ESL Literacy Starter Kit
ESL Literacy Starter Kit
Bow Valley Practical Guide to Teaching ESL Literacy: globalaccess.bowvalleycollege.ca/our-resources/publications-resources/practical-guide-teaching-esl-literacy
Practitioner Toolkit: Working with Adult English Language Learners
This toolkit provides a variety of materials to help language and literacy instructors who are new to serving adults and families learning English. These materials include a first-day orientation guide, lesson plans, and research-to-practice papers on English language and literacy learning. www.cal.org/caela/tools/program_development/prac_toolkit.html
Low Educated Second Language and Literacy Acquisition (LESLLA) – An International Research forum: www.leslla.org
Knowing Your ESL Literacy Students Project by the Calgary Immigrant Women’s Association - this project report gives an overview of how a LINC program works for ESL Literacy learners. en.copian.ca/library/learning/ciwa/kyls_project/kyls_project.pdf
Applying Research in Reading Instruction for Adults - First Steps for Teachers: lincs.ed.gov/publications/html/mcshane/
PDF: lincs.ed.gov/publications/pdf/applyingresearch.pdf
Building Literacy with Adult Emergent Readers, a video for instructors, is here: www.newamericanhorizons.org/training-videos
Teaching Reading
This series of videos from Literacywork International provides examples of ways to link oral communication skills and literacy skills: www.literacywork.com/Videos/Entries/2010/5/23_ESL_Literacy.html
ATESL Best Practices EAL Literacy: www.atesl.ca/resources/best-practices-adult-eal-and-linc-programming-alberta/eal-literacy/
This page includes a litst of best practices, scenarios and case studies (Vignettes) and a link to professional learning and curriculum resources.
The LINC Curriculum Guidelines, including the ESL/EAL Literacy Guidelines, are here: nlcg.achev.ca (The Canada Language Benchmarks and PBLA resources, such as the Language Companion, can be found in the Assessment section.)
Learning for LIFE: An ESL Literacy Curriculum Framework: globalaccess.bowvalleycollege.ca/sites/default/files/Curriculum_Framework.pdf
"Learning for LIFE: An ESL Literacy Handbook, published by Bow Valley College, is designed for instructors, program coordinators, and other stakeholders in ESL literacy. It is a practical handbook, outlining promising practices in program considerations, strategies for the classroom, and four different levels of ESL literacy. The handbook also includes a toolbox of materials and ideas for teaching, a literature review and an annotated bibliography of relevant sources in the field. The information in the handbook is based years of experience in the classroom combined with research and feedback from ESL literacy practitioners both locally, nationally and internationally." from Tutela (tutela.ca/Resource_6862)
ESL Literacy Readers from Bow Valley (aligned with the ESL Literacy CLBs): globalaccess.bowvalleycollege.ca/esl-literacy-readers
WestCoast Reader: thewestcoastreader.com
And here is a resource for using the readers: Using an e-book compilation of Westcoast Reader stories to teach strategic reading (PDF) - www.tru.ca/__shared/assets/Louise_Green__Joan_Acosta_-_Using_an_e-book_compilation_of_Westcoast_Reader_stories_to_teach_strategic_reading_pdf27044.pdf
ATESL EAL Literacy Resources for the Classroom: www.atesl.ca/resources/best-practices-adult-eal-and-linc-programming-alberta/eal-literacy/resources-for-the-classroom/
AlphaPlus Open Educational Resources Library: oercollection.alphaplus.ca
"With the guidance of a working group of educators from Ontario adult literacy programs, we've curated a collection of always free and reproducible and mostly open, quality instructional materials and content that tutors and instructors can use with adult learners. This is not another list of links leading you to sites and collections that you have to search. We've done the searching, reviewing, vetting and organization for you. All resources are ready-to-use and most have teaching tips and guidance."
*The reading levels are OALCF reading levels, not ESL Literacy CLBs.
For those looking for pictures to help create reading material, The Noun Project, thenounproject.com, collects, organizes and adds to the highly recognizable symbols that form the world's visual language, so we may share them in a fun and meaningful way.
Digital Skills Library from the EdTech Center @ World Education: digitalskillslibrary.org
The Digital Skills Library is an open repository of free learning resources designed to help all adult learners develop the digital skills needed to achieve their personal, civic, educational, and career goals. All resources within this library have been curated by educators to align to the Seattle Digital Equity Initiative Digital Skills Framework. All activities in the library are also included in SkillBlox, which allows you to search by skill, select activities you wish to use, and then organize and share these activities as playlists with others.
