Detailed Sample Task: EAL Literacy
CLB
3L-Reading
Interacting with Others
Getting Around and Transportation
Real-World Task
Read a short letter or email of a few sentences from a friend that describes their recent travel experience to another city or town in Canada.
Planning Context
Helpful Knowledge:
- Present Simple
- Past Simple with regular verbs
- Many people travel within Canada and to other countries for fun or work.
Context:
- Friends often send each other email or messages when they travel.
- There are lots of different places you can see in Canada.
Vocabulary and Grammar
Sample Vocabulary:
- tourist attraction
- zoo
- art gallery
- museum
- hotel
- means of transportation words: airplane, train, bus, car
- travel words: fly, ride, take, drive
Sample Grammar:
- Past Simple with irregular verbs
Knowledge and Strategies
Textual and Functional Knowledge:
- Emails contain an address line, a subject line, and a main body.
- Emails and letters usually start with a greeting and finish with a signature.
Sociolinguistic Knowledge:
- Friends often stay in touch while they are travelling.
Activities and Tasks
Sample Skill-Building Activities:
- Discuss as a class: Where have you been in Canada? Have you lived in any other places? Have you visited other places? How did you get there?
- Complete a “Find Someone Who” with travel and places in Canada, e.g. Find someone who has been to B.C. Find someone who has taken a train in Canada. Find someone who has been on a road trip in Canada.
- Colour the provinces and territories on a map of Canada. Label the provinces and provincial capitals.
- Complete a jigsaw of partially labelled maps of Canada with a partner in which one partner has some of the information and the other partner has the rest.
- Practice the vocabulary using vocabulary cards with simple definitions or photographs. Complete activities such as fill in the blanks, crosswords, and word searches.
- Read a simple story about visiting another province. Use pre-reading strategies such as prediction before you read. Find vocabulary in the story.
- Listen to a dialogue between two friends about places they have visited in Canada. Practice the vocabulary with a partner and perform it for the class.
- Complete worksheets on the irregular forms of the past simple.
- Using a word bank, write simple sentences about places in Canada.
- Fill in the blanks to complete sentences about travel.
- Use Google Maps to explore a different city in Canada. Demonstrate how to use route planning and street view.
- Teach email format. Have learners match parts of an email with the appropriate content.
- Practice completing an email template worksheet with provided information.
- Exchange email worksheets with classmates and have learners report on their partner’s travels.
- Practice sending email to classmates. Type in the address and subject line, and write a short message.
Sample Skill-Using Tasks:
- Read a short letter or email of a few sentences from a friend that describes their recent travel experience to another place in Canada (but a different letter or email from the assessment task). Answer comprehension questions on the main idea, purpose, and details.
Sample Assessment Tasks:
- Read a short letter or email of a few sentences from a friend that describes their recent travel experience to another city or town in Canada. Answer comprehension questions on the main idea, purpose, and details.
Teaching Considerations
Cultural Considerations:
- Canada is a large country, and different regions have different local cultures, including special foods, music, and events.
Digital Literacy Strategies:
Successful completion of some tasks may require some baseline knowledge and digital skills.
Learners may need to:
- Have keyboarding and typing skills.
- Locate, navigate and use websites.
- Use familiar apps, social media platforms and web pages.
- Read information from a screen.
- Write and send email.
Instructors can:
- Dedicate time to improve digital literacy for learners.
- Make and/or adapt digital materials.
- Introduce websites and/or apps that are relevant to the task(s).
- Support learners in finding, navigating and using websites, such as Google Maps.
- Teach reading strategies such as skimming and scanning to find information on websites or apps.
- Introduce tools and apps that can aid learners in coping with communication barriers, such as translation, pronunciation, text to speech, speech to text tools and so on.
- Share knowledge and strategies to ensure online safety.
- Refer learners to programs to improve their digital skills.
Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Indigenization Strategies:
- Use diverse representations of people in all your learning resources and images, including people who are 2SLGBTQ+, Indigenous, Francophone and of other cultures, and people who have disabilities or who are neurodivergent. Consider this diversity as you choose names for characters in stories you create as well.
- Use stories and representations of different regions of Canada, such as the West coast, the North, the Prairies, Central Canada, Quebec, and Atlantic Canada. When possible, show local culture.
Trauma-informed Strategies:
Possible Trauma Triggers:
- Learners who have experienced trauma, such as learners who have been detained or have been prevented from being able to move about in or leave a country, may not find travel enjoyable and may be triggered by this topic.
- When teaching about Canada, you may teach about things that are triggering to learners who have experienced trauma. We can’t know what the triggers might be and what seems commonplace to us may have a triggering component for learners. Be aware of this and be prepared to support learners as needed.
Strategies:
- Give learners advance warning of this topic and be aware that there may be learners who require support.
- Learners who have experienced trauma often benefit from having routine. Create a safe and supportive classroom environment by establishing familiar routines, repeated activities, and model friendly and non-evaluative interactions.
- Learners will benefit from positive relationships established in the classroom with the instructor and peers.
- Learners who have experienced trauma benefit from having choices.
- Allow learners choice:
- the choice to work on a different topic
- the choice to share or not share their own experiences
- the choice to work alone or to work with others
- the choice to take care of themselves
- the choice to step out of the learning environment
- Allow learners choice:
- When learners have shared personal distressing or traumatic experiences, make space for learners to feel safe and recover from the experience of sharing their experiences. Follow the activities which may make learners feel vulnerable with routine, predictable and comforting activities.
- Giving learners the knowledge, skills and language to access resources can be empowering.
Resources
Outings, Guest Speaker Suggestions, Extension Activities:
- Have learners work in small groups and have each group research a different region of Canada, e.g. the West coast, the North, the Prairies, Ontario, Quebec, Atlantic Canada. Each group can make a poster or give a short presentation about their region. After finishing the projects, have learners say where they would like to travel to and why.
- If you are from a different region of Canada, share a local treat with the class, such as Nanaimo Bars from B.C., perogies from the Prairies, blueberry grunt from Nova Scotia, and so on.
- Listen to regional music.
Realia:
- Images of different places in Canada
- Maps
- Google Maps
Units and Modules:
- Tutela (CCLB): Getting Around a City: CLB 3/4 (Not literacy but can be adapted)
- The Literacy Centre of Expertise at TIES: Going to a Powwow: CLB 3L/4L
- LINC 3 Classroom Activities: Travel and Transportation (p. 471-498) (Not literacy but can be adapted)
Lessons and Activities:
- Tutela: Writing Assessment: Write an Email about Vacation: CLB 3/4 (Not literacy but can be adapted)
- Tutela: Reading Assessment: Canada’s Regions: CLB 3 (Not literacy but can be adapted)
- The Literacy Centre of Expertise at TIES: Canadian Indigenous Content
- Tutela: Norquest LINC Phonics Curriculum: CLB 3L
- A search of NLCG (nlcg.achev.ca) may provide additional tasks that can be adapted.
Multimedia:
Detailed Sample Task
This exemplar is aligned with the Canadian Language Benchmarks (CLB) and is designed to guide and inform your lesson and module planning. Consult the Canadian Language Benchmarks English as a Second Language for Adults for detailed performance descriptors at this benchmark and skill.
The information in this document is not exhaustive and can be expanded on. As well, you can use more learner-friendly language in your materials and assessments.
This is NOT a lesson or module plan.
