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Macmillan Polska 2011

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P H O TO C O P I A B L E

Teacher’s Notes

Buy Nothing Day

by Magdalena Kondro

Type of activity: individual and pair work
Focus: vocabulary connected with money and non-

profi t organizations, giving opinions and reasons,

agreeing and disagreeing; reading, listening and

speaking skills
Level: pre-intermediate – upper-intermediate;

upper secondary
Time: 45 minutes
Preparation: Make a copy of Student’s Worksheet 1

for each student. Make a copy of Student’s Worksheet

2 per each pair of students and cut it up into role

cards.

Procedure:

1. Write the saying The best things in life are free

on the board. Divide the students into pairs to

discuss the saying. Set a time limit of 3 minutes

and then fi nd out which students agree and which

students disagree with the saying. Ask for the

arguments and examples from both groups to

support their opinion.

2. Explain the idea behind Buy Nothing Day. Point

out that it is primarily a protest against

consumerism. The purpose of the day is to make

people reduce their negative impact on the

planet’s resources by inventing creative ways to

achieve their goals without spending money.

Brainstorm with the whole class the different

ways in which we can limit the amount of money

we spend on clothes, books, public transport

fares, accommodation, sports, etc.

3. Explain that the students are going to read about

three worldwide organizations that offer free

services and goods. Write the names of the

organizations on the board: CouchSurfi ng,

Freecycle and Time Banking. Elicit what the

students know about them. If the students do not

know the organizations, encourage them to guess

as to what these are connected with. Do not

confi rm the students’ answers at this stage.

4. Give each student a copy of Student’s Worksheet

and ask them to quickly read the texts to check

their ideas from stage 3 above. They should ignore

the gaps in the texts. Then ask the students to

read the texts again more carefully and decide on

the part of speech of each word missing. Finally

they should match the words from the boxes to

the gaps. In pairs, the students compare their

answers. Check the answers with the whole class.

Explain any words the students fi nd diffi cult.

Answers:

1 free, 2 hosts, 3 monetary, 4 expenses,

5 register, 6 non-profi t, 7 owners, 8 landfi lls,

9 volunteers, 10 legal, 11 currency, 12 participant,

13 earn, 14 contact, 15 members

5. Divide the students into pairs, focus their attention

on Activity 2 and ask them to discuss each of the

organizations in Activity 1. They should say what

they think of each one, whether they agree or

disagree with what their partner is saying and

give reasons for their opinion. Copy the following

useful expressions onto the board for the students

to use in their conversation.

Giving opinion

Agreeing

In my opinion…
To my mind…
If you ask me …
As far as I’m concerned…

I strongly agree.
I agree completely.
That’s exactly what I think.
I couldn’t agree more.

Disagreeing

Giving reasons

I agree up to a point, but...
I’m not sure about that.
I’m afraid I don’t agree.
I strongly disagree.

...because...
Facts show that ...
Evidence shows that...
One reason is that ...

Set a time limit of 5 minutes for the discussion

and then elicit the opinions on the organizations

from different students.

6. Give each pair of students a set of role cards from

Student’s Worksheet 2. Student A and Student B

should each take four cards with their respective

roles. Explain that the students are going to act

out four dialogues connected with Buy Nothing

Day and the organizations they have read about.

Give them time to read their fi rst role card and

then set a time limit of 2 minutes for the students

to act out the dialogue. Encourage them to use

the expressions from stage 5 in their conversation.

Repeat the procedure with the remaining role-

plays. Monitor the students’ work, making sure

that they use English and that they do not fi nish

too quickly. Ask two volunteers to repeat one of

their dialogues to the whole class.

Extension:
The students write a discursive essay on one of the

following topics:
The best things in life are free.
Money makes the world go round.
Money is the root of all evil.
The real measure of your wealth is how much you’d

be worth if you lost all your money.