Daily life - resource

You might have seen yesterday that I released a new resource on my resources page here. I thought I would share some of the reasonings and choices behind it.

I knew I wanted to do something of a lower level than what I've created before, and where better to start than present simple affirmative and negative. Daily life is, of course, a good choice of topic to present and use the target grammar. Originally, I wanted to call it Sister and Brother, for Clara and Harvey - but then I noticed the main photo I wanted and thought that it may present the wrong idea (!). The majority of the photos I used are from Unsplash, which is a great, free website for stunning images. I've credited the artists on the acknowledgements page. I was lucky that the artist I chose for the main photo had a small series using the same models.

For me, I wanted to include LGBTQ* in the resource - presenting it as natural and matter of course - and this suited well with Harvey's mirrored story to his sister. I love the photo I found - it merely shows a happy couple and that was what I wanted to portray.

Talking of photos, I wanted to have a main character with tattoos and not mention them, because, in all honesty for me, tattoos aren't controversial. People are sometimes surprised when I tell them I have about 7 tattoos.

I also purposefully chose a block of flats for both characters, rather than a house. Although the figures I found were as far back as 2017-2018, most households lived in houses (approx. 80%), one in five households lived in flats (English Housing Survey, 2017-18). The report goes on to say that there are certain groups who are more likely to live in flats, and Clara in the UK, represents just one of those.

The text does not mention that Clara or Stefan have a car. In 2020, 21% of households in the UK did not have a car (Government statistics), so I chose to have them use bicycles. It was also an opportunity to have a photo of a bike with a basket, as basket is slightly out of level.

I purposefully did not mention Clara or Harvey's mother. The dad I mentioned doesn't feature much in the text, but not everybody of Clara's age is in contact with a parent, or has a surviving parent.

So, these are just some of my reasonings behind my choices for this resource. I sincerely hope teachers download it and use it - and let me know if you do!