Board race

Divide students into 2 groups. Put the word “Vegetarianism” at the top of the board and make 2 columns: one that reads (A-M) and another (N-Z). Give the teams a time limit (e.g. 3 minutes) and ask them to come up with as many words related to the topic of vegetarianism as they can in their column. The letters show what the first letter of the words/expressions can be for the groups. When they have finished, the teams look at each other’s solutions and dispute answers on the grounds of spelling, legibility, word form etc.

Polarities

After generating a sufficient amount of vocabulary, draw a cline on the board (e.g. under the already existing table) or simply point at two ends of the classroom to indicate the two ends: being a vegetarian or a meat-eater. Ask students to stand along the cline, reflecting their opinion. Then, students with similar opinions brainstorm arguments to support their opinions.

Note: if everybody stands at the same end of the scale, ask them to think about what a person at the other end of the scale would say.

“Why I’m a weekday vegetarian” – video

Play the video once and ask students to pay attention to what the main idea of the video is. After that, to check deeper understanding, play the video for the second time and tell students that they should try to remember some new information from the video. Then, in open-class, do the “Think” section with your class.

Alternatively, you can also think of this activity as a regular listening task: give students the questions on paper before playing it again, let them read through the questions, and have them choose the right answers.

Key lexis

Before watching the video for the second time, you might want to check students’ understanding of and/or pre-teach the following vocabulary items: hippie / hypocritical / mere / emission / tuck into / tastebud / culprit / footprint

1-minute challenge

Ask students to come up with 10 other pieces of information they learnt from the video. These can refer to anything: the content, the presenter, etc.

Reactions

Put students into pairs and ask them to discuss if they would try being a weekday vegetarian. Conduct open-class feedback at the end of the activity and see if there are any people who would take the challenge and go weekday veggie. If they agree to do so, make sure you get back to this in another lesson and ask for feedback.

Extra

For more information, you can use the “Dig Deeper” section that contains multiple additional resources to explore.