Contextual Resources

A lovely activity to use with groups of learners who are developing basic IT skills. This lesson focusses on the basic features of PowerPoint. The topic for this lesson is 'endangered animals' which is something that can start interesting discussions about the environment and sustainability as well as eliciting vocabulary for animals if working with ESOL learners.

Editor's note

This is a practical handling data task at L1 and L2 which uses the Internet to find the necesssary data in order to complete a Expenses claim form.

I work with Landbased students most of whom visit an exhibition at the Bath & West show ground. In this task they have to work out how much it will cost them to travel to the site and how much the entry fee is, then enter this information onto a expenses claim form as if they were submitting it to an employed to reclaim their costs.

For L2 students they need to find the actual cost of the fuel they use for the journey.

[img_assist|nid=4821|title=|desc=|link=popup|align=left|width=68|height=100]Two resources that can be used together or independently.

• An ICC / Literacy / Functional English / ESOL research project task sheet on “My favourite British animal”. E3-L2 reading, writing and ICT
• A basic animal anatomy vocabulary sheet for E2-E3 ESOL (paw, claw, antler, etc.)

For more of Kathy’s animal resources go to ‘see also’ below. (Birds of Prey resources)

Embedded literacy and Functional English for animal lovers! Also ideal for ESOL.
A beautiful set of three resources.

• Birds of prey technical vocabulary PPT (with link to a video) L1-L2
• Birds of prey gap fill (subject-verb agreement) E3-L1
• British Birds of prey reading comprehension L2 (also great for ESOL leaerners who will also learn some geography about the major British hill areas)

For more of Kathy’s British animal resources go to ‘see also’ below.

This Blue Cross resource was written for strong E3 or L1 (or even L2) ESOL learners. I first used it as a homework exercise. The English on the site is a little quirky but it is an exercise using authentic material which always has its upsides and downsides.

However, it is good on human interests and most people like animals. It involves ICT, Reading and Writing. It’s best to pre-teach the vocabulary.

Also ideal for, and fully mapped to, Functional Skills English Level 1 reading and writng.

Lovely ICT / reading activity for Milestone 8 literacy or ESOL learners. 8 animals. Drag the names to the correct pictures.

A lovely ICT / reading activity for Milestone 8 literacy or ESOL learners. 12 colours. Drag the name to the correct colour.

Selecting, highlighting and formatting practice – 4 different documents (of varying complexity). A poem about cats; a restaurant menu; information about dogs, cats and trees! (some are also suitable for reading & comprehension work). Two include formatting instructions, others are to be reproduced as closely as possible to practice advanced formatting skills.