A format for designing activities for your embedded literacy learning outcomes

This post extends my previous one on how to write embedded literacy learning outcomes.

Once you’ve come up with a really clear and narrowly focused learning outcome for your literacy intervention, you need to design or adapt some teaching and learning activities to go with it.

For example, you might have come up with something like this (there are more in my other post):

1. Identify
2. specialised vocabulary
3. in the context of basic tool identification for building and construction

1. Understand
2. a variety of sentence and paragraph structures
3. in the context of reading an employment agreement

1. Explain
2. Rhetorical patterns including cause and effect
3. in the context of workplace health and safety instructions

1. Apply
2. a variety of reading comprehension strategies
3. in the context of understanding a text on dermatology for hairdressers

Here’s the format I’m going to start using as a good starting point when I get to Module 5 in our NCALNE (Voc) training:

1. Start with some kind of listening and speaking activity.
2. Move on to a focused vocabulary activity
3. Extend this with some kind of highly targeted reading activity
4. Follow this up with a writing activity that activates the vocabulary at the word level
5. Extend this with some kind of writing activity where the learners need to use the words in context at the sentence and paragraph level

In terms of planning, here’s what I would expect a good tutor to be able to articulate for every one of these activities in the sequence:

1. A detailed explanation of the activity.
2. The step it’s targeting in the relevant progression.
3. The purpose of the activity.
4. A a brief outline of the teaching points.
5. A list of resources used or created.
6. Teaching strategies employed.
7. Examples or samples of learner evidence at the appropriate standard required.