

My wife went to the recent TESOL conference in New Orleans, and one of the sessions she went to was a talk by Marc Helgesen on language teaching and positive psychology. Positive psychology is a relatively new movement in psychology that basically looks at the science of happiness. On his website, Helgesen shares a variety [...]

[Read more →]

Scholar as Citizen is a new blog launched by UW-Madison professor William Cronon exploring the public practice of history. One of his first posts was about ALEC, a “nonpartisan” group for state legislators working to promote “free markets, limited government, federalism, and individual liberty”. Two of their current objectives are exposing the “trainwreck” of the [...]

[Read more →]

A friend just sent me this article in Grist about how cycling can help in America’s health care crisis. One paragraph in particular caught my attention: A recent analysis of the health savings resulting from the bicycle infrastructure in Portland, Ore, came up with stunning results. If the city builds out only the infrastructure it [...]

[Read more →]

George Monbiot just put together a proposal for an agenda for an upcoming rally in the UK that will include a number of different organizations. He did this in recognition of the fact that it is important to be FOR something, not just AGAINST things. This parallels something that I’ve long wondered: how can politicians [...]

[Read more →]

A recent article in the Guardian reveals some of the changes being made on Capitol Hill by the new Republican House. Among other things, they have reinstituted styrofoam coffee cups. These had been replaced with a biodegradable corn starch alternative four years ago. Next on the Republican agenda of environmental retro moves? Lightbulbs. House Republicans [...]

[Read more →]

Products of Slavery is a deceptively simple website: a gray world map dotted with yellow numbered circles. Each of these circles corresponds to a country, each number to the variety of products produced in that country by child or forced labor. Click on a number and it bursts into a collection of icons depicting the [...]

[Read more →]

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 [...]

[Read more →]

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 [...]

[Read more →]

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 [...]

[Read more →]