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Organization and self-directed learning are job skills that are highly valued in the workplace.
Set for Success materials are your “Welcome to Class” handouts for Week 1.
English language learners are usually both new to college, and to learning English. In the first week you must concentrate on core college readiness skills.
These Unit 1 materials teach your students how to capture important information. They show the value of being organized and why passwords, etc., must be filed in a safe, accessible place.
Students need to learn their college ID number and college email account. They also need to practice basic digital literacy skills, like typing upper- and lowercase letters correctly. In Week 1, everyone must do those crazy-making once-and-done tasks like initializing a username and a password. Allow plenty of time, because novices always need one-to-one attention.
These practices also teach new arrivals (immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers) the American English conventions of where to write one’s first name and one’s last name, and how to write important dates in mm/dd/yy format.
Teacher to Teacher:
New students need orientation to your college email services, to their student portal, e.g., ctcLink, and to your Learning Management System. Ask yourself, can you easily explain the difference between a portal and Canvas to a native English speaker? Personally, I find this difficult because new terms are coined all the time.
Be ready to teach and reteach computer skills. There is so much jargon in technological English, and understanding the specialized vocabulary of computing will be important throughout the course. Listening comprehension skills are generally limited in beginners. Your students will only “learn by doing.”
Novices may have a smartphone. Often, they assume that they can successfully use it to access their college materials. Be prepared to teach the class the difference between using an app on a smartphone, and the added value of using a full program on a tablet, a laptop, or a desktop computer. Even if an individual seems like a “digital native,” check your assumptions.
Materials Management:
Throughout your course, your students will receive so many handouts. They should learn how to organize them for easy retrieval. To help make this happen, you should:
- Hole punch every handout to fit into a 3-ring binder.
- Print 5 headings (I’ve listed them below) on different colored paper (ideally card stock), thus creating a set of section dividers.
- Tell the students to buy a 3-ring binder.
- Check during the first week(s) of class, to see who has a binder.
- If yes, give the student a set of dividers and demonstrate how to insert them in number order.
- If no, remind the students that they’ll get their set of dividers when they show you they have followed your oral instructions.
Divider Headings:
1. Classroom How-to Handouts
2. Meet and Greet Conversation Practices
3. Words to Know
4. Grammar Handouts
5. Writing Handouts
Best Practices:
Each week, create weekly warmers for speaking, spelling and writing activities. This gives your punctual students something important to do while everyone waits for class latecomers.
Write these warmers on your classroom whiteboard, and insist that your students open their binders and use the handouts. Don’t forget to take a photo of each whiteboard warmer before you erase it. You’ve now captured the warmer for future use! I regularly use my photographs to create new practices. Level 1 students welcome “do-overs” and build their self-confidence if they get the opportunity to repeat old tasks.
If you use other paper worksheets during class, always show your students where to file them in their binder. Organizing all class materials in a single place will carry over into your students’ future careers.
I use this “you must get a 3-ring binder for my class – no excuses” technique to hone listening skills, along with teaching the use of the English alphabet, classroom vocabulary, digital literacy vocabulary, number order and the value of being organized.
UNIT 1 HANDOUTS: Classroom How-To’s
New SS LWIT vocabulary checker
Nationality home country fill in
How to ask the teacher to repeat
Other documents you will likely need:
- Course syllabus [use your college’s approved template]
- Homemade flash cards with the 26 letters of the alphabet and an appropriate image, e.g., apple, cat, umbrella [or make an alphabet as a group drawing activity: see Unit 5]
- Your assigned textbook