cafe73 - Café pédagogique

Upper intermediate and advanced students will enjoy discovering and discussing the rights
and privilege of the EU citizen through this webquest in English designed by our Polish
colleague Bozena Stepien and based on several pages of the official EU site. Too many
students don't have a hint of what's in those pages : this webquest is an excellent opportunity
to invite them to get familiar with the EU from a citizen's point of view.
http://republika.pl/european2005/rights_and_privileges_of_the_eu_.htm
- What's in a name?
Discover this surprising article from the New York Times : "And if It's a Boy, Will It Be
Lleh?", By Jennifer Lee, May 19, 2006. The article is short and easy to understand, the lesson
plan " Exploring The History of Names Through Creative Writing" can be useful.
- article: http://www.nytimes.com/learning/teachers/featured_articles/20060519friday.html
- lesson plan: http://www.nytimes.com/learning/teachers/lessons/20060519friday.html
Suggestion to start your lesson:
- you can use the title "And if It's a Boy, Will It Be Lleh?" or an extract from the article : " In
1999, there were only eight newborn American girls named Nevaeh. Last year, it was the
70th-most-popular name for baby girls, ahead of Sara, Vanessa and Amanda." to see if the
students will notice that those two names are just Hell and Heaven spelt backwards.
- or you can start with a brainstorming about the most popular names and why parents choose
them.
Then the students will read the text and answer questions like those suggested in the lesson,
then go on to the meaning of their own name, or to a discussion about how much freedom
parents should have to choose the name of their child.
to go on with this topic, have a look at this British article from Junior Magazine ( "the world's
most famous parenting magazine") which gives useful advices to future parents about how to
choose a name and what mistakes to avoid.
http://www.juniormagazine.co.uk/module-pagesetter-viewpub-tid-5-pid-91.html
and you can then go on with this article on a blog (with several comments) comparing the law
about giving names in different countries.
http://thebabynamewizard.ivillage.com/parenting/archives/2004/11/my_baby_my_name_choi
ce_or_not.html
- Anti-social behaviour
Weekenders from BBC Learning is about anti-social behaviour in the UK. You can download
the MP3 audio file and the transcript of the program. Remember that it is a program for adults
learning English : the program is rather long, the main ideas are reformulated by a different
person and the vocabulary said by a male and a female voice is explained in English in the
middle of the program. there are also questions imbedded in the programme to encourage the
listener to concentrate on a part of the speech.
If you plan to use it in class, it'll need some editing, but it'll be a good starter for a discussion
with upper intermediate students.
http://www.bbclearningenglish.com/radio/specials/1412_weekender/
Dossier spécial : Activités pour la fin de l'année