News-based English language activities from the global newspaper

September 2010
Level ≥ Lower intermediate
Style ≥ Lesson plan
Welcome to the Guardian Weekly’s special news-based materials to support learners and teachers of English.
Each month, the Guardian Weekly newspaper selects topical news articles that can be used to practise English
language skills. The materials are graded for two levels: advanced and lower intermediate. These worksheets
can be downloaded free from guardian.co.uk/weekly/. You can also find more advice for teachers and learn-
ers from the Guardian Weekly’s Learning English section on the site.

Brazil considers bulletproofing schools

Materials prepared by Janet Hardy-Gould

Instructions
Lesson focus: reading, note taking, discussion
Materials: dictionaries
Time: 55 minutes

1 Tell students the article is about Rio de Janeiro. Write Crime:

up the following words and definitions for students to
match. Feedback. 7 mins
a slum b gang c fatal shooting d police operation e bullet
f kid g scared
1 Frightened or afraid.
2 A poor part of a city where people live in old dirty
buildings.
3 A small piece of metal that comes quickly out of a gun.
4 A child (informal).
5 When a person is shot dead with a gun.
6 A group of people who do bad things together.
7 An organised activity to stop crime in a certain place.
Answers: a 2 b 6 c 5 d 7 e 3 f 4 g 1
2 Tell students the words are part of a news story. Write up
Where? Who? What? Students predict where the story
took place, who took part and what happened. 6 mins
3 Write up headline: Brazil considers bulletproofing
_____. Explain bulletproofing and Brazil (stands for the
authorities). Ask: What place goes in the gap? Write
up: hospitals, homes, schools, playgrounds, shops,
restaurants. In pairs students decide. Give out the article.
Students read headline and check. 7 mins
4 Write up categories below. Students read the first three
paragraphs and make notes. 10 mins
Victim:
When it happened:
Location:
Details of crime:
Answers: fatal shooting; Wesley Gilbert de Andrade;
July; school in a slum; the boy was shot by a stray bullet
during a maths lesson.
5 Write up these questions. Students read the whole article
to find answers. Feedback. 12 mins
a What are the authorities planning to do to the schools?
b How many young people are in schools in the
dangerous slums?
c Who controls most of Rio’s slums?
d What does Edna Felix want the police to stop doing?
e What do the teachers do when there is a confrontation?
Answers: a Put in stronger walls and bulletproof
windows. b 100,000. c Armed gangs and vigilante
groups. d Operations during school hours. e Leave the
classroom etc.
6 Students read text again. They underline three unknown
words to check in dictionaries. 7 mins
7 Ask: Do they know similar stories of young victims
of stray bullets? What should the police do? Class
discussion. 6 mins
News-based English language activities from the global newspaper
Materials sheet
On guard ... a policeman in a Rio de Janeiro slum Sergio Moraes/Reuters
Student tasks
1 Read the first three paragraphs of the article and make
notes under the following headings.
Crime:
Victim:
When it happened:
Location:
Details of crime:
2 Read the whole article and answer these questions.
a What are the authorities planning to do to the schools?
b How many young people are in schools in the
dangerous slums?
c Who controls most of Rio’s slums?
d What does Edna Felix want the police to stop doing?
e What do the teachers do when there is a confrontation?
3 Read the text again and underline three unknown
words. Check them in your dictionary.
September 2010
Article: Brazil considers
bulletproofing schools
1 Authorities in Rio de Janeiro are under pressure to bulletproof
schools in slum areas, after an 11-year-old boy was killed by a
stray bullet during a maths lesson.
2 According to local reports, city authorities are studying plans
to introduce stronger walls and bulletproof windows in some
schools. They want to protect an estimated 100,000 students
and 5,000 teachers who study and work in dangerous areas.
3 This follows the fatal shooting of 11-year-old student Wesley
Gilbert de Andrade in July. He was shot through the heart by
a stray bullet while inside his primary school. The shooting
happened during a police operation against drug gangs in
slums near the school.
4 Rio’s education secretary, Claudia Costin, said authorities were
considering a number of things to improve security, including
bulletproofing.
5 “I will talk to the school’s staff to see if this [bulletproofing]
might be useful,” Costin said. “If they think it is a good idea, yes,
we will do it.”
6 Although politicians have praised a new “pacification” plan,
which has driven drug gangs from 11 shanty towns, most
of Rio’s 1,000 slums are still controlled by armed gangs and
vigilante groups.
7 Edna Felix, a director of Rio’s teachers’ union, said many
schools urgently needed bulletproofing and asked for “the
immediate end to police operations during school hours”.
8 “When there is a confrontation, as soon as we hear the first shot,
we have to leave the classroom, run to the corridor, duck, try
and get the children out of the way,” said Felix, a primary school
teacher in the notorious Morro dos Macacos slum.
9 “The kids get very scared, they cry. It’s not just the fear of what
might happen to them inside the school but also because they
have family members outside in the community.”
Original article by Tom Phillips, rewritten by
Janet Hardy-Gould