Adult Literacy, Functional English, and GCSE Resources

This Blue Cross resource was written for strong E3 or L1 (or even L2) ESOL learners. I first used it as a homework exercise. The English on the site is a little quirky but it is an exercise using authentic material which always has its upsides and downsides.

However, it is good on human interests and most people like animals. It involves ICT, Reading and Writing. It’s best to pre-teach the vocabulary.

Also ideal for, and fully mapped to, Functional Skills English Level 1 reading and writng.

An outstanding 30 week scheme of work for Level 1 Functional English (one 3hr lesson per week). With Key Skills, adult literacy (Skills for Life) and Functional English mapping. Detailed content fully covers all speaking, listening and communication; reading; and writing criteria. With equality and diversity notes, Every Citizen/Child Matters, differentiation and more.

A timed 2-minute speed test where learners must find and circle the correct spelling (4 options are provided for each spelling).

Challenging multiple choice quiz of vocabulary “borrowed” from other languages such as French, Greek and Italian. Words and phrases include: fait accompli, deja vu, ad hoc, bric-a-brac and many more. Makes a good warm up and could be used with small groups or individually.

Set of interactive and paper based activities based on buying and describing clothes. The on-screen activities (match words and pictures, drag and drop sentences, cloze activitiy, crossword) make a good group activity on an interactive whiteboard and can be extended and consolidated using the dialogue prompts, vocabulary cards and other activities in the PDF document.

An outstanding resource for E1 emerging readers. Based on a humorous story, this set of multi-sensory phonics activities includes a 2 page story; detailed tutor notes; various sets of word cards for spelling, reading, rhyming, listening/speaking and alphabetical order activities; and a crossword.

A beautiful PowerPoint presentation with pictures to illustrate short and long vowel sounds.

Two Tarsia puzzles based around formal and informal language. Guaranteed to prompt discussion as learners solve the puzzles. I suggest that the smaller one (16 piece triangle) is roughly at L1 and the larger on (24 piece hexagon) is at L2. I have duplicated some of my word choices from Imogen Stewart’s excellent ‘Little Britain’ (Language: formal, informal or slang?) resource which was also about formal and informal language (see link below). ‘Cheers’ has ‘regards’ as its synonym because of email sign offs – which I have found to be an interesting topic for discussion.

A flexible and appealing set of exercises that can be used in a variety of ways – with or without learner support. Two worksheets for reading and spelling common items of food and drink, plus word cards. preEntry mapping information. First used as a preEntry revision exercise.

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.