TSU English 3 SBP

ENGLISH
TEACHER SUPPORT UNIT 3
Livelihood and Home-related Work

English Teacher Support Unit 3

1
LIVELIHOOD AND HOME-RELATED WORK
Before we start…
The Third TSU
We are now done with Teacher Support Unit 1 (TSU1) and Teacher Support Unit 2 (TSU 2) and you
might be already sensing a change (for better!) in the attitude of your students towards English. We are
sure they are talking more among themselves (and with you!) besides responding more enthusiastically to
your questions. Let us carry on now till the students become confident of speaking in English!
The starting point
Having worked through TSU 2, we can now assume that your students:
• Can relate their experience in simple sentences
• Can make simple sentences using known words
• Can do actions based on a set of instructions
• Can copy in a meaningful context
The third TSU is on a theme that deals with the ‘adult’ in your students – with the work they do outside
their homes to help the family earn a little more money and the work they do inside their homes to help,
typically, their mothers. The theme of this unit is ‘Livelihood Related Work & Home Related Work’. As
for the first part, while it is regrettable that students, at this age, have to work to support their families,
let’s hope that this discomfort would motivate them to appreciate the value of things, time and money
better. As for the second part, your students gaining an understanding of running a home at such a young
age and is an enviable life-skill! Won’t you agree? Let’s see how we can take advantage of the richness of
the experiences of children.
In the this TSU, we start once again with word level activities in order to generate vocabulary related to
the topic. We still emphasise speaking here. Our students need as much speaking practice as they can get
in order to improve their fluency. However, we also lead them through writing words, filling in missing
information (in tables) and extending an idea with a one or two sentences.
Let’s begin with a simple activity of guessing the right name. It is easy and more importantly, fun!
Activity 1 (Whole class/ Group work)
Guess the word
Tell the students you are going to play a game. You will say three words related to an activity or job and the
students have to guess the job or person who does the job. They could respond in Odia too, but please make sure
that you repeat the words in English.
This activity could be done either as a whole class activity or a group activity. If you form groups, you could ask them
to write down the responses and then compare which group got how many words right.
Begin with an example: broom, dustpan, floor (sweeping)


