Pre-Entry Resources

A counting game along similar lines to Snakes and Ladders. Learners will learn turn-taking, following instruction & basic counting skills. In addition, they will pick up social and communication skills along the way.

(Print onto A3 – a dice and counters needed)

Editor’s note
A PPT version is also included to enable the game to be played on a smartboard.

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.

This is a lower-level version of ‘My Busy Day’ Housework by Laurence Fletcher (see below) for a basic literacy for ESOL class. Also suitable for M8-E1 literacy.
Reading comprehension, simplified cloze and sentence exercises.

The worksheets can be used as seems appropriate for your learners. My method was for learners to identify the seasons and write the names beneath the pictures – I had put them on the board in a random order for learners to be able to use first and second letter recognition to match the words and pictures.

The days of the week sheet was used as a recapping tool – learners insert the first letter, then fold at the dotted line and write them out again. This was followed by a Q and A session on ‘what do you do on…’ to get learners talkiing about activities.

Housework is a set of three related resources:
Housework is a very funny video (with a rather predictable ending!) accompanied by words and jolly music and designed to introduce, complement or summarise the two related resources below.
Although aimed at M8-E2, ESOL/Literacy groups of all levels will enjoy this video and it is bound to prompt disucssion. Supplied as a zipped WMV (Windows Media Video) file (6.8 MB). A big thank you must go to Janet Fletcher who co-authored this video!

Big letters reading game is a board game that provides practice reading individual letter sounds and common phonemes such as ch, sh, & th. Best laminated – you will need a die and counters.

A brilliant 18 page student workbook originally written for Milestone 8, E1-2 ESOL students to use at the beginning of the academic year. Complete with student and tutor record pages, evaluation, and answer sheets. Includes spelling, reading, cloze exercises and comprehension, sentences, word searches and a crossword.

Another super 18 page student workbook originally written for Milestone 8, E1-2 ESOL students to use at the beginning of the academic year. Complete with student and tutor record pages, evaluation, and answer sheets. Includes spelling, reading, cloze exercises and comprehension, form-filling, sentences, word searches and a crossword.

5 hand drawn storyboards – shopping, holidays, swimming, getting-up and a bank robbery! Pictures can be cut up, muddled and re-sequenced; simple sentences written out to match with pictures; sentences written in the present to be changed to past tense (ESOL); write sentences then join with conjunctions e.g. then, next; or simply as prompts for conversation and discussion.