Adult Literacy, Functional English, and GCSE Resources

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 topical investigation that can be used as a group or individual task. Learners imagine they have won tickets in the ballot and must plan their trip to Buckingham Palace.
Ideal for E3-L1 Functional maths, English and ICT but could be easily adapted for higher or lower levels.

A short project for L1 Functional Skills or ESOL, wherein students research aspects of a foreign holiday destination and produce a piece of persuasive advertising based upon findings.

A super very practical reading task to be used in conjunction with a property advertising newspaper. The resource here is specific to Glasgow, but can be easily adapted for other areas.
Learners follow the guidance given to find a home suitable for their friend.
Ideal for, and fully mapped to, Functional Skills English E3 and L1.

A great project that covers many Functional maths and Functional English criteria. You win the lottery, buy a mobile phone shop and have to furnish it from catalogues and/or Internet sites.

Learn about budgeting, displaying data, working with areas and floor plans, bank statements, rounding, estimating, and much more. Everything must be written up as a comprehensive report with a clear conclusion (a great guidance page on report writing is included in the resource).

Topical set of reading comprehension and research tasks written for Black History Month (October) but can be used at any time. Differentiated biographies (one for E3-L1, one for L1-L2) of Rosa Parks, known as “the mother of the civil rights movement”, with related comprehension, discussion and vocabulary tasks. There is also a cloze exercise and a timeline research task.

A fabulous and very topical study pack for Level 2 Functional English students. Covers all aspects of Functional English and is fully mapped to the Functional Skills criteria.
13 tasks covering reading, writing and discussion. Includes: spelling, dictionary work, formal and semi-formal letter writing, surveys and graphical information, reading comprehension, punctuation and paragraphing, and summarising. With teaching notes and several exemplar answers.

A beautifully prepared E3-L1 literacy workbook. Produced to be used during Black History month (October) at Bolton College but can be used at any time. The main text is derived from Kwesi Bacchra’s review of “Claudia Jones, a life in exile” by Marika Sherwood.
Exercises include reading comprehension, correcting spellings, dictionary and alphabetical order work, abbreviations, research and creative writing.

This is an adapted and expanded version of Jodie Travis’ ‘Hired or Fired’ resource which is of course based on the popular TV show “The apprentice”. I used Jodie’s resource last year with a really big group, getting them to create a poster to ‘sell’ Manchester. I added some more ‘Apprenticey’ bits in, such as getting them to pitch their ideas at the front of the class after they’d made the posters, and it worked really well.

Super set of three ICT task sheets that successfully embed Functional ICT, Functional English and even some Functional Maths!
Each task sheet involves composing, sending and replying to work-based emails: based in a dental surgery, a health centre and a travel agency.
Please also download the separate, very detailed, Functional Skills mapping document which includes differentiation ideas, teaching tips and embedding ideas.