S6E10: Three Activities for Raising Climate Awareness with Harry Waters

Renewable English Founder Harry Waters shares three fun and simple activities we can use in our face-to-face classes to help raise students' awareness about Climate Change.

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Key talking points

• How we can connect the activities to the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

• Activity 1: A Climate Board Race to engage learners in reviewing language

• Activity 2: A Snowball 'fight’ as a way to engage learners in writing and sharing Planet Pledges

• Activity 3: A Two-Minute Tweet to help learners connect everyday topics to the environment.

To learn more about Harry's work, including useful teaching resources and lesson plans, go to Renewable English.

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To watch this episode with closed captions, click on the video below or scroll down to view the transcript.

References

• To explore the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, go to: https://www.undp.org/

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Transcript

00:00:00:01 - 00:00:25:02

Laura

TESOL Pop Season six Episode ten Hello and welcome to TESOL Pop the mini podcast for busy teachers. My name is Laura and joining me today to share activities that help raise awareness about the environment is Harry Waters. Harry is the founder of Renewable English, a climate Crisis Awareness English course and is based in the south of Spain. Alongside his duties as chief classes, chap and lead lesson lad.

00:00:25:04 - 00:00:43:05

Laura

He also does a lot of teacher training and speaks at conferences and climate summits across the globe to bring environmental sustainability into global curricula. In his spare time, he writes materials for global publishers and was lovely second-hand shirts like the one you see today. Welcome to the show, Harry. Thank you very much for your time.

00:00:43:11 - 00:00:45:13

Harry

Oh, it's a pleasure. Thank you for having me.

00:00:45:15 - 00:01:14:22

Laura

In today's episode, we're talking about activities that we can use to help raise students awareness about the environment and the climate crisis, as well as how we can adapt these activities to different teaching contexts. Harry will also share tips on how we can communicate the value of such activities and integrate environmental literacy into existing curricula. As with many TESOL Pop episodes, today's topic is relevant to many teaching contexts whether you teach English language or other subjects, face to face or online.

00:01:15:03 - 00:01:31:11

Laura

So why not continue the conversation by sharing today's episode with your teaching community? A lot of our teachers may be working with existing curricula in lesson plans. How can they create buy-in from their stakeholders to make space for the activities that you're going to propose today?

00:01:31:13 - 00:02:00:03

Harry

Well, that's a big question. I like it. Honestly, there shouldn't be a need for a buy-in, but that's the case with a lot of things, I know. The future of our planet, future generations. Where are they going to live? But that said, there is, of course, a need for buy-in especially in education. And one of the great things about these ideas and environmental ideas in general is they can be a wonderful link to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

00:02:00:05 - 00:02:19:15

Harry

So they don't take away time from all of that important exam preparation that has to be done, but it can still be linked to something tangible. And I hate to say it, but something that you can sell to your stakeholders or whoever you're trying to to get to buy-in.

00:02:19:17 - 00:02:46:00

Laura

I agree with you that this shouldn't be something that we have to create buy-in from. But I think when teachers time and also thinking about managers as well and who they report to, they can often find themselves being pulled in different directions. And the link to the UN sustainability goals is a wonderful thing that schools can be really proud of and really promote and engage not just students but the whole community around the school in conversation about.

00:02:46:00 - 00:03:01:05

Harry

Exactly that! And yeah, the SDGs (Sustatinable Development Goals) are something that are visible everywhere. Everybody knows a lot of people know what they are. And despite their there may be failings in general, they are a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful educational framework.

00:03:01:07 - 00:03:14:08

Laura

Thanks very much for starting his off with that. I think this is a really good springboard now. So for listeners like, oh, I'm not sure if I can make time for these activities, you're now giving them a really good reason to get buy-in to make space for them. So which activity would you like to kick off today with?

00:03:14:10 - 00:03:44:17

Harry

Oh, I'm going to start with one of my favorite old time games, and I call it an Environmental Board Race and it's basically a regular board race, but using environmental words. So I like to get my whiteboard and on one side I write vertically an environmental word, let's say climate. I'll write climate on one side of the board and then I'll write climate on the other side of the board.

00:03:44:19 - 00:04:24:00

Harry

The class will be split into two teams. And then what they need to do is run it to the board one by one and fill in a word for each letter. So starting with C and then continuing throughout, there are loads of ways you can adapt this to different classes. You can do this with your youngest kids and you maybe you've just an animals and you can just make animals the topic or for a higher level classes, you could focus it more on environmental vocabulary or something along those lines and you can then take it a step further and use the words that you've collected and put them into a story.

00:04:24:02 - 00:04:28:15

Harry

Maybe you can write an environmental story using the words that you've got from climate.

