Teens: a group work

This week my students have had their listening and written tests on the topic: young people in a global era.

Next week they are going to present their group works. Each group is going to talk about one of the following topics.

• Peer pressure
• Relationships
• Alcohol
• Drugs
• Smoking
• Eating disorders
• Bullying
• School pressure
• Generation Gap
• Teen pregnancy
• Depression

My students are expected to talk about causes, consequences and possible solutions to these problems.  The aim of this group work is to make them think about these issues and find possible ways of handling with them.
I have also been searching about these issues and I have recently discovered the site, Radical Parenting, which I find much useful because teens write about their own issues.

An article which deals with the question whether peer pressure is always the reason for starting an addiction/bad behaviour:
http://www.messengersindenim.org/2011/05/peer-pressure-isnt-always-reason-for.html

An article about teen pregancy:
 http://www.radicalparenting.com/2011/05/24/teen-pregnancy-fad-still-going-strong/

It's all for now. I have much work. I have to correct my students' tests.

Teens' problems

My students have been preparing a goup work on a chosen teen's problem.

Here in this site you can find very interesting information about some common teens' problems.

Teenage years

A lesson I prepared about the topic: Young people

1. I’ve brought to school some quotations of famous people who wrote about being young. Then I asked my students to comment on them.

“It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it”. William Sommerset Maugham

“I'm youth, I'm joy, I'm a little bird that has broken out of the egg.”   James M. Barrie

“Youth comes but once in a lifetime”      Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“Youth has no age.”Pablo Picasso

2. After this last quotation, we saw the video clip: Young forever by Jay-Z and Mr. Hudson and spoke about the activities young people were involved in.

3. Then we listened to the song again and completed the lyrics, gap filling exercise.

4. At this time I started preparing my students for a text we were about to read next. This text dealt with the advantages and difficulties of being a teenager these days

5. Before reading the text, I asked my students about teens’ hopes. These were my students' answers:

• Going to university and taking a degree;
• Having a successful career;
• Having a nice family;
• Having enough money to have a comfortable life;
• Being rich and famous;
• Being happy;
• Finding the love of one’s life;
• Travelling a lot;
• Doing something unique and outstanding.

Then I asked them about their worries:

• Being unable to have a fulfilling career;
• Being unemployed;
• Not having enough money to pay one’s bills;
• Dying young;
• Being rejected;
• Not having a fulfilling relationship;
• Being alone;
• Having no real friends;
• Being unable to fulfill one's dreams;


6. Finally, we read the text: Do parents know their kids?

Young people in a global era

We've started a new topic: Young people in a global era.


Firstly, we did a brainstorming exercise. My students presented all the words they associated to: young people, such as:

- going out
- friends
- trying new things
- relationships
- love and dating
- changes in humour
- hormones
- acne
- body changes
- teen pregancy
- addictions: drugs, alcohol, smoking, computer games, etc.
- body image
- eating disorders
- bullying
- depression
- generation gap
- peer pressure
- school pressure
- uncertainty about the future
- desire for freedom

As we can see above, there are good and bad things about being a teenager.
Teenage years can be the best or the worst time of people's lives.
Teens' family, friends and teachers play a very important role during this time because they can help teens overcome the difficulties they may face.

Read more:
Some tips

Teens find evertything so complicated (as the song says)