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Now, try these words with the students. Of course, you could add your own words to these.
o seeds, soil, manure = farmer or farming ('gardening' is fine too!)
o oil, frying pan, stove = cooking
o bus, passengers, tickets = conductor (this cannot be driver because of 'tickets')
o paint, brush, ladder = painter or painting
o book, pen, blackboard = teacher or teaching (school, classroom are ok too)
o medicines, syringe, stethoscope = doctor
o scissors, hair, mirror = barber/hairstylist
o clay, water, fire in a kiln = potter
o camera, film, flash = photographer
o wood, nails, hammer = carpenter
Did your students participate with enthusiasm in this activity? Did most of the students guess the job or
activity?
Did it work?
interesting difficult boring
Choose the word that is not related to the work or activity
This activity can be done immediately after the first one, as an extension of it.
• playing, ploughing, planting, watering, = farming
• cutting, frying, laughing, washing, = cooking
• dusting, running, sweeping, wiping = cleaning the house
• weighing, packing, measuring, jumping = working in a shop
• mixing paint, scraping the wall, stitching cloth, climbing a ladder = painting a house
• pouring water, piling up wood, striking a match, chopping wood = lighting a fire
• boiling water, adding chilli powder, heating milk, adding tea = making tea
Are your students asking for more? You could create a few of your own on the suggested lines.
What is the focus of this activity?............................................................................................................
Did you make any modifications or try out
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Now, ask students to form groups. Ask each group to come up with 3 examples like what we have done. Give them
10 minutes for this activity.
This is a speaking activity but if you want your students to read and write the words and phrases above
you could write them on the board. Can you add any variations to the activity? For example, you could ask
students, 'What do you need to do to make tea?' and ask them to read the phrases from the board.
You could ask, what else can you chop or pour or climb, etc.
Did it work?
Let’s move to Activity 3. It has an interesting twist that your students would like.
This activity is really about everyday objects but here we encourage students to look at their everyday world with
slightly different eyes.
You can begin a discussion with students on these lines: Do we use books only for reading? Not really, right? We use
a book for many purposes depending on the situation we are in. You can use it to kill flies, mosquitoes, to fan
yourself, as a pillow, as a paper weight, as a broom, etc.
Now, similarly, what can we use the following objects for? The hints are for you. Wait for the students to respond
before giving them hints.
Cooking pot or vessel (to make music, to store coins, as a flower pot, to water plants, as a weapon, etc), pencil (to
scratch one’s back, to tie and store rubber bands, to point out something…), pen, bottle, mat, oil lamp, mat, chair,
table, brick, broomstick, plastic mug, bucket, iron pipe or rod, clip for drying clothes. (Please add more objects to this
list.)
Now, ask them to form groups. Ask each group to come up with names of at least three objects that can be used
for other purposes. They might overlap. But that is perfectly fine. Give them 10 minutes for this and use 10 minutes
towards the end of the period for discussing their responses. Students may come up with surprising and imaginative
purposes for everyday objects.
a. Here is another activity that you can use to get students thinking 'out of the box'. You can ask students questions
like those below.
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If you did not have a broom, how would you sweep the floor?
If you did not have a pen or pencil, how would you write?
If you did not have a matchbox, how would you light a fire?
If you did not have a cooking pot how would you cook food?
Add some more questions if think your students enjoy answering them. You could also ask students to
work in pairs and come up with some more questions of their own. Then each pair can quiz the rest of the
class.
Textbook activity: You can also connect the 'if' questions to the textbook exercises on 'if' clauses in the
grammar section of Class 10. Ask students to answer in full sentences. E.g. 'If I did not have a broom, I
would sweep with a cloth tied to the end of a stick.' After they practice the sentences orally, you can give
them some exercises from the textbook.
Did it work?
The next activity is about something that no student dislikes – food!
Get the students to describe the kitchen in their homes. What are all the things one can see in the
kitchen? (You might expect responses like: stove, vessels, tap, ‘chakki’, plates, etc). Now, move to food.
What ingredients can one see in the kitchen? As the students keep coming up with one name after the
other (salt, sugar, chilli powder, masala powder, tea…) write down the names on the board.
Once you have a list of ingredients on the blackboard, ask students the following questions.
Which of the ingredients can be used for both Sweets and Namkins? (e.g. dal for halwa and dal, wheat for
puri and rotis).
• How many foods can you think of that can be made without oil?
• How many different foods can you make with wheat, rice, gram flour?
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• What can you cook with the least ingredients? (You can ask students to call out their food item and the
ingredients that go into making it. Then the class can decide which foods fit into this category.)
• Which foods can be taken raw? (milk, dahi, sugar, some green vegetables like cucumber, fruits…)
Can you add any more questions related to food and ingredients in the kitchen?
Did it work?
Activity 5
Ask five students to come to the front of the class. Ask each one to do five separate actions related to say, cooking,
e.g. cutting vegetables, washing rice, cleaning rice, stirring something in a pot, adding some salt or masala to the pot
on the stove, etc. (You may have to show students what you want them to do - perhaps you can take them out of
the class for a minute.)
The other students have to guess what the group members are doing. (They can say this in Odia, of course). Then
you say what each one is doing in English. (E.g., Shilpa is cutting vegetables, Rahul is chopping cabbage…). After
this you can ask the students what each one is doing so that they become familiar with the words describing the
actions. They don't have to learn the sentences by heart!
Once students are familiar with these sentences, use the 'wrong sentence approach'. How do you do this? Ask 5
other students to do the same actions, say what each one is doing, but naming one of the actions wrongly so that
the students can correct you. (E.g. Rahul is frying something when he is actually miming chopping).
Can you think of other situations where you can use the wrong sentence approach? E.g. touching his toes, combing
his hair, pointing to the fan, closing his eyes, writing in his book, etc.
Can you ask students to work in groups to come up with sets of five actions, where you provide the 'running
commentary' as above?
What other variations can you think of?
Did it work?
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Activity 6 (Group of 3 or 4)
Who are all the people involved in making the food that reaches you as a consumer?
