Adult Literacy Core Curriculum - Nationally developed Skills for Life ...

Sample activities
• Work in pairs to help develop grammatical
awareness and apply it when writing, e.g. stop
every 10 minutes, get to the end of the next
sentence, read out their own writing to their
partner to check for grammatical sense and
correctness. Alternatively, exchange their
writing with their partner, read each other’s
writing and discuss its sense.
• Develop an awareness of different verb tenses by rewriting short extracts in a different tense, e.g. a
paragraph of an autobiography, a report on a current issue, an advertisement for a holiday. Discuss
the effect of changing the tense on other words, word order, the meaning of the text as a whole.
• Use word processor to change verbs from present to past, or to change nouns and verbs from
singular to plural.
• Reinforce their understanding of punctuation as part of the writing process by using
‘punctuation spot checks’ with a partner. When composing a piece of writing in continuous
text, one member of the pair says ‘Stop!’ Writers at once exchange texts and proof-read each
other’s to check if punctuation is being used. Discuss their findings.
• Plan, draft and write a short narrative or description to be marked specifically for sentence
punctuation and capital letters, which they highlight to show up clearly for their teacher.
Sample activities
• Use spelling strategies and dictionaries to check spelling as part of the standard proof-reading
process with their own writing.
• In a group, each person gives a new word that they have needed to be able to spell since the
last class; anyone can volunteer to spell it; if they cannot, the teacher writes the correct spelling
on the flipchart; learners select which words to add to their personal dictionary.
• Take a list of common homophones/near homophones (e.g. their/there/they’re, hear/here,
where/were/we’re, you’re/your, of/off, to/two/too) and in a pair compose a comical text which
uses each word correctly, e.g. The bouncers dust down their suits. There are six of them on the
door and they’re all very tough. You can hear them down the street calling, ‘Get out of here.
Where do you think you’re going to?’ ‘We’re coming in.’ ‘No, you’re not. Take your mate with
you and the two of you push off. You lot can go with them too.’ Then discuss what they learn
from this exercise about the various words, e.g. their forms, how they can be used, the sort of
writing they could be used for, and their meanings.
Writing
Commas
Commas can be problematic because they have several uses, but
most importantly learners need to know where they should NOT be
used – that is, where a full stop or other end-of-sentence marker is
needed. The use of commas to separate items in a list is relatively
straightforward. Commas to separate clauses or to bracket off a
phrase need to be taught in the context of developing control of
complex sentences, while drawing attention to their use in various
text types.
• Plan, draft and handwrite a short text to entertain (e.g. a poem, the opening of a story, a comical
anecdote) and exchange texts with their partner to read.
• Identify a writing task where legibility and neatness are essential (e.g. a letter of application for
a job) and use a word processor to compose, draft and edit it to produce legible text.
Spelling and word
structure
• Spell two-syllable
words containing
double consonants,
e.g. muddle, kettle,
common and
understand rules for
doubling consonants
with suffixes.
• Identify and spell
irregular verb forms,
e.g. would, could,
should.
• Understand spelling
patterns in plurals,
using rules such as:
– when y is preceded
by a consonant,
change y to i and
add –es, e.g.
lady/ladies;
– when y is preceded
by a vowel, add –s,
e.g. key/keys;
– add –es to most
words ending in –s,
–sh, –ch,
e.g. church/churches;
– change –f to –ves,
e.g. thief/thieves.
• Read and spell suffixes
such as: –al, –ary,
–ship, –ness, –ible,
–able, –tion, –sion.
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