Smartphone Learning Modules from the Metro Toronto Movement for Literacy: www.mtml.ca/resources/smartphone-skills/learners-or-sps These learning modules include videos, tip sheets and mini lessons. The topics vary from creating a username and password to scanning a document or learning about icons and apps on smartphones. All the tip sheets and mini lessons are in pdf format. Practice online: mtml.escases.ca
AlphaPlus Useful Apps: alphaplus.ca/technology-resources/useful-apps
Canada Language Benchmarks ESL Literacy resources: www.language.ca/resourcesexpertise/for-literacy
Annotated samples for ESL Literacy PBLA can be found in the ESL for ALL Support Kit: www.language.ca/product/pdf-e-021-clb-esl-for-all-support-kit, Section V: ESL Literacy Resources Pages 218 - 228
My PBLA for those needing extra help with reading and writing: www.language.ca/resourcesexpertise/my-pbla/
The ESL Literacy Language Companion: drive.google.com/file/d/1fd-oneNsLZ0QFcr_wrMQHfdjwo8DogU8/view?usp=sharing
"The Language Companion is a learner resource developed to support a learner's settlement and language learning, and to facilitate a portfolio based language assessment process. There are three versions of the Language Companion: ESL Literacy, CLB 1-4, and CLB 5-8. In hard copy form, it is housed in a binder with tabs separating each section. The first five sections are provided in the attachment, and can support classroom language learning. Learners can store their portfolio contents in the final section. In the hard copy, a tab titled "My Portfolio", with sub-tabs for each skill, is provided for this purpose." from Tutela (https://tutela.ca/Resource_1978)
ESL Literacy at Tutela: tutela.ca/Collection?itemId=25519
Here is video explanation of the CLBs for ESL Literacy from the ESL Literacy Network at Bow Valley: http://youtu.be/X01IjmN9VM4
Alternative Formative Assessment Activities to Check for Understanding (Reading Comprehension): www.edutopia.org/blog/dipsticks-to-check-for-understanding-todd-finley
Assessing Knowledge of ESL Literacy
The reviews below were taken from here: www.mlots.org/other-adult-learning-videos
The Reading Demonstration was designed by Literacywork International as an assessment for low-level ESL learners. It uses real-life materials and texts. Students are asked to indicate what items they recognize and how much they can read. Materials include fast food items, utility bills, grocery flyers, along with connected texts such as short personal narratives and newspapers. Learners are asked to read aloud a passage written in their native language as well. This is a quick way for the teacher to get a good sense of the underlying fluency and decoding skills the learner possesses.
It has three sections:
A note on PBLA for ESL Literacy learners: www.thestar.com/news/canada/refugees-hoping-to-become-citizens-face-high-bar-to-achieve-language-benchmarks/article_2279f649-14b2-5dea-9a64-05eb021ad5c7.html
Refugees hoping to become citizens face high bar to achieve language benchmarks
Julie Ship, the settlement language co-ordinator for British Columbia’s Affiliation of Multicultural Societies and Services Agencies, argues that the portfolio process is not designed for adult literacy learners who face barriers to classroom engagement. There was no feasibility study of how changes to the assessment process might affect refugees with low-to-no literacy in their native tongues.
“We are hearing clients are intimidated by the whole process, and if they miss a class, which happens a lot when there are health appointments or they need child minding, they miss out on the assessment,” Ship says. “It is almost too rigorous. The idea was to introduce a steady flow of assessments, but it actually kind of backfires, because talking about assessments all the way through still conveys something scary.”
Curating Resources in Adult Literacy: sites.google.com/alphaplus.ca/curation/home
This collection was created by AlphaPlus and is for literacy instructors interested in incorporating e-learning resources into the learning environments they are creating.
Hands On! A Collection of ESL Literacy Activities from Nova Scotia -- older resource but lots of worksheets for practice: www.en.copian.ca/library/learning/handson/handson.pdf
A resource manual for ESL and literacy instructors working with low-literate learners: www.languagepeelhalton.ca/LINC-Teaching-Resources/Documents/Online_Resources_10_Acheved_CLB_Ref_Literacy_Resources.pdf and www.languagepeelhalton.ca/LINC-Teaching-Resources/Documents/Online_Resources_11_Acheved_CLB%20Ref_Literacy_Support.pdf
The BBC has excellent online resources here www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise (this site is now an archive) and here www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/
The Collaborations Series and Stories to Tell Our Children by Gail Weinstein-Shr et al that we looked at in the workshop were published by Heinle and are available at Amazon: www.goodreads.com/author/show/126118.Gail_Weinstein_Shr
The classic - A Handbook for ESL Literacy by Jill Bell and Barbara Burnaby - is sometimes available at Amazon and other online bookstores. Some of what is found in Jill's book can be found here: www.cal.org/caelanetwork/resources/limitedliteracy.html (Remember that the Pre-literate category does not really exist.)
Another classic - Bringing Literacy to Life has articles about theory and practice. You can download it here: www.greedymouse.ca/PDF/BrngnLtcytoLife.pdf This resource has articles about theory and practice.
Information about the Learners Lives as Curriculum approach is here: http://www.cal.org/caela/esl_resources/digests/Famlit2.html
Creating Authentic Materials: www.ncsall.net/fileadmin/resources/teach/jacobson.pdf
Two good articles:
What Works for Adult ESL Students: www.literacywork.com/Resources_files/What%20Works%20in%20Adult%20ESL%20Literacy.pdf
Less Teaching and More Learning(Project-based Learning): www.ncsall.net/index.php@id=385.html
There is an ESL Literacy YouTube channel here: http://www.youtube.com/user/ESLiteracy/videos?view=0
And here is my YouTube ESL Literacy playlist: www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6940301852B85EFD