W

Learning We Need Each Other

W’s Story

W’s story asks us to think about how we all depend on each other. A farmer raises the wheat, a miller grinds the grain, a baker turns it into bread. In between truckers are moving it around from place to place until it winds up at the local store and on our plates.

Key Words

Cooperation, community, interdependence, saying hello, help each other out

Lesson Idea

Phrases, Irreversible Pairs, Idioms

Lots of words in English come in little groups, sometimes it is easier to learn words this way. “How do you do” is an easy example of that, am I right? Most English idioms work this way too, you kind of know what it means without trying to understand what it means. You could challenge yourself to take the next step and figure things out. It can be a lot of fun, if you really want to do it. If not, it can be quite frustrating, and I would avoid it.

Irreversible pairs is a scary term for something pretty simple. (If you don’t think about it.) Words that we just say that way: night and day, up and down, now or never. Drawing the pairs out can help us learn without “memorizing”.

Activity Sheet

Word Pairs

Some things just go together. In English it could be things like Q and U in spelling. Or phrasal verbs like “stand up” and “fill out”. For the activity sheet I thought of things in the world around us like the black and white keys of a piano, or peanut butter and jelly. In the world of English these things and their words often go together in a particular order- irreversible word pairs. One more thing to memorize- or just have fun.

What things can you think of?

We do need each other. This video and worksheet help us see how that works out in real life.