General Resources

A-Z chart of pictures with the corresponding initial sound. I’ve tried to select pictures which Beginner ESOL adults will recognise.

A simplified version of a newspaper article. The reading is followed by comprehension questions, a meaning match, a word find, and a scanning for correct spelling exercise. Developed for an adult student with Asperger’s, as well as dyslexia, who needs lots of motivation and exercises easy enough for him to be able to be successful without too much help.

Adapted from a Level 1 resource What happens to Ice Falling from planes
from Dave Norgate (2010).

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.

Questioning for understanding is a really useful help sheet that encourages learners to ask relevant questions (any topic, any level). Based on Kipling’s “What and Why and When, And How and Where and Who” with teaching ideas and useful links.

For a related resource using the same idea to investigate and write newspaper reports please see Ellie Walsh’s Looking at Newspapers (below).

Handy reference for Entry Level ESOL and Literacy learners. Helps with Alphabetical order, upper / lower case and vowels / consonants.

A great help sheet for dyslexic learners who have difficulty remembering the difference between b and d. Tip: for some learners it may be best to teach just one strategy. For example, if they are left-handed show them the left-handed ‘thumbs up’ only.

Margaret Adams wrote this story to help a dyslexic student distinguish between ‘want’ and ‘what’. Numbered ‘cartoon’ blanks for student to illustrate, plus introduction, story and background notes.