Adult Literacy, Functional English, and GCSE Resources

An Entry 2 mock exam paper that follows the format for City & Guilds.

Based on an advert for a local sports centre in Barry.

Editor's note

Covers many aspects of E2 Functional English reading & writing including: general comprehension, vocabulary, form filling and written composition.

An answer sheet with detailed Functional English mapping is available for skillsworkshop contributors. Visit our Answer Sheets page for more information..

SLC Discussion prep for FS Level L1/L2. To be used to prepare for the SLC Discussion. Aimed at people involved in or looking to work in the Construction Industry.

Editor's note

Really useful one page handout. Aimed at Functional English students studying/working in construction but much of the guidance is suitable for planning and preparing for any formal discussion.

Two Excel spreadsheets to track students performance in Functional Skills Maths and Functional Skills English from Entry Level 1 up until Level 2. Can be used by teachers and I also send electronically or print them off and give students to complete themselves. 

This is targeted towards learners preparing for the Entry 2 Functional Skills Writing exam.  It uses the Entry 1 Cat Care text created by Emma Gentili (go to "See also"), and can be used in mixed ability classes together with the E1 resource. 

Editor's note

Love it when skillsworkshop users recycle resources! A great adaptation of the original E1 version :) 

I put this together when I found so many of my learners trying to hone their employability skills did not know what a lot of the words on job descriptions meant. 

Resource 1 (Definition matching cards: job skills and attributes): I laminated these and cut them up and they worked in pairs or threes to match them up.

There are two other linked resources, as below, to help students with getting to grips with the keywords used in Job Descriptions and Person Specifications. 

Use alone or as a consolidation resource for learners after attempting  E2 Homophone Cloze Exercises’ and/or  E3 Homophone Cloze Exercises – Set 1’ . Covers 7 sets of homophones from the E2 and E3 spelling lists. There are also some follow-up exercises.

Written specifically for the new reformed English content which expects secure homophone skills at much lower levels than previously. Covers all the homophone spellings required at E2 using differentiated sets of cloze exercises. 7 sets each with 15 questions / sentences plus detailed teaching notes and an appendix listing all E1 & E2 spellings.

Short sets of words for alphabetic sorting.   These can be used with literacy or ESOL learners.  I found they worked well at the beginning of each session while learners were still arriving into the class.  They work well as individual or pairs exercises.

The first set works best when each list is cut up and laminated as individual words in each group, so learners can sort them kinaesthetically.  

Get your learners thinking outside the box with this unusual warm up quiz that works well at all levels

Also provides discussion prompts and makes a great introduction to spelling compound words.

Two reading comprehension exercises differentiated to EL1 and EL2/3 Functional Skills English.

Based on an article from Summer 2020 about the extreme weather in the UK.  Designed for a mixed ability class so that everyone could be working on the same theme.  Simple multiple choice answers for EL1,  questions for EL2/3 allow for practice in sentence writing as well as comprehension.