Skipp Class

I know that the first development goal is eradicate extreme poverty but this entry is about ensuring environment sustainability.

Recently I was engaged in a conversation with a friend about recycling paper. Into this conversation my friend told me about a video called the story of stuff. This video can be accessed from www.storyofstuff.com

It is a twenty minute video that has several topics in it that can facilitate conversation. I have included a copy of a teaser for this short film on the website but I definitely recommend that you take twenty minutes to check out the video and maybe even use part of it in your classes to facilitate conversation. Below the teaser is a very short list of conversations that this film can encourage.

1. Break the video down into the 6 parts of the video and talk about one part of the materials economy per class (include the intro as part of extraction and give another way its own segment).
2. Ask the students the following questions, “Do you think this is true?”; “What are your thoughts on this video?”; “Have you experienced any of the steps personally in the material economy (with the exception of consumption)?
3. For the final step of another way have the students come up with ways that they can cut down on their consumption and how they can be more environmentally friendly.
4. Make it into a jigsaw project and assign different people different areas of the materials economy to look up. At the top of the “Story of Stuff” film on the website they can click the various tabs at the top to get more information about the different areas. At the end have the students share with each other what they found.

These are just a couple of quick ideas that you can do with this video. Be creative and hopefully you will encourage your ESOL students to impact the planet in a positive way.