Adult Literacy, Functional English, and GCSE Resources

A fabulous City and Guilds style E3 literacy assignment that covers all aspects of E3 speaking and listening, reading and writing (see editor’s note below). Based on a trip to a seaside music festival, it makes a very appealing summer-time revision activity for music fans of any age.

A fabulous City and Guilds style E3 literacy assignment that covers all aspects of E3 speaking and listening, reading and writing (see Editor’s note below). Based on a real trip to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford it is written in a generic style and could be any local museum / art gallery.

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.

A substantial set of resources for BTEC Sport students. Based on a Functional English lesson given on Sport Relief day (but suitable for any time of year as it is based on the Back Up charity for spinal cord injuries – not Sport Relief). Includes

Fun, multi-purpose speaking / reading / listening / writing / maths warm-up activity that can be used at any level and for any subject – particularly effective at Entry Level. Learners shake two dice to locate a word on a number matrix (good for maths:co-ordinates too!).
Five sample grids are provided – covering descriptions, homophones (2 grids), spellings and clothes – plus a blank grid so you can make your own. Includes full instructions and can also be used for numeracy.

This is a resource I developed, prior to the May 2011 referendum, to use as part of ‘language for expressing opinions’ at E3 Level. It’s quite basic but can be developed in different ways for classes of different levels. It is based the Victor the Vote Counter video available on YouTube or www.aboutmyvote.co.uk

I created these hand-outs for my Entry 1 to Level 1 learners and used them to accompany Saul Pope’s E3-L2 Problem Page resource (see below for a link to Saul’s resource).

I found the resources very useful for both motivational purposes (all students enjoyed the discussion aspect) and also to inform future planning (all students found it difficult putting pen to paper when writing their response).

This activity is designed to follow on from previous discussion about formal language and letter writing. It can be adapted to suit all levels but is best for Entry 3 – Level 2.
Learners will consider the importance of the purpose, content, style and tone of letters; and write a suitable letter of complaint from a given scenario.

Originally used pre-2010-election in a mixed ability (E1-L2) group but also makes an excellent Functional English resource at any time.
Detailed 2.5 hour lesson plan includes discussion, mini-presentations, web research and paired writing. Includes internet research guidance sheets, scaffolded gap-fill sheet to help with the web research task and a sample MP information sheet. Ideal for (and fully mapped to) E3-L2 Functional English.

Stop FE/HE Education Cuts is a set of 6 photographs (taken in Hackney, March 2010). Each accompanied by questions to get learners thinking about the effects of proposed education cuts (spring 2010). Designed to accompany any of the 4 related resources on this topic (see below) and ideal for prompting discussion about the importance of education for all.
Contributed by Rebecca Galbraith, Rose Veitch and Rachel Emmett.