A lesson about POVERTY

Lesson outline

The students were studying a chapter from their textbook entitled: "Hunger and Poverty Worldwide". I decided for my speaking lesson to get them to talk about two things:

a) What will they do to fight poverty?
b) Why they will do it

My initial idea was to give people (and my students) a voice, a place to share and see other people's ideas about how to fight poverty. I thought if people uploaded a short video explaining what they were doing and why, it could be a way to raise money and that this could then be turned into KIVA loans.

I introduced the KIVA website to the students and showed them that I had personally donated $25 to someone through this website. I told them that I needed their help in making more loans and that I wanted to create a website (see image above) which allowed people to share with others (through a short video) - what they were doing to fight poverty and why they were doing it.

I asked my students to make a short video clip, which would show as high school students, what they could realistically do now to help in the fight against poverty. They first brainstormed some ideas and then set about writing down what they would say and do. It ended up being a two-lesson project but eventually the students produced their videos in pairs and came up with some good ideas.

After shooting their video clip, I made them make a wall display (see below) and choose a KIVA person or group that they would like to make a $25 loan to.

Since this lesson, I have found the following website http://freerice.com , which I plan to use with my students as a 5 minute starter to each lesson. I have created groups for each of my classes and hope to inject some competitive spirit into my lessons through this fun game.