Tell the students that most food items come to us after passing through several hands, several stages of processing.
For example, take the banana that you eat. You may have bought it in a shop but then it would have gone through
the hands of a number of people before it reached the shop - the agriculturist, the labourer who plucks the fruit, the
packer, the truck operator, the labourer in the wholesale market….. and finally, the shopkeeper and you!
Now tell the students to form groups because they are going to do an activity to find out how many people's hands
their food goes through before it reaches them? Give each group wrapper from a packet of biscuits.
Ask the students in each group to look at the ingredients on the wrapper of a packet of biscuits. Each member of
the group can choose one major ingredient (e.g. flour, butter, sugar, salt and make a list of all the people and the
work that they contributed to the making of the biscuits).
For example: flour
farmer, the people who had to clean the wheat, the truck driver who transported it, the factory workers who had to
grind the wheat, the factory workers who had to pack the flour to transport it, godown owner who stored the sacks
of flour, the wholesale shop that bought and distributed the sacks, the large bakery factories that mixed the flour
with other ingredients to make the biscuits, other workers who packed the biscuits, the retail shops that sold the
biscuit packets to the consumer.
-The group members can then compare each other's lists and fill in stages that were missed in each other's lists.
- They calculate the number of stages that result in the final product.
- Ask them to estimate how many people they think were involved in the production of a packet of biscuits. (This is
an open-ended question. There is no one right answer).
Textbook activity - Class 9
Ask the students: What impression did the writer have about the Maggie? What was the Maggie’s gift to the writer?
Can we spot any impression about Maggie’s Mother Mrs. Bethy’s situation in “The Priceless Gift”. What are the
similarities?
Did it work?
Let’s move to an activity where your students will understand the value of time and labour in their homes.
variations?.......................................................................................................................................................
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Activity 7 (Whole class)
Start a discussion by asking ‘Who works the most in your family?’ Follow it up with these questions: What are the
activities done by various people in your family? How many hours do you think they spend on these activities? Let
them make a guess.
Now ask students to fill up the table below individually. Then in pairs they can discuss the questions that follow.
(You could get them to draw the table. If possible, take a photocopy of the following table and distribute it to
students. You could restrict the columns to 5 or 6 to fit the paper size. You could draw it by hand too on the board
and ask the students to copy it in their notebooks.)
Person Task 1 Task 2 Task 3 Task
4
Task
5
Task
6
Task
7
Task
8
Task
9
Total
hours
Your
mother
Cooking
___1__
Cleaning
___1.5___
Washing
clothes and
vessels
__.5_____
Father
Brother
Sister
Aunt
Uncle
You
Now, engage them in discussing the following questions.
1. Who works the most number of hours?
2. Who's work is the most difficult? Why?
3. Who gets paid most for their work? (Do you think the this is fair payment for their work? If you had the
opportunity would you change the payment for the work in any way?)
Did it work?
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Textbook activity - Classes 9 and 10
You can teach the class level grammar to students. Teach subject and predicate and the simple present tense based
on the exercise done by the students. You can write on the board:
My mother works 5 hours a day. She spends 2 hours on cooking. (First help students identify the subject and
predicate in the sentences and then do an exercise identifying the action words in the simple present tense.)
You can ask students to write similar sentences based on the information in their own tables.
Did it work?
Do you think this is a good starting point to teach them grammar? You are using their sentences and texts
to teach them structures. Learner generated texts (as these sentences written by your students are called),
are the most effective starting point for students to learn because the sentences are meaningful to them.
If students are ready for this, you could ask them to choose any person in the family. They could write a
short paragraph with the title 'One day in the life of my mother/father/ brother', etc. They can include
details from the table they made and use the sentences which they wrote for the simple present tense.
Were your students able to write a paragraph. Does this kind of guided writing make it easier for them to
write?
Can you think of other ways to give them some guidance when they write. For instance, you can write
most of a sentence leaving a few blanks for them to fill up.
This activity will give the students an idea of what it means to do something well. We often say things like : She
writes well, He is a good singer, etc. What criteria do we use to say these things? When thinking through the ideas
in this activity, students will have to give their reasons for thinking the way they do. Your students at this secondary
stage are perfectly capable of analyzing their own and other people's statements. This is an important higher order
skill that is important across subjects and indeed in one's everyday life too
Ask them this question: “What are the three or four things by which you can say that somebody has done a good
job of something?” For example:
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cleaning - no dust, no rubbish on the floor, things neatly arranged, no cobwebs.
making a sweet - tastes good, a nice aroma or smell, should look good/appetizing (you should be drooling!)
Here are some other jobs or activities for which students have to find three things by which you can measure work
that is well done.
• teaching
• studying
• maintaining a garden
• driving a car or bike or cycle
• making rotis
You can also do this as a group activity. Students can discuss their reasons in their groups and share them with the
rest of the class.
How do you organise the sharing after group work? Groups can be asked to designate a speaker who will
present the group's ideas to the class. If you want more students in the group to have a chance to speak to
an audience, you can ask three students to present one idea each.
If two groups have a similar reason, you should acknowledge that and say, 'Oh! Both of you agree on this
particular reason.'
Sometimes when groups are getting ready to present their ideas, they forget to listen to the others. How
will you ensure that students listen to and evaluate each other's ideas? Write your answers in the space
below.
When you ask them to tell you what they have written, make sure you translate into English what they
have written in Odia.
This topic is about something that all children, without exception, would love – to eat small fishes. Maximum villages
of Sambalpur district are famous for small fishes. People of this districts are catching small fishes from Hirakud
Dams, Rengali Dam throughout the year and its became important livelihood of some of the people. Why not have
an activity built around this famous livelihood.
Engage students in a conversation about the small fishes – they like, availability, test, variety etc. Then ask them the
following questions.


