Forum discussion: The right content for young-adult students

 Remember Hertz and Gallo's words?

YAL deals with many universal themes, including the eternal questions Who am I? and Where do I fit in? Some of the themes are: alienation from one's society or group; survival or meeting a chal-lenge; social and/or political concerns about racial or ethnic discrimination; social concerns about AIDS, teenage pregnancy, divorce, substance abuse, family conflicts, dealing with death, and politi-cal injustice. These are issues and topics that all students can benefit from reading and discussing, not just students at lower academic levels.

After carrying out so many discussions and analysing so many stories meant for young adults in class, it's time to wonder about those teenage concerns in our Greater Buenos Aires classrooms. What topics should be deal with in class? Is anything possible or should we refrain from touching upon the more delicate issues?

Maybe the following newspaper article will give you something to ponder about before joining in the discussion:Click to read.

Forum 2: Storytelling young children

We started storytelling a bit late in the year, but we did start. After experiencing and analysing so many books and TV shows for children, we should be able to place storytelling in the classroom context and try to identify its pros and cons. That's the aim of this forum. So tell us, what do you think? Can you share one pro and one con of this activity?

Leave your commment below and join in the discussion.

Forum 1: Characterising the stories for our students

Some meetings ago we set to discuss the elements and characteristics that should make a story for children. Among other things, we agreed that audience age was determinant in conditioning any possible answer. Thus, it seems necessary to contextualise and specify our audience before advancing on this discussion. 

Having in mind that our aim this year would be to teach in primary schools, let us agree on Argentine primary students of English as a foreign language as our expected audience. This settled, then:

What elements should characterise the stories we choose or create for them?

You can join the debate by clicking on the 'comment' button and sharing your opinion with us.