ESL etc.

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 →]

The latest issue of Rethinking Schools features a description of a great activity by Bill Bigelow (of Rethinking Globalization) teaching students about coal mining. Bigelow’s activity starts with a game created by the coal industry, asking students to mine cookies for chocolate chips. Students buy a cookie and a mining implement (paperclip, toothpick, etc.), then [...]

[Read more →]

The Institute for Humane Education has a great collection of activities, many of which could be used with English language learners. Most of them are aimed at younger learners, but many could also be used effectively with adults. I haven’t yet had a chance to go through the whole site, but I took a look [...]

[Read more →]

A Class Divided is a wonderful episode of Frontline that shows an ingenious two-day activity undertaken by the third grade class of teacher Jane Elliot. In this activity, devised the night Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, Elliot divides her class into blue-eyes and brown-eyes. On the first day, the blue-eyed students are given preferential [...]

[Read more →]

I was recently asked for suggestions for materials that could be used with younger learners. Here are a few of my favorites. Facing the Future has a collection of activity-based, global issues lesson plans for students of all ages. In addition to the great stuff they offer for sale, they have a ton of materials [...]

[Read more →]

Materials Used Reading Circle Assignment Sheet Reading Circle Demo Miniature Earth / World Wealth Handout Miniature Earth, a neat, short video that contains a lot of demographic information on the world, and touches on issues such as wealth and education. Students seemed to enjoy the video very much. We watched it a second time, and [...]

[Read more →]

eslflow.com has a good-sized collection of environmental activities for the ESL / EFL classroom. Topics include climate change, pollution and transportation. The materials look to be mainly vocabulary exercises and readings. Let us know in the comments if you find any particularly good ones.

[Read more →]

mp3 In this podcast I talk about what I’ve been doing for the past several months. I talk a bit about my time at Dancing Rabbit, a community based around environmental sustainability with a website full of photos and articles. I also talk about two online jobs, as a tutor for TalkBean.com and as a [...]

[Read more →]

Facing the Future is an organization that makes activity-based, global issues curricula for students of all ages. In addition to the great stuff they offer for sale, they have a ton of materials available as free downloads. I especially like the lesson plans from Engaging Students Through Global Issues, and the Climate Change curricula. Finally, [...]

[Read more →]

The Intercultural Resource Pack is a free electronic ELT textbook with a variety of cultural and global issues based activities. Even though it is subtitled “Latin American Perspectives,” most of the activities could be used with students anywhere. Each activity is labelled according to the target students’ ages and levels. The five sections of the [...]

[Read more →]