I began the class by talking about my students’ reactions to New York City. Most of them have just arrived in the U.S. What surprised them most about the city? Many of them said, “Homeless people in the streets of one of the richest countries in the world.”

To introduce unit 6 on “Philantropy” and “Why We Give” I had the students read an excerpt from an article by Peter Marin called “Helping and Hating the Homeless.” I found a copy of the article on the web and made the excerpts a little easier for my students by shortening the reading and replacing some of the vocabulary.

We did it as an info-gap exercise. Half the class read his portrait of Alice, a homeless middle-aged woman in Santa Barbara, who became homeless as a result of a criminal attack, and the other half read about Marin’s description of three homeless shelters in the same city, two run by religious organizations and one by a private charity.

This worked really well, in part because I made up questions and vocabulary exercises for each excerpt and that built confidence so that they were able to make an oral summary (no pencils / all in their own words) of the excerpt they read to another student and vice versa.

Reading is something my students are usually fairly good at (compared to speaking and writing) and they need academic preparation. I also asked selected students to tell part of their summaries to the class so I could work on error correction. I had them write their summary at the end of the class. 

 The homework was to do Internet research on the causes of homelessness and the charities who help the homeless. It may seem like too much preparation (before diving into the books) but we have 15 hours of teaching with our class (and three teachers) and I like to have the unit emerge from some real life questions.