Employment skills & Public services

A reading comprehension and writing activity at L1/L2 and at E3 on Walter Tull, one of England’s first black professional footballers and the UK’s first black army officer. He has an inspiring story and was killed in action in France 100 years ago (March 25, 1918). David Lammy MP is calling for his Military Cross to be awarded posthumously as an inspiration to others. Plenty of possibilities for speaking and listening discussions around the topic.

Editor's note

A reading comprehension and vocabulary activity suitable for both ESOL and Literacy / Functional Skills. The activities are based on a BBC News article about John Cronin’s online business, John’s Crazy Socks. John, who has Down’s Syndrome, is a co-founder of the business, along with his father, Mark.

This teaching and assessment resource combines reading comprehension and a letter writing task based on an advert for a volunteer role as a Customer Service Assistant for a charity shop.

In Task 1, students read the job advert and answer questions to check their understanding. In Task 2, they make notes about their personal skills and qualities, then draft and write a letter to apply for the volunteer role. An additional, extension task is provided for students who either work at a faster pace or at a higher level, and involves writing a personal statement for a college course.

A differentiated resource to recap many number & measure skills and to help learners with the skills needed when looking for or applying for a job.

There are 6 questions in both the L1 and L2 version – working out weekly pay, annual salary, tax payable, comparing pay to JSA (Job Seeker’s Allowance), reading/completing a bus timetable and correcting a job acceptance letter (L1 Functional English proof reading).

5 questions, increasing in difficulty, to get learners to work out how many solar panels can fit on different size roofs. Involves metric conversions between mm, cm and m. Learners have to work with the panels being placed in 2 different orientations to work out the maximum number of panels that can fit.

This is a selection of literacy tasks, based on the Poppy Appeal 2016 and John McCrae’s poem ‘In Flanders Fields’, covering aspects of speaking and listening, reading and writing.

Editor’s note: covers all aspects of L1-2 Functional English – also suitable for GCSE.

A huge and extremely comprehensive pack of resources. Written for ESOL learners but many parts are also suitable for Functional English and/or Job Skills groups. Includes:

A couple of resources for planning a CV.

Firstly, I would check learners understand the term ‘Employability’ and, using the letters in the the word, ask learners to come up with ideas for the personal skills and qualities needed to get a job. For example – E – enthusiastic, energetic, M – motivated, multi-talented …etc. I would then move on to the PPT.

A role play which teaches learners how to start looking for work using an agency. It also contains phrases to help learners to ask for clarification.

Three sets of dominoes to use in warm-up and for letter and word recognition activities. The first set, for pre-Entry ESOL and Literacy learners with very low levels of letter and word recognition, matches lower case to capital letter versions, the second set is a set of “doubles”, which can be used alongside the first. The third set, for pre-Entry / Entry 1 ESOL learners, matches a category to an example. Each set has 17 dominoes, so 4 each for a group of 4 learners, plus one to start.