missteacher

Hi There!

Valentine's day is a good opportunity to talk about love with the pupils in a funny way.
I chose to do it only with my older pupils (14 year-olds) because I didn't have many ideas for the lower levels. Making cards is fun but I didn't feel like doing it. I find it hard to make the topic linguistically interesting; I mean it's hard to practise the language with such a topic, especially with beginners. There's not much to say.

That's why I created a lesson plan for my older pupils, which could also fits High School students.
I chose to introduce love with the theme of advice: should / if I were you, I would...
Pupils are confronted to love problems which they have to solve. The first one is introduced through an oral comprehension, from this page. You can capture the sound with a software such as audacity.

Pupils will have to give advice to Alice, whose heart is broken.

Then I chose to work on an extract from "Friends".

Did I tell you how much I love the series Friends???? I own the 10 seasons (big fan!) and I find them great to watch and use in class. The situations are often interesting to describe, as well as the themes and the characters' actions. I really would like to work more with Friends, to create lesson plans based on the series, to make a list of all the themes/scenes which are worth using in class.
Creating a new blog would be great for that but I'm afraid I just don't have the time.

Anyway, Friends are full of scenes about love, argument, cheating, relationships and so on.
Take season 3, episode 8 in which Chandler learns that Janice is cheating on him. The episode shows several scenes in which the characters questions their feelings and wonder what to do. Those are perfect scene to ask the pupils: what would you do? What should he do?

I then want to finish the lesson plan with dialogues made up by the pupils (see the list of themes in the file) in which they will have to give advice.

Here's the lesson plan:3e_LV2_-love_problems.pdf

Yesterday was a special day. One of my friends got married. The first one. The first wedding I was invited to not as the daughter of Mr and Mrs X but as "me"!!!
I guess it was the first wedding of a long list to come.

It was all the more special that it was a bilingual wedding. French-American. What a nice association ! The groom was lovely (as well as his American friends!). I particularly like bilingual weddings. They are symbols of tolerance and unconditional love. They are the proof that we're living in a world without (almost) no borders. They are the proof that one can go beyond one's prejudices to discover the truth inside each of us.

I hope to be part of this symbol one day. Because weddings are not only made to party and feel good about yourself. They are also made to build up memories of love and bonding, memories to be remembered for generations, symbols to be looked at with deep respect and understanding.