Detailed Sample Task: EAL Literacy

CLB 3L - Speaking
Getting Things Done

Employment:
At the Workplace

Real-World Task

Ask a supervisor for a day off for a religious or cultural holiday.

Planning Context

Helpful Knowledge:

Basic workplace vocabulary: workplace, coworker, employee

Context:

Some holidays in Canada are statutory holidays. Schools, government workplaces, and many other workplaces are closed for statutory holidays. Other holidays are not statutory holidays, and it is common for employees to request time off for a cultural holiday.

Vocabulary and Grammar

Sample Vocabulary:

days and dates
polite phrases: Do you mind? Is it all right? Thanks so much!
shift
take a day off
holiday
celebrate/celebration
cultural holidays: Christmas, Eid, Thanksgiving, Diwali, Hanukkah, and so on..

Sample Grammar:

Modal verbs: would, could

Format of dates

Knowledge and Strategies

Textual and Functional Knowledge:

When asking for a day off, you need to know the day and time.

Sociolinguistic Knowledge:

Modal verbs and polite phrases help soften a request and show respect to a supervisor.

Activities and Tasks

Sample Skill-Building Activities:

Discuss as a class: Do you have a job right now? What is a shift at work? Which shifts do you work? What do you do if you can’t work a shift? How does this compare to jobs you have had before?
Review the months of the year. Sing 12 Months of the Year Song.
Review the days of the week. Sing Days of the Week Song or Days of the Week Song (Addams Family Tune).
Work as a class to create a large class calendar of cultural holidays. Write down the months of the year and write down the cultural holidays that happen in each month. Include holidays from many different cultures, including the cultures of all the learners in the class, as well as common Canadian cultural holidays.
Discuss as a class: Which holidays do you celebrate? Elicit from learners which holidays are celebrated in Canada as official statutory holidays (e.g. New Year, Good Friday, Easter Monday, Victoria Day, Canada Day, and so on) and which are celebrated in Canada but are not statutory holidays (e.g. Eid, Diwali, Hanukkah, and so on).
Fill in the blanks to write the dates of upcoming cultural holidays.
Discuss the vocabulary for the task. Write words and simple meanings to complete a mini-dictionary of task vocabulary. Practice this vocabulary using a variety of activities such as crosswords, matching, fill in the blanks, writing sentences, and games.
Incorporate phonics activities based on vocabulary words and other vocabulary related to the topic.
Practice the modal verbs could and would for polite requests and complete worksheets with could and would.
Read a short story about an employee who needs two days off to celebrate a cultural holiday with family and requests the days off from their supervisor. Listen to the instructor read, echo read, and then choral read. Read and practice the story multiple times over the course of lessons to practice pronunciation, intonation, and fluency.
Complete comprehension activities with the story, including matching vocabulary cards to words in the story, sequencing the images from the story to match the events, completing jigsaw activities about the story, answering comprehension questions, and working with a partner to retell the story in your own words.
Listen to a dialogue where an employee requests a day off from a supervisor. Practice the dialogue as a class and then with a partner. Perform your dialogue for the class.
Read a prompt card to ask your partner if you can take a day off to celebrate a cultural holiday. Perform the dialogue for the class.

Sample Skill-Using Tasks:

Ask your instructor for a day off from school for a religious or cultural holiday.

Sample Assessment Tasks:

Ask a supervisor for a day off for a religious or cultural holiday.

Teaching Considerations

Cultural Considerations:

Different workplaces may have different policies about requesting days off. Some employees may have holidays they can take, while others may have to work a different shift or request unpaid time off. Discuss the different possibilities with the class.

Digital Literacy Strategies:

Successful completion of some tasks may require some baseline digital knowledge and skills.

Learners may need to:

Have keyboarding and typing skills.
Locate, navigate and use websites.
Use familiar apps, social media platforms and web pages, such as employment payroll programs.
Read information from a screen.

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.
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:

In your examples include many different kinds of jobs and workplaces that may be familiar to literacy learners, such as cleaning, security, housekeeping, kitchen work, care homes,and so on.
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 experienced trauma may be triggered by discussions of authority.
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:

Give each learner a schedule with their shifts at a pretend workplace. Mark one shift that they cannot work because it conflicts with a cultural or family event (or an important medical appointment). Have them trade shifts with each other.
Using a very supported template, have learners research a type of job and share what they’ve learned with a partner.

Realia:

Schedules
Calendars
Online calendars or schedules

Units and Modules:

Lessons and Activities:

Tutela (OCDSB): Describing Future Employment Wants: CLB 3 (Not literacy but can be adapted)
Tutela: Norquest: Setting Employment Goals: CLB 3 (Not literacy but can be adapted)
LINC 3 Classroom Activities: Employment (p. 343-390) (Not literacy but can be adapted)
Tutela: Norquest LINC Phonics Curriculum: CLB 3L
A search of NLCG (nlcg.achev.ca) may provide additional tasks that can be adapted.

Multimedia: