"The Seattle of the Balkans"

Photo by Puja

I promised Theodora that I would come up with a lesson for the New York Times article on Thessaloniki (click here). So here it is. Basically, it's for upper-intermediate and advanced EFL, ESL students.

Lesson plans

1 Ask you students where Seattle is. Ideally you should have access to a map of the States or the world.

2 Ask them what they know about the place. There's a god chance that they nothing, in which case ask them to write down some facts about the place based on the information in the map.

e.g. "It's near the sea"

or

"It must be quite cold in winter as it near Canada."


Alternatively, if you have access to the internet ask them to look at the place in Google Earth and ask them to comment on the layout, size and homes there.

3 Now ask students to quickly read the main part of the article and guess what Seattle must be like. What reminded them of Seattle?

e.g "Well, they talk about all the cafes and bars in Thessaloniki, so Seattle must have something simiar."

4 For homework ask the students to so some research on the internet to five five similarities and differences between the two cities.

Ideas for follow - up activities

1 Students create their own Thessaloniki tourist poster complete with slogan.

2 They create a magazine cover using either their own photos or ones from Flickr and this Flick Toys application.

3 They create their own 30 second ad for the city using either Windows Movie Maker or Photo Story 3. This can be done with photos (either their own or taken off the internet) or video recorded by digital camera or even mobile phones.

All of these suggestions can then be posted on the class or student's blog.