I’m Dave, an ESOL teacher based in an FE college in Glasgow with over 20 years’ teaching experience. I hold the CELTA, DELTA and SQA TESOL Literacies qualifications and I’m also a teacher trainer for the CELTA and TESOL Literacies courses. I love teaching all levels of ESOL and I developed a major passion for teaching ESOL Literacy classes about 20 years ago.
I love interacting with my students in the classroom and supporting them towards the next level. I noticed, however, that ESOL Literacy learners seem to take much longer to improve and, like many other teachers I know at this level, I embarked on a mission to speed up their progress to get them to the next stage. While I loved my teaching time in class with students, preparing the lessons was another matter! Despite spending hours looking for resources, often this search was in vain. I would find material written for children, lacking relevancy or context or that was simply way too difficult for my group of students. I often knew what I was looking for but I couldn’t find it! After hours of fruitless searching, I would then put together my own worksheet to meet the aim of the material I had spent ages looking for. I ended up with material I was happy with but drained and frustrated before my classes.
My efforts started to pay off, however, as after a few years of this, I had built up a pretty large bank of resources, which I decided to compile into a pack for my students. Instead of photocopying worksheets before each class, I just printed the pack once a year and saved myself hours! This evolved over the years as I envisioned something more cohesive, following a syllabus, in the same way that course books at other levels do. I divided the pack into units, separated into relevant contexts and included a balance of activities to support students with their reading, writing, phonics and numeracy.
Many of the lessons in the pack included graded texts, with comprehension tasks, leading to personalised writing practice. As many of the texts were about me, colleagues affectionately dubbed the pack, ‘The Book of Dave.’ Other teachers started using the pack, feeding back that it was extremely helpful and saved them hours in prep. time. However, with colleges keen to reduce the amount of photocopying, I started thinking that printing ‘The Book of Dave’ might soon be untenable.
This was the push I needed to move forward with publishing the course book for ESOL Literacy learners, Read and Write every day. I ‘de-Daved’ the texts but retained the relevant contexts used for each unit (free time, transport, routines, food etc). I added more activities throughout, ensuring that the books included a balance of reading, writing, phonics and numeracy. As with other course books, I realised that students would benefit from a Workbook with homework tasks, to consolidate any work done in class. In addition, I wrote a Teacher’s Book with advice on how to stage the lessons, as I knew that even experienced teachers often haven’t been taught the specific skills needed to teach students at this level.
After the success of publishing this series of ESOL Literacy books, I then converted another pack of material I had created for my Upper intermediate class into a book that prepares them for the writing paper of their external exam, Writing for SQA ESOL National 5. While this was written with the SQA exam in mind (a Scottish qualification), I’ve heard from some teachers in England that it covers topics relevant to ESOL Level 1 (B2), e.g. formal/informal e-mails. I’m about to publish Read and Write every day ESOL Literacy plus, which is aimed at stronger ESOL Literacy learners who are working towards beginner level.
Contact me for any query about our books or to give feedback. If you’re interested in setting me up as a supplier for your college/ council/ school/ voluntary organisation then send me a message. You can get a 10% discount when ordering a class set. Happy to have a phone call to discuss this or any other matter.
Get your free guide on how to stage an ESOL Literacy lesson. In this blueprint, I take you through a reading and writing class step-by-step, with clear examples throughout, including sample pages from our ESOL Literacy course book, Read and Write every day.
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