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Prize-winners: Lesson Plan

Outcomes:

Learners practice extract meaning from an authentic text Phrases to describe a person's achievements Learners discuss and present a person who they think merits a prize for their achievements

Materials

Pictures: Print-outs of the four pictures to show the class.Text: Goldman prize-winners. One copy per student. Half the class get the text on Rudi, the other half the text on Ruth.Worksheet: Goldman prize-winners: One copy per student.

Please copy double-sided and save trees! The student materials fit onto two sheets of paper per student this way.

Level

A2 level of English and above

Time

1 hour and thirty minutes

www.eltsustainable.com where ELT gets eco-friendly

http://www.eltsustainable.com/

Stage Aim Procedure Timing in minutes

1 Lead-in to topic of the prize

Ask students if they have ever won a prize. Let them tell each other in pairs, and then tell the group.Then ask the class what famous people they know who have won prizes, e.g. Nelson Mandela won the Nobel peace prize, or a famous actor who won an Oscar.

10

2 Lead-in to two prize-winners

Show the pictures of Rudi and Ruth, and show pictures 3 and 4 which are linked to their prizes. Ask them to make three guesses as to what the prizes were for. Feedback ideas to the class.

5

3 Introduce the Goldman prize

Teacher reads the introduction to the Goldman Environment prize and students answer the following questions:

When was it started?What does it honour?Where do the winners come from?What is it sometimes known as?

Check the answers with the class.

10

3

Jigsaw Reading and Speaking: Find out about the recipients of the prize by reading a text and then asking someone for information from the text they read.

Put the class into 2 groups and give one group the text on Rudi and one group the text on Ruth. Students read their text and answer the 3 questions and match words to the definitions on the worksheet.

Put students in pairs with one member from each of the previous groups. They ask these questions to their partner about the person their partner has read about:What was the problem?What did he or she do?How successful were they?What new words did you learn?Students complete the missing information from the text they did not read.

15



4 Language focus: describing achievements

Tell the class which person you admire, e.g. 'I admire ….Ask a couple of students which of the people they most admire. Then ask them who they admire from other fields, e.g. sport, the media, or history.

Put the following phrases on the board and drill them:

I admire …... for the way he/she ….I think ….. particularly inspiring because...Their great achievement is …They deserve a prize for...

10

5Speaking and personalisation

In small groups students discuss four a few minutes people they admire and come up with a list of four or five people they admire most and why.

When they are ready, they present the people they admire to the class and say why they admire these people.

Teacher gives feedback on what they said well and corrects errors.

10

6Conclusion Ask students to give feedback as a class on the most

interesting things they have learnt and on the most useful vocabulary.

5



Description of the Goldman Environment Prize

Read this to the class so that they can answer the questions in stage 3 of the lesson plan.

The Goldman Environment Prize was started in 1996 by Richard and Rhoda Goldman. It aims to honour ordinary people who have taken extraordinary action to protect the environment. Each year an award of 150,000 Dollars is presented to a winner from each of the World's regions; Africa, Europe, Asia, Island nations, South and Central America and North America. The winners all work in different ways to protect the natural world, the different plants and animals within it, and work to promote a sustainable future. They have often worked at great personal risk to themselves. The Goldman Environment prize has come to be known as the 'Green Nobel Prize'.



Pictures

Both these people won a prize related to pictures 3 and 4. Make three guesses what the prize was for.

Rudi

Ruth



Picture 3

Picture 4



Rudi Putra, Indonesia

A biologist by training, Rudi Putra is stopping illegal palm oil plantations that are causing massive deforestation in northern Sumatra, protecting the habitat of the critically endangered Sumatran rhino.

What was the problem?

Indonesia’s rainforests are among the richest on the planet, housing 12 percent of the world’s known mammal species. Only half of the original forests remain standing today, due to an astonishingly high rate of deforestation—an estimated 2 million acres are lost every year.

The main cause of Indonesia’s rapid deforestation is the growing worldwide demand for palm oil. It is used as an additive in packaged foods such as cookies, cereal, potato chips, chocolate, margarine, baby formula, and canned soups, along with a variety of soaps and cosmetic products.

Almost 90 percent of the world’s palm oil is grown in Indonesia and Malaysia, and despite a current ban on cutting down rainforest in Indonesia signed by the president in 2011, much of the forest loss comes from illegal plantations that have forced their way into protected areas illegally.

As a high school student growing up in the Aceh region, Rudi Putra showed an early interest in nature and animals. He studied conservation biology and fell in love with the Sumatran rhino, the smallest—and the most critically endangered—member of the rhinoceros family.

He became an expert researcher and tracker, leading rhino protection teams on field expeditions to track down poachers. Putra realized that in addition to anti-poaching efforts, his work could not be complete without addressing a much larger threat rapidly outpacing conservation: habitat destruction from illegal palm oil plantations.

Further studies showed the importance of the forest for the 4 million people living near the protected area, who rely on the forestland for sustainable agriculture and water. The forests also provide much-needed protection from flooding, which has grown in frequency and severity in recent years. Putra began to see his work as not only protecting the rhinos and their habitat, but the people of the region as well.

What did he do?

With support from local communities, Putra approached local police directly to enforce land protection laws and shut down illegal palm oil plantations. He spoke of the hundreds of thousands of families who lost their homes and loved ones during the 2006 Aceh floods and their struggles to access clean drinking water.He also approached palm oil plantation owners and reminded them that their actions were against the law. After Putra showed them the boundaries marking conservation areas, some owners voluntarily shut down the plantations and gave the land back to the government so that Putra and his colleagues could conduct restoration work.

