Language Resident: Katherine Pérez Gutiérrez 

Class theme/topic discussed : Lifestyles & Minimalism

Goal of the class 

  • To understand information different lifestyles and their relation with culture and language.
  • To reflect and contrast on the long-term effects and consequences of specific lifestyles

Class structure

  • Warm-up:  Students read the word minimalism on the slide and have a couple of minutes to think about what comes to their minds when they see the word. They look up a picture that represents their interpretation of minimalism and share it in breakout rooms. 
  • Activity 1: Students watch a couple of videos on minimalism to check if their idea of minimalism is correct 
  • Activity 2: Students see a small survey on minimalist lifestyle and as a class we choose three main questions: Are you a minimalist person? Do you know anyone who lives a minimalist life? Would you be able to live such kind of life?
  • Activity 3: Minimalist challenge. Students have 5 minutes to think about 15 items in their room/house that they could throw away within the next 5 minutes. Students also make a top 5 list of things they could never get rid of. In small breakout rooms they share their lists and compare.
  • Activity 4: Students decide to change their lifestyle. Taking into account different lifestyles, minimalist included, students discuss the benefits of some of them. They have to find a lifestyle that suits them the best and come up with a plan as to how they will implement that on their daily life from now on.
  • Extra activity: On a google slides presentation, students see pictures of 11 different households and their fridges. These people are from all over the world so students have to discuss 1) Where do they think they are from, 2) What kind of lifestyle they think they have by looking at their fridges. 

Resources used

Reflection: What worked/did not work? How can it be improved?

  • The class worked great for both levels. For the intermediate class the first video was slightly faster but, because it was one of the first activities, it worked well anyways. We did the extra activity as well in both classes, students enjoyed working with the pictures a lot more than the discussion-based activities this time, so it would have been nicer to have spent more time on it.