Dice Questions

Purpose: to give lower level students speaking and listening practice; to give higher level students practice with critical thinking skills, as well as speaking and listening

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Materials: white board and markers for a group; typed or written page for one-to-one; dice (one die for each individual, pair, or small group); an object or picture for intermediate/advanced level

Prep: Prepare a list of 6 questions related to the current unit of study or the selected object or picture

Beginning level example: questions about family

1. Who lives with you?

2. How many people in your family live in Minnesota?

3. Where do the people in your family live? What countries?

4. Do you have children? How old are they?

5. What is a name that many people in your family have?

6. How many cousins do you have?

Intermediate/advanced example: Show students an object or picture. Ask questions that require different levels of critical thinking. For an object, ask questions about it and for a picture of a person, ask questions with she or he.

1. Describe: What does it/he/she look like, feel like, etc.

2. Compare: What/how is something like or different from something else?

3. Associate: What does it/he/she remind you of?

4. Analyze (only if the topic is a thing): What parts does it have? What is it made of?

5. Apply: What does it/he/she do? What might you use it for?

6. Argue for or against: good, bad, why?

Procedure:

1. If using a board, write the list of six questions or instructions that students can respond to about the topic, object, or picture.

2. Check for comprehension of vocabulary and instructions.

3. Model the activity with several students.

4. Students work with partners or in small groups. One student rolls the die to see which question he/she needs to answer about the assigned topic. Then the next student takes a turn with a new question.

A Great Resource for teachers and tutors

Notebook: Resources for the Adult Educator is a 16-page resource designed especially for teachers and tutors. It is published three times per year as a benefit for ProLiteracy members. Each article in Notebook describes a ready-to-use teaching idea related to reading, writing, listening and speaking, numeracy, or a practical application of literacy skills such as making a budget. Most articles contain reading material and/or worksheets that can be photocopied for students to use. In some instances, additional worksheets are made available online for tutors and teachers who want to do additional work on the topic. Each issue also contains an inspirational story about a learner or an instructor as well as a resources section that lists events or links to other valuable teaching resources.

The Spring 2011 issue of Notebook: Resources for the Adult Educator, is available online and we have been encouraged to share the link with tutors and teachers in our network.

In this issue:

• Health Literacy
• Applied Literacy
• Numeracy
• Exploring Resources
• Tutor Profile

Access an electronic version of this issue along with related expansion materials here.

For more information about ProLiteracy, visit http://www.proliteracy.org/.

This is the second in a series of two lessons based on Reading for Life, a two-volume collection of worksheets and activities published by the Minnesota Department of Education and designed to enhance the teaching of life and work skills to adult ESL and ABE learners. Both volumes can be found at:

http://www.themlc.org/Reading_for_Life_Lessons3.html.

Our intention is to help teachers and tutors by building lessons around specific competencies addressed in Reading for Life by Linda Strand. Each lesson plan outlines three stages of addressing a competency:

1. a real-life application
2. a list and links to applicable worksheets in Reading for Life
3. links to multiple-choice, CASAS-style worksheets and answer sheets

Lesson Name: Housing Advertisements (Reading for Life Volume 1, Unit 2: Ads: Jobs, Product and Housing)

Purpose: Learners will be able to read and interpret newspaper-style apartment ads.

Key Vocabulary: apartment, rent, lease, security deposit, property, furnished, available, unit, efficiency apartment, studio, utilities

Topics to Review: classified ads

Materials: apartment ads from a newspaper or other source, photocopies of apartment ads

Procedure:

Real-life application/creating context:

1) T facilitates discussion with students about the places they live. Do they live in apartments or houses? Discuss how many bedrooms there are, other rooms, utilities included, security features, furnished/unfurnished and anything else you and your students can think of. Use this as an opportunity to teach and review vocabulary.

2) Look at an apartment ad from the newspaper. Discuss with students the same information as before, based on the ad.

3) Students circle all of the abbreviations in the ad. T and students work together to figure out the abbreviations. Students look at other ads to find abbreviations. Make a master list on the board of abbreviations and their written-out form.

