Adult Literacy, Functional English, and GCSE Resources

Simplified texts and DARTS activities with follow up writing tasks at E1 and E2.
Based on material from the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust website http://hmd.org.uk/
Prior to completing the reading and writing tasks the class listened to a podcast of a survivor talking about their experiences.The material from both the listening activity (http://hmd.org.uk/resources/podcasts/i-was-there)

This resource helps learners hear rhymes and recognise corresponding letters/digraphs, rimes and onsets etc. Take simple limericks and poems and get your learners to put them together.

I created my own limericks to match work we had been doing on long vowel sounds (it is not that difficult to do once you get started). Well-known poems and nursery rhymes also proved particularly popular as many knew them already by heart from childhood and some were doing them now with their children.

This is great as a warm-up activity or a bit of end-of-term fun. It is suitable for a mixed ability group of numeracy learners, or indeed literacy or ESOL learners. This quiz tests learners’ knowledge of how old someone has to be in order to do certain things legally, e.g. be a blood donor. It can be used in small group or pair work (which worked well for me) as well as individually.

This simple wordsearch is ideal for ESOL beginners and E1-2 Literacy. Nationalities included are Polish, Bangladeshi, Italian, Japanese, South African, Chinese, British, Egyptian and Irish. The chosen nationalities give examples of the most common suffixes -ish, -i, -ian, -n and -ese.

Topical PPT adapted from Chris Farrell’s How many smileys 1-20 (see below).
use as a starter in pre-Entry/ E1 ESOL, Maths or literacy groups.

Clicking reveals the number (as a digit) and a further click reveals the number spelt out as a word. Good used with small individual whiteboards.

Powerpoint for practising numbers to 20, not necessarily all at once.

Used as a starter with all ESOL maths groups to check the spelling of numbers. I created it for E1 / E2 and it could be used for ESOL, Literacy or Numeracy classes.

A selection of smileys are shown on each slide. Clicking reveals the number (as a digit) and a further click reveals the number spelt out as a word. Good used with small individual whiteboards.

A set of cards including birthday, get well, good luck and new baby aimed at E1/ E2 learners. Print them off and fold in half as practise for writing short messages. It may help to elicit suitable phrases from students and discuss suitable layout for their text inside the card.

I also recommend bringing in some sample envelopes to help learners recognise how to lay out a name and address.

Ideal for Entry Functional English writing.

A set of reading and writing activities to accompany Readwell Road book 1A The Shop. You will also need need to download book 1A (scroll down to See also)

Readwell Road adult reading scheme books have been a great hit since they first appeared on skillsworkshop in 2010. Site contributor Linda has now gone on and independently published the complete set of 48 books. Linda has recently produced sets of photocopiable activity books to accompany all the stories in Steps 1 and 2.

A set of 9 email templates / writing frames for all levels.
Long ones, short ones, plain ones, shaded ones, some with proof reading tips, one with a focus on using conjunctions. Pick and choose to suit your learners.

With a useful Functional English mapping chart listing all the coverage and range writing statements for each level from E1 – L2.