People who make a difference as examples in exercises

First of all, Happy Thanksgiving!

I learned many important things from my former director Magda Silva when I taught Portuguese at Duke University in the United States, from 2011 to 2012.

One of the things she taught me, after evaluating one of my tests, was how to better choose the people portrayed in language exercises and tests. I remember I had chosen some Brazilian celebrities' biographies as texts for a test and Magda asked me about  the reasons for those choices. I admitted I had never thought about that before and I did't know what to answer. Then she suggested that I include biographies of Brazilians who had tried and/or continue to try to create a better world for everybody. Since then, I have been including people who make a difference in the world in my exercises, tests and assessments.

As I am working with ESL Literacy + CLB 1 students and I am currently teaching about dates and birth dates, I thought about creating cards with Canadians who have made and/or make a difference in the world and their birth dates so the students can practice speaking using the information.

While I was creating the exercise, I realized I didn't know many Canadians who make a difference in the world. So, I decided to google "important Canadian people" to learn. Unfortunately, the first search mentioned 10 men only! Of course I was not satisfied with this and I tweeted about this. Soon, my coordinator Jennifer Loewen and Stuart Schwartz tweeted me great suggestions of names of Canadians who make a difference.

Now the cards are ready and I am going to use them tomorrow. I hope my students will get curious about these people and will learn more about them. Let's see what is going to happen!

I will keep up posted!