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...

 I can't believe it's nearly Easter already. This term has gone so quickly teaching online, but I can't wait to go back to face-to-face lessons after the Easter holidays.  Here are two of my latest PowerPoints for zero/ low literacy Pre-Entry ESOL learners looking at Easter and Ramadan. This year in the UK Easter is on Sunday 4th April 2021 and Ramadan is roughly between Monday 12th April and Wednesday 15th May (depending on the moon).  My students come from very mixed backgrounds (mainly Middle Eastern and European) and they love finding out about each other's cultures. These PowerPoints are designed to give students the language to describe the festivals they might be familiar with and to share how they celebrate them.  Each PowerPoint consists of vocabulary colour coded to show the phonic patterns, videos, matching activities and spelling activities. Each PowerPoint should last about 2 hours on Zoom, depending on your class. I hope you enjoy using them, just click...

 I've recently created several resources to use with very low literacy Pre-Entry learners on Zoom. For the last six weeks we have been learning about rooms in the house and household objects. These materials have been created specifically for learners who are unable to read and write on their first language and who really struggle with learning to read in English. I have chosen to focus on rooms/ house objects as a way of making language meaningful and practical for my learners and to encourage them to practice using English in their everyday lives. Several of my learners really enjoyed describing their 'bedrooms' and 'living rooms' to me using their mobile phone cameras to give the class a tour and others started to write down object words on post-it notes which they stuck around their house! I have also tried to breakdown words by basic phonic and sound patterns. The Teach ABC English  https://www.teachabcenglish.com/book-1-activities.html website has some great ...

 It's been awhile since my last few posts. but I have been rather busy going back to online teaching on Zoom. These last few weeks have involved going back to shouting "press connect to audio!" and "you need to unmute!" to my ESOL learners, most of whom have coped with online learning very well. I've also had the chance to be more creative with my online resources.  Here are my latest PowerPoints for my low/ zero literacy Pre-Entry learners learning about objects in the home. I have made the PowerPoints to focus on phonics and sound patterns and have chosen home words as a way to make the language relevant and meaningful to my learners' lives. Each PowerPoint has activities such as "read and find the object", encouraging my learners to go to the correct room and find the objects in their house e.g. "cup" and "cushion". There are also activities for matching the words to the pictures, filling in the missing letters, watching ...

I have been very busy teaching my Entry 1 students writing skills over the last few weeks in preparations for their Entry 1 ESOL and FS writing exams.  Enabling ESOL students to write at Entry 1 can be a challenge, as some literacy concepts such as writing postcards and letters can be quite alien to learners. Writing postcards especially is a very British/ Western activity and these days so much communication is now done online digitally (when was the last time you handwrote a note rather than send a text message?). One of my students pointed out today that she doesn't need to worry about spelling when she e-mails her boss as the computer checks everything automatically! Therefore, I try hard to familiarise my students with as many different types of written text as possible and encourage them to write about places they are familiar with using the name of another friend in the class to write to.   As with my previous Entry 1 worksheets, the first page is designed as an ex...

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 ...

 I've been back to face-to-face teaching with my ESOL students for nearly 2 weeks now. It has been really fun, although slightly strange with all the social-distancing and Covid-19 rules. One of the challenges my students have faced is accessing updated Covid-19 information in their own languages (particularly if they have low level English). They have also been unsure what to do if they, a family member or someone they live with has Covid-19 symptoms or what the rules are for self-isolating.  So I made several enquiries on Twitter and Facebook to other ESOL teachers and refugee organizations and was sent these very useful links in response:  https://www.walsallforall.co.uk/post/covid-19-translatedguidance https://www.covid19.nhs.uk/   https://www.doctorsoftheworld.org.uk/coronavirus-information/      This information is as up to date as I can find from 6/10/20. I have made some basic posters for my learners here: The second poster also has information...

Introducing ICT to Asylum Seeker and Refugee Women This year I had the privilege of introducing a small group of asylum seeking and refugee women to ICT skills for the first time. These ladies have had little or no experience with using laptops or computers and were desperate to learn. Some of them had very little English and low literacy (zero beginners) and others could read and write quite well (Entry 1+). None of these ladies knew anything about computers and had not had the opportunity to learn before- they may have spent years living in a refugee camp or been denied access to ICT education. None of these ladies had an e-mail address, but they were desperate to have one and learn how to use it! First of all, we started the classes by learning basic computer skills and how to type. My students were used to do everything with one finger on their phones, so they tried typing everything with just their index finger (this proved quite time consuming). I was able t...