Contextual Resources

This lesson is based around the story of Birkenhead resident Charlie Wright, who famously refused to leave his house when the local council decided to demolish the estate around it. Students have the opportunity to discuss themes of community, identity and change. Students watch a short documentary about Charlie from the BBC archives and answer comprehension questions. Charlie's story provides a context for a role play task whereby learners have to decide how best to regenerate Charlie's lost neighbourhood.

During the Covid-19 lockdown I started working online in Google Classroom and created this L1-2 writing task (and an accompanying introductory presentation) in Google Docs / Slides. Use the presentation to introduce learners (if needed) to Captain Tom and his remarkable achievement for the NHS (national health service) during the Covid-19 crisis.  Slides also provide links to related news articles (important for background information and also for demonstrating the layout and language features of articles). 

A PowerPoint set of L1-L2 reading, maths and writing tasks. All are based on information a recent UK.gov Home Office fact sheet about Prevent and Channel*. The fact sheet can be found online or downloaded from this page. Main Functional Maths coverage is reading and comparing whole numbers and percentages, and percentage-fraction equivalents. Some questions involve calculating percentages or checking the figures that are quoted in the text (Level 2).

Video task and reading comprehension based on the style of Entry ESOL reading exams. Taken from BBC Newsround website.

Editor’s note
Questions suitable for mixed ability classes from E2-L1 and make good discussion prompts for further work.

PPT with title slide and 3 slides and a set of suggested questions to go with it.
A further worksheet showing the number of seats for the parties for the last and new parliament with tasks for E3 to L2 learners.

Editor’s note
A great resource for prompting general discussion about elections, statistics, etc.

Using a video from YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6eTr4ldDYg) about the miniature earth I have created this PowerPoint on percentages. It will work well with John Thompson’s easy percentage worker-outer and Margaret Adams’ Calculating percentages as quantities (links below under “See also”).

This is a topical lesson, looking at the Japanese tsunami disaster and its coverage in the media.

It introduces students to identifying facts and opinions. It also allows students to discuss their own views (appropriately) about this disaster. Students are also given the opportunity to write their own newspaper article based around the facts of the events.

A Level 1/2 PPT quiz on commas. Some slides are based on persuasive-type texts so can also be used for purpose of text extension work, others are based on recent news items.

The game is multiple choice and based on colours. I use coloured hoops (as in hoola hoops) and bean bags. It can be team based or individual. Each player throws a beanbag into the hoop that corresponds with their chosen answer.

Stop FE/HE Education Cuts is a set of 6 photographs (taken in Hackney, March 2010). Each accompanied by questions to get learners thinking about the effects of proposed education cuts (spring 2010). Designed to accompany any of the 4 related resources on this topic (see below) and ideal for prompting discussion about the importance of education for all.
Contributed by Rebecca Galbraith, Rose Veitch and Rachel Emmett.