Adult Literacy, Functional English, and GCSE Resources

A lovely activity to use with groups of learners who are developing basic IT skills. This lesson focusses on the basic features of PowerPoint. The topic for this lesson is 'endangered animals' which is something that can start interesting discussions about the environment and sustainability as well as eliciting vocabulary for animals if working with ESOL learners.

Editor's note

Update 24/2/22: written by Sharon Roberts and Alexandra Bates, both of Essex ACL. 
This is a fun activity which encourages ESOL learners to engage with digital technology and transacting online. It provides opportunity to explore vocabulary related to shopping while also discussing the advantages of shopping for food online. It can be adapted to all levels and can be extended for a longer activity if required.

Editor's note

A hangman style game created in Google Jamboard (a free animated whiteboard app). Based on a game I used to play on a traditional whiteboard with a cut-out crocodile and person (held in place with blu-tac!) and river created with a blue whiteboard marker. When Covid-19 and remote teaching came along, I needed something else.

You can access the jamboard here. 

Here are few things on cooking verbs and recipes for E1-E2 ESOL and Entry Level 1 Functional English classes. Includes reading, spelling and saying the letters of the alphabet. Includes a recipe for pancakes but useful at any time of year.

Editor's notes

Fully mapped to the new Reformed Functional English content.

An interactive whiteboard activity with ten words to sort. Noun, verb or both is a good way to explore the way that words can be both nouns and verbs. Easily edited to suit E1-E3. .

Aron Ralston smartboard resources for Entry 1-Entry. Fabulous lesson plan and resources on the fascinating story of an American rock climber who sawed off his arm with a penknife in order to free himself from a rock fall and get some help. Includes interactive cloze exercises, photographs, lesson plan/objectives, syllable match, word sort and more.

An accompanying Word file (see below) includes an illustrated writing frame and differentiated word cards for word and sentence level work.

Titanic smartboard resources for Entry 1-Entry. Covers discussion, reading comprehension, phonics and writing composition. Great lesson plan and resources on this popular topic. Includes interactive cloze exercises, phonics/syllable exercise, ‘See, hear feel’ brainstorm, photographs, lesson plan/objectives, and more.

An accompanying Word file (see below) includes an illustrated writing frame and differentiated word cards for word and sentence level work.

This PowerPoint makes a lovely introduction to reading and spelling words with this consonant digraph in initial or final position.

A set of two resources – PPT and PDF file. Updated in 2008. Please ensure you download the PDF file as this includes full teaching instructions for the PPT.