Adult Literacy, Functional English, and GCSE Resources

A L1/L2 Functional English card match resource. Serves as a tactile supplement/plenary for the recognition of text and layout features assessed at Level 1/2. Colour coded to aid learners in organising the columns, this resource allows learners to place the layout feature next to its descriptor and layout effect.

Cards which can be used as a plenary or warm up to match definitions and features to types of text.
Editor’s note
With Functional English mapping

This is a game to form new words using syllables.All these words have three parts to them and multiple words can be made using different parts in different order

I have used this with L1 and L2 learners and they love it. I let them work in groups – no more than 5 otherwise it gets a bit too busy and confusing.

You may need to have pre-taught some common prefixes and suffixes and rules; how prefixes never change the spelling of the root word they join, etc..

Photos and pictures to match with accounts of real emergency situations. All in the present tense. All the accounts are true. Accounts can be cut in to strips and given to pairs of learners who can put them in to a sequence to tell a story. Leads to discussion on how we tell a story, and how we sequence sentences to make sense.
Lots of new, real life vocabulary to provoke discussion.
Some stories shorter and simpler than others to allow for differentiation in group.

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.

Cards to help students recognise what nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs.
They can then play the bingo game or use highlighter pens to identify the different parts of speech in a text.

Set of four graduated activities for preEntry up to Entry Level 2 ideal for mixed ability literacy and ESOL groups. Colour word cards provided.
Match identical pictures (Milestones 6-7)
Match or write colour words to pictures (Milestone 8 – Entry 1)
Simple cloze activity (E1-E2)

This is a resource for teaching compound words to mixed ability groups. There are five different word match activities and two help sheets.

I use the first two activities, sports and food, with E1-2 learners. Depending on their ability you can either give the learners both topics at once or give them one at a time to make the activity easier. For very low level students I’d give the learners one topic at a time and a help sheet.

Root word family cards are two sets of flash cards that can be used to visualise the concept of root words to entry level and L1 students.

The entry level cards contain a number of root words and their word families, with a picture representation of each word. The level one sheet contains a higher level of vocabulary and the pictures have been removed.

Lesson Ideas

This is a set of ‘shun’ suffix word cards to accompany the “Which suffix -cian -ssion, sion or tion?” resource (see below).

Print the sheets onto card or have them laminated, then cut up the individual root word cards for learners to sort under the correct headings.