00:04:28:19 - 00:04:45:20

Laura

This is a really lovely idea to kind of recycle language and get that is reviewing language. And like you said, it could be a brainstorming as a springboard to a creative project. What's the most memorable words that students have come up with when you've been playing this Environmental Board Race?

00:04:45:22 - 00:05:14:08

Harry

I think my favorite one actually ever came up. And this it's very strange to say this, but I was teaching a First Certificate class and we got to the E and they wrote Environmentally-Friendly and for me, suddenly my challenge was whoever could write the longest word got the points. And that student had gone from thinking Environment and I thought, I need to make it longer.

00:05:14:08 - 00:05:38:16

Harry

So it turned into Environmentally. And then as soon as Environmentally came into the head, they were all Environmentally-Friendly. I've heard that before. So just, just seeing that kind of process in the students and and it's also something that is really useful to different parts of the First Certificate exam. You can find those words in there. You can find them turning using adverbs and you can just see the wheels turning.

00:05:38:16 - 00:05:42:22

Harry

So for me, Environmentally-Friendly was probably my favorite.

00:05:42:24 - 00:06:02:00

Laura

That's a brilliant memory to have of that activity. This is a really good activity you got started with, and such an easy one that teachers can already adapt if they're not already doing board races of some sort. I think a lot of teachers do. This is one that can just make a simple switch to make a slight change to bring the environment into the classroom.

00:06:02:02 - 00:06:05:06

Laura

So with that, what's your next one? How are you going to top this?

00:06:05:07 - 00:06:33:08

Harry

They get better, don’t worry, they get better. The next one I like to call Snowballs. Because I live in Seville where it's currently very, very hot. So the idea of seeing a snowball at the moment is my dream. It’s also a great way of reusing scrap paper. So when we get our scrap paper, we go to our recycling box and from that we take some pieces out and on the back of our scrap paper we write a Planet Pledge.

00:06:33:12 - 00:07:01:15

Harry

So I will stop driving to school. I'll start walking to school so it can start with something very simple like that. I will stop eating meat on Mondays and Thursdays. Any idea like that we can put on a piece of paper. Then you screw up the piece of paper. And what I do in my classes is I get my students to throw it at the teacher- being me.

00:07:01:17 - 00:07:25:21

Harry

No, something wonderful. When the students are able to throw something at you, they get very involved, they get very excited. And then I ask them to go and collect a snowball. They have to find that snowball, open that snowball and go around the class asking what their fellow students’ Planet Pledge was. So do you take too many showers?

00:07:25:23 - 00:07:52:02

Harry

Do you eat meat only on Mondays and Thursdays? Oh yes, I do. That's my Planet Pledge. And then with that I stick it to the wall. So they've got their Planet Pledge that they've made this idea that they've had, no matter how simple, no matter how small. And it's there on the wall. And when they walk out of the classroom, they can look at it and you can check back on any moment and you can say, Hey, Steve, did you have meat for dinner yesterday?

00:07:52:02 - 00:08:09:22

Harry

Yesterday was Thursday. How are you going with that? Oh, well, you know, it did have meat yesterday, but I'm not going to have meat today, so I changed it around. I'm finding it difficult on Mondays and Thursdays, but I am doing two days a week, so it's a way of keeping it there in our students’ faces.

00:08:09:24 - 00:08:33:10

Laura

That's a wonderful way of like making it part of that classroom environment. These resources that you can refer back to and recycle and make part of other conversations and obviously other things you can do with the students. When you're talking about the snowball fight. The last time I did a snowball fight in my young learner classes, another teacher actually came in with his class and like Snowball attacked us.

00:08:33:11 - 00:08:49:04

Laura

We were unprepared, unaware, and they literally just came in and threw all these snowballs at us, these paper snowballs. And then for the rest of the lesson, me and my students were like, Right, how can I get them back? Like we need to plot carefully. But while you were mentioning that in describing that activity, that's a wonderful memory I have.

00:08:49:04 - 00:09:00:04

Laura

And like you say, the students get so involved and so excited to be part of that and then that can really help generate that interest into the topic of what's written on those pieces of paper.

00:09:00:06 - 00:09:08:23

Harry

Exactly. And you get to see this eclectic mix of different views. And you’re encouraging recycling as well, which can't be a bad thing.

00:09:09:00 - 00:09:18:24

Laura

Yeah, absolutely. So with that then we've talked about the Board Race, the Snowball fight. You've got a third one in your pocket to share. What would you like to talk about next?

