ESL etc.

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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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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This month, Green Teacher is offering a series of free one-hour webinars. All of these events begin at 7:30 PM EST. May 10 : FROG SONGS: Poetry and Essays, Field Ecology and Entomology – “Learn to use haiku to teach entomology. Learn to use poetry to help students write clearer more exciting essays. This simple [...]

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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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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 [...]

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Global Issues in the ELT Classroom, a new textbook by the Czech Republic’s Society for Fair Trade, won a 2010 ELTon from the British Council for innovation. This book uses the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals as a framework to address a wide range of global issues. The sample activities look promising, but they are [...]

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Dancing Rabbit is an intentional community in northeast Missouri that is dedicated to living sustainably. They eat (and grow) local, organic food, practice natural building techniques, and host educational seminars. I stayed there for three weeks a couple of years ago and loved it. It is truly something worth supporting. Their website also features past [...]

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Making Connections is a new textbook (w/ teacher’s guide) from Facing the Future. This new research-based teacher’s guide helps students develop English language skills through highly engaging real-world investigations of current global issues. Designed for intermediate-level English language learners and striving readers, Making Connections combines language learning with opportunities for students to think critically about [...]

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EarthPulse is a great website by National Geographic that provides an overview of many global issues. It starts with a series of essays by Thomas Hayden. He takes a much more strongly anti-consumerism stance than I expected from National Geographic. …here we are, too far into the new century to pretend any longer that a [...]

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I’m a fan of statistics as conversation / writing prompts, and Worldometers features a bunch of interesting stats. The main page provides real-time stats on a variety of issues, including consumption (military expenses, car production etc.), the environment (CO2 emissions, forest loss, etc.) and food (number of overweight people, number of people who died of [...]

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