Overview:
How do you celebrate Earth Day in a country where nature is revered on a daily basis?
I teach English in Kinmen, Taiwan, a rural island home to beautiful natural beaches, large evergreen pastures of land, tropical birds, and lots of cows—lots and lots of cows. Literally a million miles from celebrating Earth Day the way the United States honors nature. Kinmen’s nature is very well preserved, and when I want to get away from the stresses of the classroom, I am just a five-minute bike ride away from one of its many national parks.
Living here, I have to admit that I had totally forgotten about Earth Day, but living in a community where outdoor life is coveted on the regular and also one that religiously recycles all of its garbage, I hope you can understand why every day is like “Earth Day” for me, and not a tokenized day to teach lessons on why we should take care of the Earth. Nevertheless, it was actually a complete coincidence that the day I chose to teach outdoor vocabulary outside also happened to be Earth Day!
Every day is Earth Day
My school’s campus is gorgeous, so on the bright sunshine-y day (that came after one whole month of constant rain), I taught class outside. Remember that I teach English language learners where English is a “foreign” language, not a “second” language, so my lesson was very simple. I taught the sentence pattern, “What do you see?” and “I see a _,” to help students verbalize the many beautiful things we see daily around our school campus. I chose tree, flower, bird, bush, grass, and rock vocabulary words.
What do you see?
My students and I calmly walked around campus through our many nature trails, and I let the conversation flow genuinely. As we walked, I would ask, “What do you see?” My more advanced students would describe the things that they saw using simple adjectives.
Lastly, I gave my students a worksheet with about five or six squares where they had to draw what they saw. They had to write the vocabulary word for every box in which they drew a picture. So, for instance, if they drew a flower, they needed to write “flower”. To further encourage language usage, before the end of class, the students had to read each vocabulary word within a sentence before they could leave.
The simplicity of nature
This activity was super easy and simple, and I think my students really enjoyed it. It is also a great lesson plan that can cater to multiple intelligences in the classroom, as students can learn through drawing, speaking, seeing, or writing.
