Real-World Task
Complete a very simple guided text about your home with 2 or 3 words using a word bank
(for example: living room, bathroom, yard).
Planning Context
Helpful Knowledge:
- Letter formation: capital and lowercase letters
- Some phonics: some single initial consonants
Context:
- Describing your own home is a good way to understand housing options in Canada.
Vocabulary and Grammar
Sample Vocabulary:
- house
- apartment
- yard
- bedroom
- kitchen
- Bathroom
Sample Grammar:
- Spacing between letters in a word
Knowledge and Strategies
Textual and Functional Knowledge:
- The rooms in a Canadian home all
have a name.
Sociolinguistic Knowledge:
- Talking about your home is one way to share about yourself and connect with other people.
Activities and Tasks
Sample Skill-Building Activities:
- Put large, clear photographs of different rooms in a home on the board, e.g. kitchen, bedroom, living room, and bathroom. Try to use photographs that represent likely housing choices for learners in your community. Discuss as a class: Where do you live? Do you have rooms like this? Is this similar or different from your country of origin?
- Use clear photographs and TPR (Total Physical Response) to practice task vocabulary.
- Practice vocabulary by playing games such as Bingo or Matching.
- Incorporate phonics activities based on vocabulary words and other vocabulary related to the topic.
- Have learners work together in small groups. Give each group a pile of room cards with clear photographs of the room (e.g. kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, living room, yard). Have learners select the cards that make up their home.
- Tell your group members about your home using the room cards, e.g. I have a kitchen. I have 2 bedrooms. I have a bathroom. No yard.
- Walk around the class and look at what learners have put together out of their room cards. Check which rooms learners have and say sentences about what you see: Everyone has a kitchen. Amina, Sadia, and Roman have 3 bedrooms. Tandi has 2 bedrooms. Jay and Nyachor have 1 bedroom. Parminder has a yard. Call out questions and have learners respond by putting up their hands: Who has a kitchen? Who has a living room? Who has 1 bedroom? Who has 2 bedrooms?
- Read a very simple instructor-made story about a home, e.g. Asa has an apartment. Asa has a kitchen. Asa has a living room. Asa has 2 bedrooms. Asa has a bathroom. Read the story to learners and then echo read and choral read the story. Read the story several times over several days and practice for fluency.
- Have learners trace room words from the Asa story to match pictures from the story.
- Read very simple instructor-made housing ads as a class, e.g. apartment. kitchen. 1 bedroom. or apartment. kitchen. bathroom.
- Copy 2-3 room words to say information about your own home. Tell your partner what you wrote.
Sample Skill-Using Tasks:
- Copy 2-3 room words next to clear pictures to share information about your own home.
Sample Assessment Tasks:
- Complete a very simple guided text about your home with 2 or 3 words using a word bank (for example living room, bathroom, yard).
Teaching Considerations
Cultural Considerations:
- Some learners may come from cultures where multigenerational families living together is the norm and may now be living in what is for them very unusual circumstances in Canada.
- Learners may have different expectations around sleeping arrangements in a family and may be used to having many family members sharing a bedroom.
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.
- Type information to appear on 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:
- Recognize that housing is expensive in Canada, and that many learners may be in insecure housing situations. Try to choose images of housing that represent actual housing in your community that learners may live in.
- 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.
Trauma-informed Strategies:
Possible Trauma Triggers:
- Learners who have been forced to flee from their own land may be triggered by discussions of homes and housing.
- Learners who have experienced trauma may not want to share information about their own homes; they may want to keep that kind of information private. Let learners know they can talk about any home if they don’t want to talk about their own home.
- 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:
- If you feel comfortable, share a story with the learners about your own home using a few photos from your home. Read the story to learners several times.
- Practice a very simple dialogue between two neighbours talking about their homes.
Realia:
- Housing ads
- Photographs of housing
Units and Modules:
- Tutela (CCLB): Finding a Place to Live: CLB 1L/2L
(Not the right level but can be adapted)
Lessons and Activities:
- The Literacy Centre of Expertise at TIES: Reading Skills Stories
- The Literacy Centre of Expertise at TIES: Adults Learn to Print
- Tutela: Norquest LINC Phonics Curriculum: CLB FL
- Tutela: Foundation L-CLB 2L Phonics Curriculum
- Tutela: Teaching the Mechanics of Writing and Letter Formation
- A search of NLCG (nlcg.achev.ca) may provide additional tasks that can be adapted.
Multimedia:
- Tutela: ESL Image Bank: Housing
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.
