Cultural Lessons--The Amish

My English Classes tend to focus on Pennsylvania as a point of reference for everything. Since I am Pennsylvanian, and forever proud of it, I make sure to present issues about my state's history and culture every chance I get. I usually spend a few lessons describing Erie (using simple present to talk about what it is like and the simple past to talk about a trip someone took to my city.) Typical homework assignments after these texts are for the students to present their city and then to talk about one of their last vacations and what they did.

Tomorrow marks my first attempt at teaching about the Amish. I think this will prove to be very interesting as the text I chose (which I grabbed from VOA News, except I cut out TONS and TONS of stuff) uses both the simple present and past and has a few simple comprehension questions, as well as a few open ended questions. Example: Why do the Amish traditionally have so many children? I'm using this article as an example of how to put together a presentation about a specific topic since next week I am having my students give 5 minute presentations in front of the class about a topic of their choice! They are already petrified, but I am going to be giving them a big pep talk today about how to handle presentations in another language.

Click here for a copy of my pdf!