ESOL Queen

I've been spending the last few weeks encouraging my Pre-Entry low literacy students to do self-study with a focus on phonics- particularly looking at initial sound patterns and CVC words. My students all have access to Microsoft Teams and after a lot of practice they can now log on and click on their class Team independently. When they have logged on they can click on the websites I post and access them on their mobiles. This has been really useful in enabling my learners to practice at home. If you want to know more about using Microsoft Teams with a low literacy class, let me know in the comments box below and I will post more information about it when I have time. Here are my best self-study phonics websites and videos: Citizen Literacy – Reading and Writing for Everyone  This is an excellent app for reviewing basic literacy and phonic skills. Learn to Read with Phonics | Starfall Education e Word Machine (starfall.com)   Phonics - KS1 English - BBC Bitesize phonics – Sha...

 Over the last few weeks I have been introducing my very low (zero) literacy ESOL students to body parts, health problems and medical treatment vocabulary. One of the main reasons for this is to encourage my students to be confident should they or their family need medical help. Another reason is to help them see that certain words like "children" and "expiry date" can be found on medication labels, enabling them to gain some practical skills for word recognition.  My PowerPoints can be used for both Zoom and face-to-face teaching. They include slow typing motion to show students how the words are formed (with colour-coded vowels). They also include matching activities, simple sentences to practice reading and a few have "fill in the missing letter" activities (see below). Today, I asked my colleagues to bring in their old "over the counter" medical packaging and I was able to create a mini pharmacy in my classroom. My students were able to look ...

After 3 months of online teaching due to lockdown, I am rather pleased to be back to face-to-face teaching again! It has been so lovely to see students in flesh rather than on a screen and everyone seems so happy to be back :) One of the things I've been keen to establish with my very low/ zero literacy Pre-Entry students is how much their literacy and language skills have developed over the last few months and where I will need to 'pitch' my class over the next few weeks. I will also have some new learners starting, so it will be useful to know how much to 'repeat' what we did online and which words and phonic patterns we can move onto next. Therefore, I've created a 'Pre-Entry Literacy Progression Test', which covers basic phonic activities such as initial letter recognition, CVC and CVCC words and simple sentences. I have also included activities to review personal information and basic vocabulary (e.g. colours, clothes and house objects etc.).  To do...