Teacher resources about the USA

I used to be an English teacher. During that time, I made a number of texts, tasks, question, oral assignments and so forth about different topics within the competence aims of the subject. In this blog post, I share texts related to the United States of America. I will make other blog posts later on other topics. I thought it might be useful to share these so other teachers can save some time by reusing them. I share these teaching materials in formats that are open standards since that ensures that these will always be possible to open and use. If the formatting is off when you open them i MS Word, you might consider using LibreOffice instead. To download the files, right-click with a mouse or click with two fingers on a trackpad and choose Save link as…

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Links to files with a short description:

• 12 years a slave and slavery.pdf Some information about slavery in the USA and some questions about the film 12 years a slave.
• The American Dream and poetry.odt Tasks related to the American Dream, with poems by Langston Hughes and Emily Dickinson as well as references to a poem by Ralp Waldo Emerson in the Tracks book. (You can easily edit this part out if you use another book or copy the relevant pages.)
• The American Government to be.odt A hard task where one should decide whether to use am is or are. What makes this hard is sometimes that the real subject of the rather formal sentences might be hard to spot and sometimes that you could debate whether the subject is plural or singular since it could be thought of as either one issue or a number of separate issues. I used this for students that finished the easier concord tasks fast to give them something a bit harder to think about.
• The American Government short version Targets 2015.odt This is a shorter and somewhat simplified version of the long and hard text from Targets 2015.
• American Lista tasks.odt These are tasks related to American immigration from Lista and how American culture influenced Lista after many of the immigrants returned. Lista is part of Farsund and many teachers and students at my school are from Lista. I used to live there. Lista is known as the place in Norway where American culture has had the most influence and people from Lista are often in the national news in Norway debating political events in the USA. A lot of people have relatives and friends in the USA and many people here have dual citizenship.
• Arnold Schwarzenegger and the American Dream simplified.odt This is my simplified version of a text where Arnold Schwarzenegger shares his dream growing up about achieving success as a body builder and moving to America.
• Black Friday.odt This is an easy text about Black Friday with vocabulary.
• Essay task USA 1KOA.odt Essay tasks related to texts and a film (Bury my heart at wounded knee) we had worked with about Native Americans, the gun culture in the USA and a harder task about comparing and contrasting the USA and the UK.
• Facts about the USA translation task.odt This task is about singular and plural nouns and concord at the same time as it is about facts about the USA. Words are included to make this easier for students with a limited vocabulary.
• Group task on native peoples.odt Four groups work on the Aboriginals of Australia, the Maori in New Zealand, The Native Americans and the Zulus in South Africa and make a presentation for the class. This task is hard and I would use this in stronger classes after having a look at some basic facts about the different countries, before going deeper into one or two indigenous peoples and their countries. (There was a competence aim related to indigenous peoples in the past. Now, there is one about the culture of English-speaking countries around the world where Native Peoples would fit.)
• Halloween An easy text with vocabulary on the last page about the American Halloween traditions.
• Langston Hughes I too.odt The poem with a short introductory text and some questions to work with. I found a video on youtube where Hughes reads the poem that is referenced in the introductory text.
• Oral assignment a state in the USA.odt The students would present in front of the class and listening to all the presentations would give the students a better understanding about how large, geographically and culturally diverse and interesting the USA is.
• Oral assignment a state in the USA simplified.odt A simpler version of the task above.
• Oral presentation US company.odt The USA has many famous companies and brands and this task is about those.
• Oral presentation indigenous people.odt I gave the students different Native American tribes, Canadian First Nations as well as some other Indigenous Peoples from English-speaking countries when I used this task. It is often easy to generalise about Native Americans and Canadian First Nations and not realise that the many different peoples have very different cultures, but this task highlights those differences.
• Oral presentation about the USA.odt These tasks were for grown-up students. We had worked a lot with American politics and the tasks reflect that there had just been an election, so I think these were from 2020 or possibly 2016.
• Poster state in the USA.odt I handed out large A2 posters and the students planned what to write based on the questions in the task and then made posters that we hung in the classroom.
• Presentation American news.odt A presentation task based on a current American news story I made for the immigrant class. I picked a few credible sources of journalism to avoid getting fake news and conspiracy theories from alt-right outlets.
• Presidential election group task.odt A task I made before the 2016 election where the students would work in groups and cover one policy area for each group and find out what the candidates wanted to do within that area, make a table and present their findings to the rest of the class afterwards.
• Questions for Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.odt It is a good idea to read through the questions before watching the film to know to look for these things and then work on answering these questions in writing afterwards.
• Questions for Crash.odt Same as above.
• Questions for Fargo.odt A small group of students that needed some extra help to pass did not want to watch a typical school film about the USA, so we watched Fargo instead. These questions were a basis for further investigations more than questions the students should already be able to answer.
• Repetition questions for chapter2 North America.odt These questions relate to the book Tracks 2013.
• Repetition questions about the USA.odt These are central questions relating to the USA, but you may want to edit out the question about who will enter the White House in January 2017…
• Repetition questions about the USA.odt I made this for students at the health care study line.
• Sports in English speacking countries.odt I made this for students at the athletic study line.
• Tasks about Henry Ford.odt When I taught the technical and industrial production study line, we worked with the industrial revolution in the UK and on industrial production in the USA and this was part of the latter. I think I found a text on a Henry Ford Museum or maybe from the Ford company that these questions and tasks were related to.
• Thanksgiving.odt
• The American Dream grammar.odt A grammar task related to a simple text about the American Dream.
• The Hate U Give Discussion.odt Some questions for discussion after watching the film The Hate U Give.
• The Pursuit of Happyness questions.odt Questions with vocabulary for the film The Pursuit of Happiness which we used as part of working with the American Dream.
• There is no frigate like a book task.odt Some words to look up before or after reading with the Poem by Emily Dickinson.
• US Settlement and Immigration simplified.odt My simplified version of a text in the book Stunt with questions and vocabulary.
• Alias Detroit and Silicon Valley.odt This is a vocabulary for the text in Tracks 2013 in the form of squares to use to play Alias with.