Help the Bees, Grow the Rainbow

Springtime is here! I've already blogged about how to have your students review the parts of a flower, and about how to help them make vocabulary gardens to decorate your class.  I am partially inspired by the season, but also by the month!
April is home to Earth day and the 22nd is fast approaching. Have you taken any time to address ways we should care about Earth for Earth day? There are so many aspects to cover. We can talk about recycling, water conservation, avoiding plastic, and so much more. However, in many cases, our students hear these things over and over, how do we introduce them to something new?

Here's an easy way There are some great news articles out there on the issue with bees. BreakingNewsEnglish has a lesson set up to go with an article about the disappearing bees.

Who cares about bees? Well, we all should! It is well documented that bees pollinate about 33% of our food! Disappearing bees means our food is disappearing as well. What kind of food is impacted? Berries, burgers, beer, and coffee are all on the hit list. If the idea of not having coffee isn't scary, then know that they also affect about $15 billion worth of US crops!

How to incorporate this into your class?


If you teach younger students Pollinator has some great activities! I think the vocabulary is too intense for most younger EFL students, but you could adjust them pretty easily. Plus their snacks look delicious!

I would use the snacks to talk about the importance of bees. Then, I would see if I could get us permission to plant seedles in our school. There's lots of grammar to be practiced! Practice comparatives and superlatives by seeing who can throw is the highest, or closest. Practice prepositions: over the slide, beside the fence, etc. See if you can practice numbers and colors!

Seedles are PERFECT for the classroom as they are completely non-toxic. This means they are 100% safe to touch! Basically, your students can play with them without you stressing about them being exposed to chemicals. This year, instead of worrying about how to celebrate Easter without leaving out the non-religious children, celebrate spring and making the world a better place by throwing seedles around!

If you can't afford to support their project by buying the seedles, you can go to their kickstarter page. There they give you the recipe to make your own seedballs. You could make them as a class, but then I think you would need a LOT of  parents helping.

Now if you're thinking, "Wow this is a great project, but I am the lesson seems way too easy for my students." That's fine. I have another idea for you :) Right now I teach Business English, so I would probably do the following:

Step 1: Read an article about Seedles.

Step 2: Discuss the goals, and the market.

Step 3. Design a marketing campaign to help Seedle meet their goal. Could we approach larger food companies with hopes of helping save their reputation? Meet with local farmers about helping their crop? How would they use social media? etc.

Step 4. Watch the video

Step 5. Discuss the video. What market did they try to reach. Would you support them? Why or why not?

Step 6. Come up with your OWN solution to a problem plaguing the Earth and pitch it to the class! 

If you don't think this lesson plan would work for you, that's fine! In fact, you can join the "Grow the Rainbow Campaign" and sign up as a classroom champion. If the kickstarter goes through you will receive a PERSONALIZED curriculum for your class!

• If you are teaching university students about Thoreau and sustainability, I am sure they can find a way to work with that. 
• If you want to look at the business aspect, they can help you with their experiences! 
• If you teach little ones they have some  art and theater based ideas where everyone would play a part in a classroom reenactment of pollination. Of course they would also get some new vocabulary!
• If you teach high school students, you will receive a task based physical science lesson.

Ei Ei, one of the people heading the Kickstarter, used to manage an environmental education program in the San Francisco public schools, so she is well experienced in tailoring environmental curriculum to be integrated into your classroom. This way you can be sure that the lesson is designed for your class, rather than receiving cookie cutter lesson you have to adjust to fit your class.

Can't wait to start talking about bees with your class? Tomorrow I'll be posting about different figures of speech with bees. In the meantime I'd encourage you to help grow a rainbow! Even if it is just by liking their FaceBook page.

Here's another Water Freebie!

Since I just posted about the UNICEF mobile site to donatewater and keep students off their phone, I thought I should share this great ebook about different ways to get your students thinking about water.

 The book is designed for teachers in London: however, most of the activities can easily be adapted to the city where you teach. Some of them are obviously English related: write a story about a river in the shape of a river for example, but other activities that aren’t English based are great examples of tasks you can use for task based lessons.

 Keep in mind that Earth Day is coming up in the spring, so if you are planning to incorporate anything about water conservation into a lesson later, it may be best to introduce something water related now. This way when you teach water conservation later, they will be able to refer to the earlier lesson.

For example, students can animate the water cycle (MEW010) and focus on a specific tense. Alternatively, students can focus on the use of transition words.

There’s another activity where students go online and try to track specifically where the water in the school (or house) comes from. Then they track the path via the pipes to their house. This should give them appreciation of how far their water travels.

A lot of science experiments are great for getting students to talk to one another, write down their thoughts and then share them with the class. For instance, you can have students make a water filter and try to filter water you have made dirty. Later they can present their filter to the class and hypothesize what could have made it better.

Was every mission great? No. A few flat out would not work in my area. For example. When they suggest counting rain drops left on cardboard, they are envisioning a rain that doesn't come down in sheets the way it usually does in Culiacan. Bu that's fine! There are more than enough suggestions, so I can ignore the ones that don't work for my class and adapt the ones that may.

The book overall is well written. It is NOT written specifically for an English Language Teacher, but if you are like me, then you are used to adapting lessons all the time! Plus, this book has super cute illustrations by Tom Morgan Jones. 

There's also a version of the book for students without all the teacher's notes.

I saved the best part for last! There's a related website MissionExplore.net
At this site teachers (or students) can sign up and start earning basges! It is all in Beta right now, but it looks like LOTS of fun and a great way to keep students engaged and maybe get the competitive ones really working hard!

Keep students off their phones, and help a child access water at the same time!

I love technology. I often have lessons where my students use their cell phone or tablet in class. I think there are a lot of apps that give us the ability to really make students excited about class. However, not every lesson uses cell phones!

Do your students always pick up their phones in the middle of class? They want to be sure they don't have a new tweet, or see what their favorite celebrity is saying on Facebook. Sure, sometimes you can make it a teaching moment, but usually it just distracts them, the rest of the class and you!

Here's an idea. You can make not touching their phone into a game AND teach them about the importance of water.


UNICEF, with their sponsor Giorgio Armani Fragrances, is helping us realize that we don't need to be on the phone all the time.

To participate simply get on your phone and visit http://tap.unicefusa.org/. It will give you specific directions. Basically: 1. Set your phone down. 2. Don't touch it.

If you can make it for ten minutes without touching your phone, they donate a day of clean water to a child in need.

While you are not touching your phone the app keeps a timer letting you know how long you have gone. It also gives you random facts about water, or the Tap Project.

OK, that's nice, but what makes it a game?

It gives you specific goals. Compares your "score" to the score of other users, and showing you your own personal records! This is an easy and fun way to keep your students from touching their phones.

I won't use it every class, but it would be fun to see how much water a class could "earn" by simply staying off their cell phones during class time. If you have a lesson on resources or water this is pretty much the perfect addition to your class.

While the app is up and running now, the fine print suggests that only minutes done between March 1st and March 31st will count. Therefore, if you are planning on making this into a lesson, you have about a week to plan something amazing.

There are a few things to be aware of: It WILL drain battery and use internet, so be sure they have an awesome plan, or are tapping into a local WIFI source.

Try it out and let me know what you think! If you are looking for other water saving activities check out this post about MissionExplore!