A radical EFL lesson plan

The introduction to the unit is a game designed to shock students and raise their awareness of a global issue of importance.

Examples:

1.       Game: “Products of slavery marketplace”.  Students pretend to buy and sell products made using slave labor such as chocolate and running shoes

2.       Game: “Poverty trap quiz”.  Students play a quiz-type game where they attempt to decide whether sentences are true or false (ex: “The more soap operas women watch, the fewer children they will have” is true according to Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee in Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the way to Fight Global Poverty)

 

Quests are scaffolding tasks and games to help students learn language and thinking skills. 

Examples:

1.       Students learn about how to use the passive voice (ex: Children are forced to pick bananas) and then create a “grammar gamble” game for each other where the aim is to spot correct/incorrect sentences

2.       Students write a persuasive essay, then scramble the paragraphs for other students to reorganize.

 

The missions then allow the students to develop both the language points and the global ideas further.  The final product of the mission is then disseminated to a specified audience.

Examples:

1.       Try living on less than $2 per day.  Document the experience.  Post the results to “Live Below the Line” on Facebook and Twitter.

2.       Create a book of shocking facts on the topic of human rights.  Donate the books to a local high school.