By Fatime Jadallah, EFA Teacher-Organiser and Volunteer Coordinator Healthcare and the NHS are a recurring topic in our classes. When (and if) I revisit it with a new class, something new always comes out of it. This time, my Wednesday morning class compared their own healthcare system with the NHS (most of the students are […]
Category: Participatory Pedagogy
By Robin Sivapalan, EFA teacher-organiser and Brent hub lead A key word that EFA teachers Becky and Dermot identified in research on our participatory ESOL pedagogy is stance. Through valuing each other’s experiences and bringing together diverse perspectives, and at the same time critically evaluating systems and ideologies, our students become more able to take conscious stances. […]
By Anne McConnell, EFA Teacher-Organiser + Lambeth hub lead “A Strike Day to Beat All Strike Days” – This little article appeared in the free London METRO newspaper on Monday, 30 January. The closer look at the current strike action that we took during a recent ESOL class was sparked by one student asking, “Why […]
In four of his classes this week, our Brent hub lead, Robin, got students writing Haikus. For each group, it served a different function. Check out Robin’s reflections on the exercise below: For the Domestic Workers (members of one one our brilliant partners), it was primarily a mode of metaphorical thinking and creativity, a stand-alone […]
Shared by EFA teacher-organiser Dermot Bryers, Pedagogy Lead In class, we’ve been looking at EFA, Citizens UK, and the Living Wage campaign in recent weeks. Students compared the two organisations using their knowledge from previous lessons and the projects’ respective websites in terms of: It produced lots of interesting discussion and emerging language. The emerging […]
The following blog post was written by EFA teacher-organiser Anne McConnell, who leads our Hackney and Tower Hamlets hubs and teaches in Greenwich. Following on from the solidarity Black London walk and demonstration with the Voice of Domestic Workers, I shared my experience with my Greenwich Beginner class: Students responded to the photo and slogans […]
In one of our classes recently several students spoke about health problems in the check in at the beginning of our class, so health as a topic seemed a good one to discuss. We talked about how our health is, what we do to look after our health and also about the NHS. Talking about […]
Shared by EFA teacher-organiser Anne, who leads our Hackney & Tower Hamlets hubs: “What’s in the news?” This is not an uncommon question in my classes, to check in with each other at the beginning of a session. It also quickly becomes apparent who are the news listeners and who are not. I don’t allow […]
Shared by EFA teacher-organiser Robin, who leads our Brent hub: In our Brent hub, we’ve been sifting through the various issues our students face in education and employment. Quite often the issues are individual and we try and support each other to make headway. An issue like “I’m unconfident in English” can be subjective; it […]
In a recent advanced ESOL class in Hackney, led by EFA teacher Anne, the group worked together to read a Telegraph article with the goal of gleaning the ‘gist’ of its contents and being able to produce a quick, accurate summary of the story. The class aimed to pull the key message out of the […]
English for Action 