00:09:18:24 - 00:09:46:10

Harry

I have now this one is probably my favorite with teens ish and also young adults, and that's a Two-Minute Tweet. So at the end of my lesson, whatever I've been teaching about, I don't only teach about the environment, by the way, I do teach about other things. I just connect it to the environment in some way because everything is connected to the environment.

00:09:46:12 - 00:10:11:03

Harry

So at the end of my lesson, let's say I've talked about sport, which I will be doing in future classes., obviously. At the end of the lesson, I say to my students, okay, you have two minutes. I want you to write a tweet or up to 280 characters about how sport is connected to the climate or how the climate is connected to sport.

00:10:11:05 - 00:10:35:22

Harry

So they may say something along the lines of sport affects the climate because there is lots of transport to matches, so there's a lot of CO2 that is released and the climate affects sport because it's getting hotter. So now they have to have water breaks or there is a weather incident. So there may be a storm or something like that.

00:10:35:22 - 00:10:57:16

Harry

So these ideas that students can think about and get into and it's just a Two-Minute Tweet. So I have 2 minutes. They have 280 characters, you know, saying go home and write an essay. No, you're just saying, look, we've got 2 minutes. Just write down the connections. And, you know, they have that moment of critical thinking and a great way to kind of join them together.

00:10:57:18 - 00:11:05:14

Laura

And do students actually tweet these on a social media platform or is it something they just write down or do you give them the choice.

00:11:05:16 - 00:11:26:03

Harry

They can if they want. I have had in the past one or two classes do it. It's rare, though. Usually it's just a way of getting them to write in their notebook. You just call it a Tweet and they can draw a bird and they can surround it. They can make it look wonderful. But they have had students tweet from the class in the past.

00:11:26:05 - 00:11:39:02

Laura

I think it's lovely that you give them that choice because depending on if they want to engage in social media and how comfortable they feel with that, they can either just write it and share it with their classmates in the safe space of that classroom or put it on social media if they wish.

00:11:39:04 - 00:11:40:04

Harry

Exactly.

00:11:40:06 - 00:11:57:14

Laura

This is brilliant. These activities are so easy to integrate into the class. Like you said, they don't take too much time. But the fact that you're able to kind of integrate conversations about the environment is really powerful one. I'm sure that teachers are listening. They're thinking, Oh, you know what? I can adapt that other activity like bingo, that I play with my students.

00:11:57:16 - 00:12:18:08

Laura

Bingo is my favorite and it's my students favorite too, for my classes and how they can adapt existing activities to kind of integrate the environment. For teachers that are interested in learning more and integrating environmental literacy into their classes, what sort of resources or things can they do to kind of build this skill?

00:12:18:10 - 00:12:42:13

Harry

Okay. Now for me, there are there are two ways to go about this one way, and this is actually my favorite way of doing it, and that's to flip the classroom. Our teenage students know so much at the moment - some of my biggest heroes are teenage activists. These are people that I learn a lot from. They really help me a huge amount.

00:12:42:13 - 00:13:08:08

Harry

So giving that power over to your students, they can bring the environmental literacy and you listening to them and you learning from them will empower your students. So that's one way of doing it. The other way is going on to the plethora of materials that are out there. Obviously, Renewable English is the prime hot spot for the greatest environmental lesson plans out there and they’re completely free.

00:13:08:10 - 00:13:31:08

Harry

But there are so many other places, you know, ELT Sustainable, ELT Footprint has a lot of materials on there. All of the big publishers are coming out with free climate materials and places to get that. So there is so much out there, it can be difficult. But my first step would be listen to your students. And then from that, have a look around and see.

00:13:31:08 - 00:13:32:21

Harry

See what you can find.

00:13:32:23 - 00:13:54:13

Laura

That's brilliant. And I think also just talking to the teachers as well about what they're doing, you can really create a whole best practice sharing of activities, lesson plans, ideas, strategies, right? There's a lot power within the community of your school as it stands. Thank you so much, Harry, for packing so much value into this episode for sharing activities and recommendations.

00:13:54:18 - 00:14:01:16

Laura

You mentioned that Renewable English has free resources that teachers can download. Please could you tell us where we can find those?

00:14:01:18 - 00:14:17:17

Harry

You can find them on the elaborately named RenewableEnglish.com. It's all there. There are there are videos to go with classes so that pre-made classes which have worksheets as well. And we have live classes every other Friday.

00:14:17:19 - 00:14:40:00

Laura

You can also follow Harry on social media. Just look for the Renewable English handle wherever you are on social media to stay up-to-date with the latest materials and resources he’s creating. So if you have a question that you'd like us to answer or like Harry, you have a topic that you'd like to pitch an episode, then you can contact us via Instagram, Facebook or the website TESOLPop.com

00:14:40:02 - 00:14:53:07

Laura

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