Pre-entry Dates and Ordinal Number Activities

I've been spending a few classes teaching my low/ zero literacy class how to read and say the date in English recently. We've done several activities looking at days, months and ordinal numbers vocabulary.

I have been trying to think of creative ways to make this language really meaningful and personalized to my students (particularly in terms on engaging in the literacy element). Therefore, I made two worksheets looking at birthdays and expiry dates for foods. I will also add my Ordinal Number PowerPoints and worksheets below.

The birthday worksheet was very interesting as many of my students could only tell me their own or their children's birthdays, but not any other family members. This really showed me how "birthdays" are not necessarily celebrated in some countries or hold as much importance as they do in Western countries like the UK. Therefore a few of the later activities in the worksheet can be adapted to each student.

My birthday worksheet is here:

The second activity I used to practice dates today involved showing my students expiry dates for food using recycled packaging. I asked my colleagues to bring in their recycled rubbish and gave it to my students to look at. This was very useful for my learners as many of them did not know how to read expiry dates or know when their food was  too old. We were also able to look at the differences between 'Best Before End', 'Display Until' and 'Expired', which is extremely important to understand and also  not eat any dodgy food or get food poisoning!

As a follow up to this activity I have made this Expiry Date worksheet.

My ordinal number PowerPoint is here:

My ordinal number reading and gap fill activity is here:

Do you have any good days, months or date activities or worksheets? Please put your thoughts and ideas in the comments box below. 😀