4) Abbreviation Scavenger Hunt: Give each student one abbreviation and a photocopied page of ads. The student scans his/her page to find all the instances of his/her abbreviation.

5) Ad rewrite: In pairs, students rewrite an ad for an apartment without using abbreviated forms.

Progress to Reading for Life, v.1 competency worksheets: Applicable worksheets: RFL v.1, pages 31, 32 and 33

Progress to multiple-choice format activities:

Housing Ad Worksheet for page 33

Stand-Alone House Ad Worksheet

Extensions:

• See Daily Living Activities on page 30 of Reading for Life v.1.
• Have students write a list of questions to ask when calling to inquire about one of the apartments on the worksheet. Do role plays in pairs after discussing the questions as a group.
• Do the Scanning for Items activity outlined in the Reading section of the Tutor Tip Archive on the MLC website http://www.themlc.org/Reading2.html

Recognizing Telephone Numbers

MLC trainers have written a number of CASAS-style lesson plans for use by tutors and teachers. We encourage you to check out the others at: http://www.themlc.org/Reading_for_Life_Lessons3.html.

The lessons are based on Reading for Life, a two-volume collection of worksheets and activities published by the Minnesota Department of Education and designed to enhance the teaching of life and work skills to adult ESL and ABE learners. Both volumes can be accessed from the link above.

Our intention is to help teachers and tutors by building lessons around specific competencies addressed in Reading for Life by Linda Strand. Each lesson plan outlines three stages of addressing a competency:

1. a real-life application
2. a list and links to applicable worksheets in Reading for Life
3. links to multiple-choice worksheets and answer sheets

Each lesson plan includes links to specific worksheets from the two volumes.

Recognizing Telephone Numbers

Purpose: Learners will be able to recognize phone numbers and distinguish their format from that of other personal information

Key Vocabulary: telephone/phone number, area code

Topics to Review: writing and saying numbers 1-10

Materials: phone book

Procedure:

Real-life application/creating context:

1) T shows the phone book. T asks “What information can we find in the phone book?” Use student responses to assess knowledge.

2) T writes his/her phone number with 1+ area code on the board.

T asks “What’s your phone number?” Students repeat the question.

T gives response, using own phone number. Students repeat the question until confident.

3) T asks: “What does the 1 mean? When do I need to dial 1? What are the next three numbers? What does area code mean? What is the area code where we live?”

4) Students practice asking for and writing down each others’ phone numbers.

5) Write different numbers on the board: phone numbers, Social Security numbers, birth dates, and addresses. Have students identify which numbers are phone numbers.

Progress to Reading for Life Volume 1 competency worksheets: Applicable worksheets: RFL v.1 page 59. Additional worksheets: Phone # Info Gap and Circle the Phone #.

Choose from worksheets listed according to your learners’ needs. Please see a copy of Reading for Life for additional worksheets and units.

Progress to multiple-choice format activities: A stand-alone multiple-choice worksheet to complement Reading for Life v.1 unit 4 is attached as well as a bubble answer sheet.

Extensions:

• See Daily Living Activities on page 57-58 of Reading for Life v. 1, as well as additional activities on pages 64-67 related to alphabetizing and using a phone book.
• Reading phone numbers can be an excellent pronunciation activity. Model the intonation used when giving a phone number, then provide students with a list of numbers to read to each other as a dictation. Or, give each person a different phone number and ask them to read it while everyone else writes it down.
• With lower level students, do the Personal Information TPR activity in the Tutor Tip Archive on the MLC website http://www.themlc.org/Listening.html

Making Grammar Text Exercises Open-Ended

Purpose: To make grammar text exercises more engaging and more multi-level; open-ended exercises allow students to participate at their own ability levels.

Preparation Time: 10+ minutes; allow extra time if you plan to make a handout rather than using the board.

Materials: grammar exercise from a traditional grammar book; board and markers

Preparation: Look at the sentences in the grammar activity and decide how you’d like to change them. For example, in a beginning level exercise, you might see the following sentence:

Lucy ______(do) her homework every night..

An alternate approach involves asking students to fill in the blanks with any word that makes sense in the sentence. Use the same text in Rounds 1 and 2, but change what students need to fill in.

