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Activities for classroom use

October 17th - International Day for the Eradication of Poverty

Elementary and above

British and American English

The aim of this lesson is to encourage your students to think about and discuss real-world issues. The lesson, which focuses on the poverty in the world, helps students develop their communication skills as well as their critical thinking skills.

Background

The concept of 'poverty' is very often associated with things and events seemingly unrelated to us and the way we live. Poverty then becomes 'an act of God', something which individuals and governments can do nothing about because you are born poor or not poor just by chance. Under this light, it is generally assumed that some people, regions and countries are luckier than others. This is, of course, a rather limited world view.

According to the United Nations, half the world, nearly 3 billion people, live on less than 2 dollars a day, which is one of the criteria used by the United Nations and other institutions to draw the line between the 'haves' and the 'have nots'. The wealth of the world's richest three people combined is more than the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the poorest 48 nations (i.e.: a quarter of the world's countries).

Download and print out the teacher's notes and one copy of the worksheet for each student.

Elementary to Pre-intermediate

Teacher's Notes (PDF, 35 KB)
Worksheet (PDF, 36 KB)

Intermediate and above

Teacher's Notes(PDF, 38 KB)
Worksheet (PDF, 33 KB)

Author

Ricardo Sampedro

Related title

Global Issues

Related teacher's site

Global Issues

Source

Oxford Teacher's Club - http://www.oup.com/elt/teachersclub/articles/