Ideas From The Guardian: Family

I like to challenge my students. I like to choose activities and stimuli that will prove to be thought provoking and different. I have no desire to make them, or me, feel uncomfortable, but I do feel that I need to be pushing them mentally in order for them to come up with an interesting response to the materials I provide.

So in the spirit of 52, I took a look in the January 28th Family supplement of the Guardian newspaper to see what I could find...

Michelle Hanson writes about her embarrassing parents.

Q. Have you ever been embarrassed by somebody? How and why?

Original article

Steven Appleby's Loomus cartoon shows 6 cynical ways you can be loved.

Q. Have you ever tried to make someone like you?

Other examples

Joanna Moorhead interviews family members who have donated organs to their loved ones.

Q. What's the biggest sacrifice you've ever made for someone?

Original article

Erica Medcalfe writes about a photo of her father before she was born.

Q. Can you find an old family photo? What did you think was happening in the photo? Who do you think took it? etc

Original article

Claire Bainbridge remembers a recipe that she used to eat with her family.

Q. Is there are a particular meal or food that you associate with your childhood / past? Discuss why it is so memorable for you.

Original article

David writes a letter to his partner of 42 years, Roy, who died from a stroke.

Q. If you could write a letter to someone from your past, who would you choose?

Original article

Charlie Condou writes about the difficult birth of son.

Q. Have you ever been through a period of great stress? How did it feel? How would you advise anyone experiencing it for the first time?

Original article

Annalisa Barbieri advises a woman whose daughter has become a porn star.

Q. What advice would you give to this woman? How should she deal with the situation?

Original article

The Guardian were looking for contributors for a story about meeting the in-laws.

Question as in the picture.

Follow up article

A quote from the American writer Pearl S Buck.

Q. Do you agree with the quote? Should this be the aim of education?

An anonymous diary of a woman going through a separation.

Q. Who else in society would you like to read a diary by? A prisoner, a police officer, a professional sports person?

Original article

Eight pages, eleven ideas. The chances are you wouldn't use quite a few of them in your lessons. To be honest, for various reasons there are a few I wouldn't use either. But that's not really the point. There are many opportunities to find interesting and stimulating classroom materials all around us, it's just a case of opening our eyes, being receptive and not underestimating our students capabilities.

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Ideas from the Guardian: Experiences

Generally I’m not in favour of promoting products or companies in my teaching activities, unless I’m trying to engage my students in critically analysing a subject, for example advertisings effect on children. I’m going to make an exception here though because the Guardian is a news organisation that I think deserves any publicity it gets. I believe it through it’s pursuit of quality investigative journalism, it is actively trying to make the world a better place. In this series, I’m going to share some of the ideas that I get from its online content.

I was lucky enough to see Ken Wilson’s talk Ten Things I Think I Know About Teaching and Learning at IATEFL Brighton 2011. One of his ten things was about integrating material into lessons that is more thought provoking and stimulating for your students than what you find in your average coursebook. He used the following fascinating article as an example:

“I've Eaten Only Crisps for the Past 10 Years.”

Here’s an idea for how I would use the article in class.

1) Begin by asking the students to discuss their eating habits with the following questions as prompts:

a) Do you consider yourself to be a healthy eater? Do you think you need to make any improvements in your diet?
b) Do you have any food ‘guilty pleasures’? (Explain if necessary)
c) Is there one food, healthy or unhealthy, that you eat more than any other?

Note: Try to keep the mood light, food can be a serious subject especially if you have students who have or have had difficulties with food in their lives. This can be true of many subjects though, so I wouldn’t hesitate to introduce it.

2) After they’ve finished their discussion, get class feedback by asking students to share some of their perspectives.

3) Tell them they are going to read an article with the headline “I've eaten only crisps for the past 10 years.” After making sure they know what crisps are, ask them to predict, with a partner, what kind of person they think this article is about and write down 5 brief facts about them.

4) After 3 or 4 minute discussion, ask one person from each pair to simultaneously write their five predictions on the board. Hopefully you should have a board covered in weird and wonderful descriptive ideas. Ask the students to read each other ideas and call out any similarities between them.

5) Now it’s reading time. This can be done in a number of ways, such as reading the whole article through once or breaking it down by paragraph and discussing it as you go along. You may want to create skimming and scanning activities. You will presumably also want to deal with vocabulary at some point. The most appropriate way depends on the nature of your class, so that’s up to you.

Note: You may want to edit the text to suit your students. The language may need some adjustment for their level or you may want to edit out some of the more challenging content if you think it’s inappropriate. Personally, I would like to keep it as intact as possible in order to make their experience as authentic as possible, but there may be quite understandable reasons why you want to make some changes.

6) After the main reading activities are complete, refer the students back to the board. Ask them to reflect on what they predicted about the subject of the article now they’ve read it. Were they close, or completely wrong? This should be quite fun as they are probably more likely to be wrong then right.

7) It would be interesting to encourage a more serious discussion after. The students could discuss if they think the woman needs medical or psychological help. They could talk about what they would say to her if she was a friend or family member. The tone of this discussion may need to be carefully managed based on the dynamic and sensitivity of your class.


Hopefully the students will have found this unusual story engaging and thought provoking. The woman’s unorthodox story offers them a chance to read an authentic text, encounter a fascinating life and engage critically with some moral and social issues. Much more valuable than what you usually find in a text book, I’m sure you agree.


You can find other similar articles in the Guardian’s Experiences section, from the fun “I Own a Back To The Future Car” to the probably too challenging “My Husband Died On Our Honeymoon”:

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Ideas From The Guardian: 24 Hours In Pictures

Photo by me.

I’ve been reading the Guardian newspaper ever since I was a teenager, and though I can no longer pop to the newsagent to pick one up, it is still my main source of news and comment. From the news articles to the various podcasts, I don’t think I could live without it. It’s the only newspaper that I know of that has a TEFL section, which should make it popular with us teachers too.

One of my favourite pages is 24 Hours in Pictures. Every day they publish a collection of around fifteen recent images. This includes pictures from current global events, as well as other notable images. It’s a great resource that can be used in a variety of ways, including as a conversation starter. Below is an example of how I used the page in an upper intermediate and above lesson about photography:


1) Begin with a general discussion about photography to gauge the level of interest and knowledge about the subject.

2) Go through the pictures and discuss them, concentrating on the technical aspects of photography rather than any issues raised. This is an opportunity to introduce some relevant vocabulary, such as composition, framing, use of light, portrait, landscape etc.

3) Then ask the students to choose their favourite image. They then explain why they chose this one in particular.

4) Ask students to imagine that they are a judge for a news photography competition. They have to give a prize to the best news photograph. What criteria would they use to decide on a winner? Hopefully they will use some of the qualities mentioned in point 2, as well other things such as capturing a moment etc.

5) Show the clip from the BBC Culture Show below. I stop the clip at the 3 minutes 45 second point, but you could show more if you wish. The chances are you’ll need to play the video more than once, even if your students are very advanced, so decide how you want to structure their tasks. For my upper-intermediate student, for the first listen, I just asked her to summarise the main idea.



6) For the second listen, I asked her to listen again and note down anything the judge says she looks for in a prize winning photo.

7) The students then compare the list they made at point 4 with the judges criteria.

8) If you want to do some language work based on things that came from the video, you could do it at this point.

9) Finally, you could finish by discussing the issues raised in the photos.

Possible follow ups activities:

- Homework: Ss uploads one of their own photos to http://www.fotobabble.com/ and describes what is happening and why they like this photo so much.

- These articles can be used for further reading on the subject.

 

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