How successful was he?

Putra’s hard work resulted in the removal of more than 1,200 acres of illegal plantations from an Indonesian nature reserve. The rehabilitation of the rainforests after the clearance of the oil palm has recreated a critical wildlife corridor now used by elephants, tigers and orangutans for the first time in 12 years. The Sumatran rhino population in the area has also come back in the past decade.

In 2013, Putra organized an online petition to apply international pressure on the Indonesian government to enforce its own conservation laws. The petition got 1.4 million signatures.



Ruth Buendia

Overcoming a history of traumatic violence, Ruth Buendía united the Asháninka people in a powerful campaign against large-scale dams that would have once again uprooted indigenous communities still recovering from Peru’s civil war.


In 2010, the governments of Brazil and Peru signed an agreement that called for a series of large-scale hydroelectric dams in the Amazon. Under this agreement, most of the energy would be exported to Brazil. Few economic benefits would come back to local communities in Peru, whose ancestral territories would be flooded during construction.

Among the indigenous people living in the proposed construction site of the Pakitzapango dam along the Ene River are the Asháninka, who have made a home in the thickly forested “eyebrow of the jungle” practicing subsistence farming, hunting and fishing.

The energy agreement was pushed through without any input from the Asháninka, which broke the rules of the International Labor Organization’s (ILO) treaty—which Peru ratified in 2006—that requires governments to consult with indigenous communities on any development projects in their territory. What did she do?

Ruth Buendía came across news coverage of the bilateral energy agreement and the proposed Pakitzapango Dam. CARE’s requests to the Peruvian government for more information went unanswered, but it soon became clear that the massive dams would displace thousands of Asháninka. Buendía and her team at CARE began reaching out to Asháninka communities, raising awareness about the dam and its threats using digital simulations of how the valley would be flooded during construction. They organized a region-wide assembly and united the Asháninka in opposition to the dam.Buendía took the struggle to international leaders. She traveled to Washington DC as the representative of the Asháninka delegation and presented a report to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights about the impact of Peruvian energy development on her people.

How successful was she?

In December 2010, as a direct result of Buendía’s work, the Peruvian Ministry of Energy rejected a request from Pakitzapango Energy that would have allowed the dam to move forward. The following year, Odebrecht, the main shareholder in another dam, the Tambo 40, announced its withdrawal from the project, citing the need to respect the views of local communities.

With the Pakitzapango project tied up in court, Buendía is now working to firmly establish land rights for the Asháninka. She is developing a management plan for the Asháninka Communal Reserve that would protect their lands from future development while allowing local communities to pursue sustainable economic opportunities such as coffee and cacao farming.



Worksheet


Rudi Putra:

Ruth Buendía:

What did they do?

Rudi Putra:

Ruth Buendía :

In what way were they successful?

Rudi Putra:

Ruth Buendía :

1. Read the text your teacher gives you and answer the questions about the person you read about.



2. What words or phrases can you find in the text in bold which match the following definitions from your text?

The text about Rudi Putra

1. against the law illegal

2. Areas where people planted palm trees for the oil they produce ______________

3. When water covers the land after heavy rain ______________

4. The loss of forests when people cut them down ______________

5. An area that is protected to allow plants and animals to survive ______________

6. When not many of an animal still live, it is… ______________

7. people who hunt an animal illegally ______________

8. this forest is also known as ‘jungle’ ______________

9. when something is not allowed, you ______________ it

The text about Ruth Buendía

1. when a river is blocked to make a lake and generate electricity hydroelectric dam

2. when people are against something ______________

3. When water covers the land after heavy rain ______________

4. When something is refused, it is ______________

5. People producing enough from the land for their own food ______________

6. to do something that is not allowed ______________

7. dangers to something ______________

8. An international agreement ______________

9. To make other people know about something _______________



Teachers' notes

What was the problem?Rudi Putra

Illegal palm oil plantations were being put in nature reserves resulting in great environmental damage, making the Sumatran rhino endangered and harming local communities

Ruth Buendía A plan to build a dam in Peru on the lands of the Asháninka people without them seeing any benefit.

What did they do?

Rudi Putra

Made sure that laws were kept and made an international petition

Ruth Buendía

Formed an organisation to help local people fight the damn and lobbied the government

In what way were they successful?

Rudi Putra

Removed 1,200 acres of illegal palm oil plantations and restored the rainforest

Ruth Buendía

Helped stop the dam being built and helping the Asháninka people to have rights to keep the land.



Teachers' notes

2. What words or phrases can you find in the text in bold which match the following definitions from your text?

The text about Rudi Putra

1. against the law illegal

2. Areas where people planted palm trees for the oil they produce palm oil plantations

3. When water covers the land after heavy rain flooding

4. The loss of forests when people cut them down deforestation

5. An area that is protected to allow plants and animals to survive nature reserve

6. when very few of an animal still lives, it is… critically endangered

7. people who hunt an animal illegally poachers

8. this forest is also known as ‘jungle’ rainforests

9. when something is not allowed, you ban it

The text about Ruth Buendía

10. when a river is blocked to make a lake and generate electricity hydroelectric dams

11. when people are against something opposition

12. When water covers the land after heavy rain flooded

13. When something is refused, it is rejected

14. People producing enough from the land for their own food subsistence farming

15. to do something that is not allowed broke the rules

16. dangers to something threats

17. An international agreement Treaty

18. To make other people know about something raising awareness



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