Buy Nothing Day

treehuggers.com

This page was put together for Buy Nothing Day (coinciding with Black Friday) on Nov 29 2019, but a lot of the links and ideas can just as easily be used for a lesson on shopping and consumerism in general and questioning what we buy, how we buy etc.

  1. A lesson from Owain Llewelyn over on the ELT Sustainable blog, Buy Nothing Day or Black Friday?, suitable for B1+. It contains slides, teacher’s notes and lasts between 45 minutes and an hour.

  2. A link to a blog post by a blogger based in the Netherlands: What is Buy Nothing Day and why should I care? The blog post talks about the origins of the day and some possible alternatives to splurging on Black Friday bargains. It was written last year (2018) but is still an interesting and relevant read. It could work well as a jigsaw reading for B2 and up students – or the video could be a conversation starter for any class. I like the idea of the “zombie” protests, but maybe students could come up with other creative ideas? Or just debate the pros and cons – some of them may love Black Friday – we could maybe get them to explain why and take a look at another point of view.

  3. A lesson from the British Council Learn English site: Black Friday and Buy Nothing Day – a reading text with interactive tasks for B1+.

  4. There’s a wealth of material over on this website: webenglish.se. This is the description on their About page:

    Webenglish.se is a curated collection of resources for teachers of English who wish to introduce authentic contents with the help of ICT in their English classrooms. This free website offers inspiration, lesson plans and authentic teaching materials for the Compulsory School levels (A1-B1) in Sweden. Teachers from other countries are naturally also welcome to use the links and subscribe to WebEnglish.se. The need to create  WebEnglish.se arose from the realisation that there were no printed school books that complied with the Swedish Curriculum, Lgr11. Therefore, all the links in WebEnglish.se are chosen in compliance with the intentions of the Swedish Curriculum. As many classes still do not have 1:1 computers, most materials only require one computer and a projector in the classroom.” This is a link to their Buy Nothing Day resources. (thanks to Outi Frisk for sharing!)
Scroll to Top