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• Can you name the varieties of fishes available in your Village/Sambalpur district? (Ask them to write
in Odia, then translate into English).
• Why Hirakud Dam is famous for small fishes?
(ask them about the month and time of availability)
• What are all the dishes you can make with small fishes?
• How do you recipe the small fishes to eat?
• Which varieties of small fishes test good – people like to buy more?
• What are the methods to catch small fishes in your village? Can you name the materials for
catching small fishes?
• What are some of the problems small fish catchers’ face, in order to get a good livelihood? (If
students have a lot to say about this, you could then ask them: can you suggest any solutions to the
problem faced by the small fish catchers?)
• Pose this problem to students: There are two small fish catchers. One has many varieties of small
fishes. The other has only one variety. Which fish catcher is more profitable? Why? (If two students
take opposite positions, great. Generate a debate, if not, you take the position opposite to a
student’s and argue with him or her. Get them to talk.)
Did it work?
Activity 10 (Whole class/Group work)
This activity will help students to do several things related to farming in Sambalpur - gathering information and
presenting it by means of a timetable, doing interviews, comparing the farming practices over time, thinking about
weather and soil conditions and their effect on farming, etc. All the information is easily available in the students'
own environment. Through this process, students will learn about and understand their own surroundings better.
Start the activity by asking students what they had for breakfast or lunch. Ask them how much of the food
they ate comes from Sambalpur. Do they know how many things are grown in Sambalpur district or
surrounding areas? Ask them to tell you what crops are grown in and around Sambalpur? This is a listing
activity. As they mention the crops you can write them on the board.
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Now ask them to form groups and create a timetable for farming in Sambalpur as given below. You can
put up the timetable for one crop e.g. tomatoes, write the words in English and explain them. You can ask
them when the field is ploughed, when sowing happens, etc.
Crop Tomatoes Potato Paddy
Ploughing the field Which month?
May?
Sowing the seeds Which month?
September?
Replanting
Harvesting
Students can then choose other important crops and fill out the rest of the grid. Walk around the class and help the
groups create and fill in the timetable. It is important to have a calendar in the class for students to refer to when
filling in the months when each activity takes place.
You can ask a number of questions based on the timetable. E.g. when are tomatoes harvested?
What other questions can you think of? Write them in the space below.
Don't you think it is important for student to convert one form of information, like timetables, into
another? In what way do you think it is important? Think about it.
You can also ask them the following questions:
• What makes Sambalpur a good place to grow these crops? (Have a short chat with students on
weather, soil, etc).
• What kinds of work do people in Sambalpur do that are related to farming and the crops that are
grown? (Think about making gur, for example.)
Did it work?

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10a. You could extend the activity on farming if you think your students would be interested. Ask students
to do a small interview and gather information based on the questions below. You can tell them, 'Find out
about farming in Sambalpur. You can ask older people in your home or in the village for information. You
can then write it down in Odia or English and present your findings to the class.'
• Which crops are relatively new to Sambalpur?
• What was grown earlier?
• How have farming practices changed in Sambalpur from your grandparents' time to the
present?
• What were some of the problems your elders faced twenty years ago? What are the
problems they face now? Can you suggest ways in which some of these problems can be
solved?
Did your students enjoy doing these activities involving their lives and homes? Think of more games,
activities to take advantage of the experience of the students. Did you enjoy teaching this unit? And do
write to us so that we would be able to share them with other teachers.
Did it work?
Which activity/activities did your students enjoy the most? Write it in the space below.
At the end of TSU 3 do you think your students can do the following?

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What a student can do after completing TSU3
• Can describe things in a few words
• Can substitute/add words and add one or two lines
• Can make simple sentences using known words
• Can take part in word games
• Can do actions based on a set of instructions

TSU English 3 SBP

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