Six ways to exploit the “atheist bus” in class « Six Things

Six ways to exploit the “atheist bus” in class « Six Things:

"It’s another one of what the Spanish would call a “noticia insólita” (which means unusual news, but it sounds better in Spanish!): the atheist advertising campaign on London buses that is spreading to other cities. This is one of those things that just can’t be ignored. As soon as I saw the video on the news and the reactions it was provoking I started getting ideas on how it could be used to spark discussion in class. Six ideas, actually.

1. Play “Guess the word”. Write on the board the following: There’s probably no ______. Now stop worrying and enjoy your _____. Ask students to suggest different words that could go in the slots. At the end, once the words have been guessed or you tell them ask them what they think of the quote. Then explain the backstory.

2. Focus on word order. Give the following words jumbled up in two groups. no there’s God probably / stop enjoy and worrying life now your. Ask the students to form two grammatically correct sentences. Accept all grammatically correct sentences. Then ask them what they think of the quote. Explain the backstory, or give it to them to read.

3. Teach adverbs. Use the sample sentence to focus on adverbs like probably (sometimes called adverbs of certainty). The others"