Detailed Sample Task: EAL Literacy

CLB FL - Speaking
Sharing Information

Health and Wellness

Real-World Task

Answer 2 to 3 personal identification questions at the emergency department.

Planning Context

Helpful Knowledge:

Greetings: hi, hello
Basic health words: doctor, nurse, hospital

Context:

When you arrive at the emergency
room, or any place that you go for an appointment, you need to answer personal information questions.

Vocabulary and Grammar

Sample Vocabulary:

name
address
phone number
date of birth / birthday
what
emergency
months of the year: January, February, and so on

Sample Grammar:

Questions with what: What is your name? What is your address? What is your date of birth?
Present simple with is: My name is… My address is…

Knowledge and Strategies

Textual and Functional Knowledge:

When you arrive at emergency, you give basic personal information.

Sociolinguistic Knowledge:

You greet someone before you start talking to them.

Activities and Tasks

Sample Skill-Building Activities:

Practice greetings and introductions at
the start of every class. Greet each learner and be greeted in turn. Vary the greetings over time to include hi, hello, and good morning / afternoon. When learners are comfortable with these, add how are you? When they are comfortable, add introductions: What is your name?
Discuss as a class: what is a doctor? Where do you see a doctor in Canada? Do you have a family doctor?
Put a clear photograph of a hospital on the board or screen. Discuss as a class: what is this? What is an emergency? When do you go to emergency? Teach that the emergency room is for emergencies. Discuss medical emergencies, miming as necessary for a broken arm or leg, a heart attack, a baby who is very sick, and so on. Try to explain using photographs that those who go to the emergency department with minor issues such as a cold or headache will often wait for a very long time. Support learners by providing the local options for receiving medical care outside of the emergency room.
Put three photographs on the board: a photograph of an emergency department,
a photograph ofa family doctor at a neighbourhood clinic, and a photograph of
a bottle of painkillers. Using words and miming, role-play different levels of medical problems, such as a broken limb, a heart attack, a headache, a stomach ache, and ask learners where you should go. After a few rounds, have learners take turns role-playing a medical problem.
Provide each learner with a personal information card that includes their full name, address, and date of birth. Use these cards for many different activities to practice personal information.
In various activities practice asking for and saying your personal information.
Copy own name.
Trace and copy own address. Say own address out loud.
Sing the 12 Months of the Year Song.
Ask learners if they know their birthdays.
Go around the class and say the birthdays. Write a list on the board of the months of the year and write down each learner who has a birthday in that month.
Role-play an emergency room. The instructor plays the part of the receptionist and asks each learner: What is your name? What is your address? What is your date
of birth? Learners play the role of patients and answer each question.

Sample Skill-Using Tasks:

Use your personal information card to answer questions: What is your name? What is your address? What is your date
of birth?

Sample Assessment Tasks:

Role-play answering 2 to 3 personal identification questions at the emergency department. Use own personal information to answer the questions and use a personal information card to support.

Teaching Considerations

Cultural Considerations:

Not everyone knows their date of birth; people who don’t know their date of birth are usually assigned a date of birth (often January 1) during immigration. They can find their birthday, or assigned birthday, on their personal identification cards such as health cards or license.
While it is generally a good idea to teach learners only to go to emergency for medical emergencies, not every community in Canada has enough family doctors or walk-in clinics, and many people in Canada don’t have a family doctor.

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.

Instructors can:

Dedicate time to improve digital literacy for learners.
Make and/ or adapt digital materials.
Introduce websites that are relevant to the task(s).
Support learners in finding, navigating and using websites.

Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Indigenization Strategies:

Use diverse representations of people in all your learning resources and images, including people who are 2SLGBTQIA+, 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.
Make sure learners know that medical care in Canada is free.
Make sure learners know that they have the right to privacy, and that anything they tell a doctor or nurse will not be told to a family member or spouse. Recognize that this fear of their family information being divulged is exacerbated when there is a need for interpreters. Interpreters, depending on the size of the community, can often be a known member of their cultural group. Learners need to be aware that as part of their job as an interpreter, they are bound by confidentiality.

Trauma-informed Strategies:

Possible Trauma Triggers:

Learners who have had bad experiences with medical care or with lack of medical care, or learners who have been through serious illness or the serious illness of a loved one, may find this topic triggering.
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
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:

Visit the receptionist area of a clinic (arrange it with them first)
and then elicit an LEA (Language Experience Approach) story from the learners about what they saw and heard.
Invite a public health nurse who understands the level of the class to visit and talk about when to go to the emergency room.
Create a class calendar of birthdays.
Create a map of locations of medical clinics, emergency rooms or numbers for tele-health.

Realia:

Stethoscope (play) or nurse’s cap for role-playing

Units and Modules:

The Literacy Centre of Expertise at TIES: Visiting the Doctor: CLB FL/1L

Lessons and Activities:

LINC 1 Classroom Activities: Health and Safety (p. 366-404)
(Not literacy but can be adapted)
Tutela: Following Medication Instructions: CLB FL/1L
Tutela (Archway): Personal Information: Numeric Focus: CLB 1L/2L (Not the right level but can be adapted)
Tutela (Archway): Personal Information: Alphabetic Focus: CLB 1L/2L (Not the right level but can be adapted)
Tutela (Archway): Dates and Days: CLB 1L/2L (Not the right level but can be adapted)
Tutela: Norquest LINC Phonics Curriculum: CLB FL
Tutela: Foundation L-CLB 2L Phonics Curriculum
The Literacy Centre of Expertise at TIES: Reading Skills Stories
The Literacy Centre of Expertise at TIES: Adults Learn to Print
A search of NLCG (nlcg.achev.ca) may provide additional tasks that can be adapted.

Multimedia: