We’ve had a lot of great contributions in our first week, both on our GISIG website and on the linked Facebook page, and are very lucky that MAWSIG are supporting our Issues Month this year!
As language teachers, we are probably all interested in the way language changes to accommodate social changes and to start talking about issues that were once taboo. One of the first topics discussed this week was the labels and terms people use to describe different genders and different features across genders. Bill Templer provided some really useful discussion and a video to bring this up in class, and Rachel Roberts posted an excellent lesson from her ELT-resourceful site to guide learners to discuss the way women and men are labelled.
Labels: a free downloadable lesson, built around a viral advertising video.
One of the most effective ways of bringing issues like bullying into class is through short videos. Dennis Newson and Bill began the week on the GISIG website with a discussion about LGBT bullying with useful videos, stories and types of questioning. Bill also reminded us about his e-Lesson inspiration about sexual harassment.
The discussion then moved on to judging girls on their appearance, with videos and discussion from Bill; and Patricia Santos shared a great lesson from her blog on various gender issues, especially the gender pay gap.
Finally, Bill posted a fascinating discussion about child marriage with links to a Rajasthan soap opera, information about child marriage in the Roma community in Bulgaria and several ways of approaching this topic in class.
On our special Issues Month Facebook page, we’ve also had
- a ready lesson about ‘new feminism’ and a quiz and infographic on Transgender from Linda’s Easier English New Internationalist wiki;
- Aparicio pointed out a useful section from page 74 of the publication ‘Intercultural Voices’
- there’s a TEDEd lesson on the history of marriage
- and some great posts by Pat Santos and Gergő Fekete e.g. this youtube clip about hurdles women face
- and this one about the gender of inventors
- and an article about the pressure there is nowadays on girls to look good – doesn’t this also now apply to boys?
And finally, there’s a great introduction to our new GISIG Special Days lesson. May 17th is International Day against Homophobia and Transphobia – have a look at this very well- staged lesson with a video and a twist by László Hajba – put a note in your diary to use it to celebrate this day with this in class!
Ready Lesson: Feminism
Thanks very much to László for moderating comments and running the website, and to Gergő for posting as Global Issues SIG. And thank you so much everyone who has contributed so far, read the posts and used them in class.
great stuff to be used in class