Lesson Plan Resource

As tutors and teachers we all need a little help now and then. Lesson planning is a big challenge for most of us, particularly at the beginning of our experience. A website called UsingEnglish.com gives you varying levels of help in creating lesson plans. It offers complete lesson plans on some subjects, games and activities for others. Below is one activity from the site, a game called "Responding to Requests." It gives a long list of very bluntly worded statements. The task is to try to make them more polite by making them a little less direct. Here is part of the list:

Here you go.
Grab this.
Sit down and wait while I look.
I can’t help you.
Just a sec/ Just a mo./ Wait.

Treating the activity as a competition to see who can be more excruciatingly polite could be a very funny experience. The basic idea, though, is that beginning speakers of English tend to lack phrases that make their requests or commands sound more palatable. The ability to add, "Why don't you...?" or "Would you mind...?" or "I'm sorry, but..." can help learners soften their requests, which helps native-speaking listeners to be more inclined to listen to them.  Interestingly, in this game you have the option to stop if you either cannot make make a statement more polite or if your effort sounds less polite than the one before.

UsingEnglish.com has many more lesson plans ready-to-go, worksheets and games like this one.Why don't you pay them a visit?

Free Learning Website

Literacy Network volunteer Kelley Burd-Huss discovered a great resource recently and brought it to my attention. The website www.gcflearnfree.org has interactive tutorials for everything from numbers and measurement to food shopping, job searching and computer use. It provides graphics and spoken instructions that are slow and easy to understand for a non-native speaker of English. Being a baker myself I took one tutorial which led me step by step to measuring and mixing the ingredients for a cake. You can hear and read the instructions, then click-and-drag out, for instance, a box of salt and pour out 1/8 teaspoon. At the bottom of the picture below see the text of what the narrator is saying. You have to try it for yourself to appreciate how much fun it is. It has great potential for tutors who meet with their learners at a library or other site with internet access.

The microwave instructions are fun, because they teach how to set the cooking time and power on a microwave's key pad then drag a cup of coffee or a frozen pizza slice into the oven. When you succeed your food comes out steaming. It helped that a clear, natural sounding voice offered instructions in the background. When I made an error the voice sounded like my own internal thoughts saying, "Oh, yeah. I need to push the time button and then enter numbers."

The same drag-and-drop skills turn out to be helpful in the tutorial on how to fill out a job application. The learner simply drags his address or job history onto the right part of the application. A voice (again sounding like someone's internal monologue) lets you know when you get things right and guides you to the right answer when you get it wrong. It even makes comments like, "That was a nice place to work. It was a shame the company went belly up." In addition to applying for work you can learn how to prepare for and behave in an interview.

For the learner who wants to begin using computer applications like MS Word, Excel or Outlook, more clear pictures, text and voice instructions walk you right through. Basic arithmetic and math skills, money, safety, health and even telling time are all topics that make excellent lessons for tutors in both basic literacy and ESL. The service is free, but you will need to create a user name and password in order to use it.

The same drag and drop skills turn out to be helpful in the tutorial on how to fill out a job application. The learner simply drags his address or job history onto the right part of the application. A voice (again sounding like someone's internal monologue) lets you know when you get things right and guides you to the right answer when you get it wrong. It even makes comments like, "That was a nice place to work. It was a shame the company went belly up." In addition to applying for work you can learn how to prepare for and behave in an interview.

For the learner who wants to begin using computer applications like MS Word, Excel or Outlook, more pictures, text and voice instructions walk you right through. Basic arithmetic and math skills, money, safety, health and even telling time are all topics that make excellent lessons for tutors in both basic literacy and ESL. The service is free, but you will need to create a user name and password to use it.