Real-World Task
Write 2 to 3 highly familiar personal information details to complete a very simplified form to register for a financial literacy workshop for women.
Planning Context
Helpful Knowledge:
- Most capital and lowercase letters
- Numbers 0-9
Context:
- You often need to register for a class or workshop by providing personal details.
- There are sometimes financial literacy classes available for women to learn financial skills.
- This task reflects the intention to include all people in Canada in the themes. The language skills in this task could be applied to other contexts.
Vocabulary and Grammar
Sample Vocabulary:
- first name
- last name
- address
- phone number
- workshop
- register
Sample Grammar:
- Spacing between letters in a word
- Spacing between words
Knowledge and Strategies
Textual and Functional Knowledge:
- When you register for a class or workshop, you usually need to provide personal information.
- Forms have several spaces that you write information into. It is important to fill in all the spaces.
Sociolinguistic Knowledge:
- Workshops can help you learn skills that will be useful to you.
Activities and Tasks
Sample Skill-Building Activities:
- Discuss with learners: what do you spend your money on? Do you spend your money on necessities, like food, rent, and bills? Do you spend any of your money on fun things? Brainstorm ways that you can spend money.
- Discuss with learners: is it important to save money? How do you save money? Do you put it in the bank? What do you save money for?
- Discuss with learners: in your family or in your culture, who makes the decisions about money? Do men and women both make decisions about money? Tell learners that sometimes there are classes for women to understand more about how to save money. Ask learners: how do you register for a class? What do you need to do? What information do you give them? Elicit things like your first name, last name, and address or phone number.
- Review letter formation. Every day, review and practice three letters. Have learners write in sand trays, air-write, trace, and copy.
- Incorporate phonics activities based on the vocabulary items and other vocabulary related to the topic.
- Practice copying digits 0-9. Trace and then copy the numbers.
- With a partner, count items and then write down the number.
- Read Count Your Veggies with a partner. Play the audio for the book and read along. Count the items on each page.
- Read a very simple, instructor-made story about learning about money in a workshop for women. Read the story aloud, and then choral read and echo read the story. Talk about what the story means.
- On a piece of paper, personal whiteboard, or in a sand tray, write down the number the instructor calls out.
- Copy your phone number.
- Trace your own name, and then copy your own name.
- Practice first name and last name. On a very simple form, copy your first and last name.
- Trace and copy your own address.
- Incorporate other activities to practice personal information such as names, addresses and telephone numbers, both orally and through reading and writing activities.
Sample Skill-Using Tasks:
- Write 2 to 3 highly familiar personal information details to complete a very simplified instructor-made form to register for a conversation class.
Sample Assessment Tasks:
- Write 2 to 3 highly familiar personal information details to complete a very simplified instructor-made form to register for a financial literacy workshop for women.
Teaching Considerations
Cultural Considerations:
- Some learners may come from a culture or a background where it is less common to keep your money in banks. They may not trust banking, especially if they’ve experienced losing their money to fraud, theft, or corruption. When you discuss learning about money, gently teach learners that Canadian banks have to follow the laws and are very trustworthy.
- Some learners may come from backgrounds where women don’t have control over their own finances. Make sure that all learners in the class understand their rights in Canada.
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.
- 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.
- Show learners that the size of an image on the screen can be adjusted.
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.
- Some learners who are women may have experienced that someone else, such as their father, brother, or husband, controls their money. Gently teach all learners that in Canada, all people have the right to have at least some control over their own money.
Trauma-informed Strategies:
Possible Trauma Triggers:
- 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.
- Learners who have experienced or are experiencing poverty, or who have lost their homes or possessions, may find discussions of money triggering. Learners who have experienced theft, fraud, or corruption may also find this discussion triggering.
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:
- Invite a guest speaker who is aware of the level of the class to speak about financial literacy at a very basic level. If an external speaker who understands FL learners is difficult to find, you as the instructor may take this role, or another instructor in your school or organization.
- Play “bank.” Give learners an amount of play money. Have each learner count their money and write down the number. Have them “deposit” their money with another learner who is playing the role of bank teller. Later, have them “withdraw” their money and have the bank teller count out the correct amount.
- Fill out other highly simplified instructor-made forms for other purposes.
Realia:
- Play money
Units and Modules:
Lessons and Activities:
- 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)
- Janis ESL ISSBC: Banking and Money (Not the right level but can be adapted)
- Learning Chocolate: Money Matters: ATM (Not the right level but can be adapted)
- Tutela: Norquest LINC Phonics Curriculum: CLB FL
- 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:
- Unite for Literacy: Count Your Veggies
- Tutela: ESL Image Bank: Banking and Finance
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.
