Earth Day

In honor of Earth Day, I taught an environment-themed lesson during the week leading up to April 22nd. I can easily say that it was one of the most successful lessons that I've taught thus far. It worked well for all my levels. With my advanced students, I threw in words like “global warming” and “natural resources” as I went through the PowerPoint, and they got to show off their impressive vocabularies during the poster making and presentations. Even my lowest level classes got the underlying message and were excited to present their posters, likely for the artistic rather than English content – but hey, at least they were speaking!

I spent the first 10 minutes of class introducing the topic through many vivid pictures of environmental issues. Throughout the PowerPoint, I asked students questions like “Why is the growing population a problem for the environment” or “What are some examples of things that you can recycle?” From what I can tell, Koreans are extremely environmentally conscious, as least more so than Americans. Thanks to their obscenely complicated recycling system, even my lowest level students knew words like trash, plastic, metal, recycle, etc. Needless to say, I was impressed.

Next, the class worked on a “Decomposition Activity,” in which I presented pictures of 6 items (food waste, plastic bags, aluminum cans, plastic bottles, glass bottles, and styrofoam) and asked the students to guess how long it would take for those items to decompose. During class, I drew a timeline on the chalkboard and put tape on the back of the pictures. Then, I distributed them to random students and asked them place the pictures where they think the items belonged on the timeline. Once those students finished, I had the class direct me in English to switch the pictures around, as needed, and then I revealed the correct order of the items (as listed above).

After that, students worked in pairs to create advocacy posters, based on a picture that they randomly chose. I used 8 different pictures in total and each picture depicted a different environmental problem. I asked the students to think about what the problem was, how it was created, and what people can do to help. Then, I instructed the students to answer these questions in sentence form, write them somewhere on their poster, and then draw an image that either depicts a possible solution to the problem or can teach people about the problem.

In every class, students asked questions when they needed help thinking of the proper English word. This was a great activity for students to learn new vocabulary words like fossil fuels, pesticide, public transportation, etc. Finally, students were asked to present their posters to the class. I was overwhelmingly pleased by the final product. Their posters were insightful, moving, and creative. I truly wish that I could post all of them. But here are some of the highlights, categorized by picture topic.

1. Traffic Congestion

Matching couple shirts!

2. Deforestation

Trees are bleeding.

Such a powerful message

3. Plastic Bag Accumulation

The world is in our hands.

Charge 1000 won (about $1) for each bag.

4. Overhunting of Sharks

Legislate laws against catching sharks

Go vegetarian.

5. Air Pollution

Simple, yet very effective

6. Water Pollution

Aww, poor Ariel!

Africa needs clean water but America has lots of it. A little colonial and Western-centric dontcha think?

Poop is the source of dirty water.

7. Pesticide Overuse

Pesticide = Poison

Use poop!

8. Melting Ice Caps

OH NO!

Adorable polar bears

SO SAD. BUT SO TRUE (esp in Korea).

Koreans love their air masks. Be it to safeguard themselves from yellow dust, swine flu, or the common cold, Koreans wear them out in public without thinking twice. Naturally, they made an appearance on several posters, as well. Don't know how effective they are. But students like to think that they can magically protect wearers from pollution and disease.

Last, but not least, I leave you with this gem. Surely it isn't the most insightful poster, but it may reign supreme in the most entertaining category. First, notice the adorable polar bears who are not hungry and enjoy ice-fishing for fun. Now shift your attention over to the penguins. Since when do penguins fall under the marsupial category?! I'm not exactly sure why, but I find this photo so hilarious. My students never run out of ways to keep me entertained.