Round One: Lucy does _______ every night.

Students could fill in the blank with: dishes, mending, exercises, etc.

Round Two: Lucy ____ her homework every night.

Students could write: finishes, does, checks, etc.

Round Three: Students write their own version of the above sentence, changing the name, the activity, the verb and/or the time.

Procedure:

I do it:

1) Review the vocabulary or grammar that you are focusing on. If your grammar focus is the past tense, make sure the verbs in the sentences are in the past tense.

2) Model the activity by doing several examples and using different words to fill in the blanks, so students understand there is no right answer, as long as the sentence makes sense. Go through all 3 rounds with each sentence.

3) Try doing some examples that don’t make sense to check for comprehension.

We do it:

1) Do a number of examples on the board, filling in the blanks with words elicited from students. Have fun trying out different possibilities.

2) Ask students to come to the board and fill in blanks. Other students decide if sentences make sense.

You do it:

1) Students work on their own to complete the sentences, written either on the board or on a handout. Tutor/teacher circulates to assist as needed.

Note: In a multi-level class, give a time limit rather than a quantity-of-work limit. Each student does as much as he or she can in the given time.

Statement Checks

Purpose: This is a conversation activity that encourages students to produce language quickly and cooperatively, while practicing a specific grammar point.

Prep Time: 10+ minutes (time needed to locate 3-4 pictures)

Materials: projector for showing pictures to class; 3-4 colorful, interesting pictures from magazines or books

Prep: Once you decide on the grammar that students will practice, choose photos to use both for modeling (“we do it” step) and for the activity itself.

Procedure:

I do it

1. Introduce or review the grammar structure and vocabulary you want students to practice, such as using prepositions, adjectives, or the present tense. Also, review the components of a simple sentence. You’ll model correct sentence structure in the “we do it” step as well.

We do it:

1. For the activity itself, students will work in small groups, but to model the activity, the tutor or teacher and the class act as one group. Explain that one person in the group is a recorder. For the “we do it” phase, the teacher acts as the recorder.

2. Show a picture to the class for one minute. For a large group, use a projector, if possible, so that everyone can see.

3. Ask students to say sentences about the picture, using the grammar point you’ve specified.

4. The recorder (teacher) makes a check mark on the board for each sentence that the group produces.

5. At the end of a minute, count the number of check marks. This is your score.

Note: For a lower level class, you might want to repeat the above activity, but model it with a small group, so students will understand how to proceed. Have one of the students act as the recorder this time.

You do it:

1. Now divide students into small groups.

2. Each group decides on a recorder within the group. The recorder also participates in producing sentences.

3. Show the picture on the projector for one minute while groups create sentences.

4. When time is up, students count the number of check marks they have.

5. Now show the class a different picture for one minute, with the goal of generating more sentences than they did the first time. Students will almost always find that they have more sentences about the second picture.

Vocabulary House

Purpose: This is an association activity and a memory aid that helps students retain new vocabulary.

Preparation Time: 5 minutes

Materials: markers, large sheets of paper, such as newsprint, one per student, pencils

Preparation: Gather materials. Think about the floor plan that you intend to draw on the board as a model.

Procedure:

1. Each student draws the basic floor plan of a house where he or she has many memories. The rooms/yard/gardens should be empty (no furniture) and large enough to write plenty of words in the empty spaces. Students use pencils initially, then trace over the lines with markers.

Demonstrate this activity first by drawing a simple floor plan of your own present or childhood home on the board. Model putting words into certain rooms and talk about the associations you’ve made. For example: “I put the word ‘traffic’ in the kitchen because that is the busiest room in my house. Everyone always ends up in the kitchen! It is the center of our family life.”

2. Students select a new word, associate it with a place in the floor plan they drew, and write the word in that room. Everyone will have a different association.

3. After they have done this with several words, students tell each other, in pairs or small groups, why they put each word where they did. When students tell one another why they put each new word in a particular room, they learn a lot about each other.

4. Students keep their Vocabulary House, adding words to it and talking with classmates about it throughout the unit or class.

5. Charts could also be posted on the wall, creating a “neighborhood”, while students continue to add to them.