Can any teachers help me with this

[Jiminy102]

I work with people who are homeless and have a mental illness. I am planning to try to help them increase their general grammer and English skills. I do not want miracles I just want them to be able to interview for a job and be able to prepeare a resume. Most of my clients do not have any more than a high school education, if they even finished scholl. Those who did finish barely finished. I have no idea where to begin. I have already done a group on Fractions with them and most of them were at a grade school level with math. Any help you can give me I would appreciate. Ideas on books I can buy of websites or anythign.

Thanks in advance.

 

[gemmie214]

I would suggest working on a functional math and reading level. Math for banking, budgeting, daily living math skills should be introduced first. Try using calculators (they are available for as low as 2 dollars). I don't think it is as important to be able to do the math in the head at this point. It is more important to get the answer. I would try http://www.pcicatalog.com/.

For reading I would try an adapted newspaper. It is easier to read and will help keep them up to date on currant events while practicing reading skills. I recommend News for You by New Readers Press.

Good Luck. I hope this helps.

Oh and a cost effective way to practice filling out applications is to go to various stores and collect them. I think you may be able to photo copy them and then have the clients practice on them. That way you can see where the concerns are and help them address them. If the writing is poor can they work from a computer?

 

[KarenB]

What a generous person you are!!! These people you are helping are very lucky!

While I am not a teacher (yet), I wonder if you contacted the PA Department of Education. Maybe they could send you some free materials.

There are so many "homework help" websites on the Internet that could give you a wealth of information in various grade levels that might give you a start on how to present the information to these people. You may even find some help for high schoolers and filling out applications and making resumes.

Don't know if I helped much, but maybe it is a start.

Karen

 

[Kermit]

I have a degree in English, but I don't really have any good ideas about teaching adults to speak proper English. It's so much easier to do when they're kids.

I guess it might help to start with basic sentence construction--subjects, verbs, adjectives, etc. While discussing these, you could talk about common errors in each sentence part. I'd discuss things like no double negatives, subject/verb agreement, I vs. me, etc. When you hear students use improper English, you could gently use those examples to show them why they are incorrect.

If you're interested in diagraming sentences, there's an easier way than the method you probably learned in school. Most people call it tree diagraming. You start by writing an S at the top of your paper, for sentence, then you make 2 lines coming down angled apart, like a triangle without a base. You write NP for noun phrase under the first one, and I think you write VP for verb phrase under the other one. (It's been ages since I've done this.) Then you further break down each part of the sentence with lines and label each section. It's much easier than the diagraming method where you have different kinds of underlining and all kinds of other crazy symbols that most schools teach.

 

[disykat]

Here's one little lesson I used to do with adult ESL students that might be fun and a good experience too (for sharpening public speaking skills) . Rip some pictures from magazines and have them each give a sales pitch for their picture. Encourage them to give details, a persuasive argument etc. You could even designate groups of them to critique certain parts -like listening for gramatical errors etc. - if they could do that productively.

 

[JohnTBap]

The research shows that the best way to improve your writing and speaking is by reading. The key to motivating reading is the find subject matter that the reader is interested in. Dr. Stephen Krashen (I know, I know EROS) reports that he had great success with a group of Asian women who were hooked on the Sweet Valley High series. Do they have access to a variety of books? Perhaps you can get them to a library somehow? The best of luck to you.

 

[Simba's Mom]

I used to teach in a slightly similar program. We took people on welfare, gave them math and english, interviewing skills, public speaking, and even supplied slightly used clothing for interviews. I have 2 of the books we used for English and Math here: English the Easy Way, by Schachter and Clark-Southwestern Publishing. For math, we used Number Power #2, Howett, Contemporary Books. Both books were supplemented with a lot of other stuff, but that's what we mainly used. Feel free to Email me or PM me, I'm sure I have other books and ideas (no guarantee on how good, just "other" ideas).

 

[Jiminy102]

Keep the ideas coming gang!!! Thanks or the help. I can use it. I am not a teacher I am a case manager in a mental health clinic which translates to....I get to do a litle of everythingg!!! Thanks for he ideas. Simba'smmom I will be contacting you!!!

 

[Jiminy102]

Just a bump for more great ideas!! Thanks Everyone.