I've decided not to do the kinds of questions I wrote about in my previous post with my EAP/CBI American History and Soci-Cultural Values class, mainly because there are 22 students in this one (as opposed to 8 in the other).
The first day I just told them a bit about myself and we played ask the teacher. It was only a 50 minute class. Now our second meeting is coming, two 50 minute classes back to back. It happens to come on March 8, International Women's Day. There were some good ideas in the JALT Global Issues newsletter, but none that seemed quite right for my class. Here are some International Women's Day ESL lessons I thought up (related to American History).
Lesson 1
Aims: To discuss famous American women and practice taking notes.
1. Students form 5 groups (the number of groups can be varied for larger and smaller classes). Each group reads about a famous American woman. I chose from http://www.greatwomen.org/, a site that has short, easy to read biographies of famous women.
2. Each student takes notes on the woman and then compares with the group. They discuss what's necessary and what's not (in the notes).
3. Repeat until each group has read about each woman.
4. Switch groups: no group members should be the same. Students compare notes on each woman. Each students' notes will be different so students can discuss the good points and bad points of each set of notes.
Lesson 2
Aims: To discuss suffrage by interpreting political cartoons
Students interpret and compare two political cartoons (with brief accompanying text). Here's a pro-sufferage cartoon and one from the anti-suffragists. This can lead into lots of things; in my class probably the fight for the right to vote for women in America.
Posted by James Trotta at March 7, 2004 1:01 PMESL blog is one of many Blogs for learning English & teaching English. Translation services information.