Adult Literacy, Functional English, and GCSE Resources

A set of Power Point slides to get Functional Skills students writing.
I use it towards the end of lessons to get them doing some free writing and to demonstrate whatever they have been working on in the lesson.
Ideas include: smoking, binge drinking, pets, tattoos, Christmas, mobile phones, changing laws, cars and more!

Learners must choose the next manager of the England football team. Using the task sheet to guide them, they must research, collate and present information for five candidates and then make the final choice.

There is scope for plenty of lively discussion around the choices made and also about what the manager’s job entails.

A Power Point presentation is included as an example, but can also be printed out to use in some of the additional activities described.

A powerpoint to spark discussion and introduce the topic of formal and informal language and choosing which is appropriate for different social and work situations. Aimed at E3-L1 Functional English learners.

The PPT can be used with the word match up game, which gets learners thinking about the difference between formal and informal language. Laminate the page and cut up into individual word cards.

This colourful PowerPoint aims to teach learners about the structure of words in the English language. Numerous examples are given to help learners think of their own root words, suffixes and prefixes.

[img_assist|nid=5121|title=|desc=|link=popup|align=left|width=68|height=100]This resource explores the differences between synonyms, antonyms and acronyms.
It includes an introductory PPT, a sorting activity with synonym cards, a Smart Notebook activity for interactive whiteboards, an antonym work sheet, and a synonym writing exercise.

I have found this a great resource for encouraging learners to explore a greater range of vocabulary, use dictionary and thesuarus skills, improve spelling and encourage descriptive and creative writing.

This is an activity on New Year. It was written for an E3 ESOL class but could be adapted for E2 fairly easily too. There is a reading comprehension, a group activity, writing practice and also an optional cut-up “top Ten” resolutions activity.

I haven’t done a lesson plan to go with the resources as I think they could be easily adapted and used in different ways.

A warm up or round up exercise to get Functional Skills students interested in spelling! A lot of my students are interested in tattoos (this is one of the few jobs where the fact that I am covered in them is actually a good thing!) and this had led to a lot of discussion.

I often talk through the importance of considering their designs before getting them done and this ties in nicely. It could be used as part of a session on tattoos, for example discussions and writing a letter to a friend to tell them about the pros and cons of getting a tattoo.

A complete lesson to help students in using these reference books. Look at and compare the features of different dictionaries, look up words in a dictionary, order words alphabetically and rewrite a text (in aprs) using a thesaurus to replace every instance of “good” with a more appropriate woprd

A Powerpoint suitable for an end of lesson assessment. Includes omissive and possessive apostrophes.

L1/L2 resource adapted from comma quizzes in The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation by Jane Straus. Nine slides of multiple choice questions. They are all in red, green, yellow or blue so that learners can throw beanbags into the corresponding hoops, or hold up corresponding cards etc. The choices are sometimes very tricky and this provokes a lot of discussion.