Your high school and young adult life skills, transition and VCE Vocational Major Literacy classes will love building their functional reading skills with this new unit on reading instructions and labels!
Instructions and labels are a part of using literacy for personal purposes, so it is important students can read, understand and use them easily. Instructions and labels are important in functional reading and in daily life skills - they help us understand how to use items, complete daily tasks, complete a process or find important information. Instructions and labels are used in everything from washing machine instructions to changing the batteries in a remote control. Being able to find key words, understand the meaning and context and apply the information to everyday situations can help build independence skills for the future. Reading instructions and labels on products, items, signs and recipes is a great way of building awareness of the many different text types that are used in everyday life.
Who is it for?
This resource is suited to high school and young adult students who are learning about functional reading skills with instructions and labels at home and in the community. The pages are age-appropriate for learners who are teen to young adult, with black and white imagery and a simple, easy-to-use page format.
Students who will benefit from this resource include:
- VCE Vocational Major Literacy Unit 1
- Life Skills
- Transition
- Work Education
- Foundation Skills
- ESL / EFL
What's included?
There are 16 topics. Each topic has 2 pages.
1.Using the washing machine
2.Cleaning windows
3.Taking medicine
4.Changing batteries
5.Making compost
6.Using a QR code
7.Making cordial
8.Using children’s paracetamol
9.Cooking pasta
10.Ordering pizza
11.Making packet soup
12.Using stain remover
13.Blender safety in the kitchen
14.Heating baked beans in the microwave
15.Paying with a credit card
16.Storing food
Each topic includes 2 pages - one to build reading and comprehension skills and the second to encourage application and deeper understanding. There are 32 printable pages in total.
Notes:
Measurements are in metric units.
Some pages include health related information and should not be used as a replacement for professional health advice. Do not use the dosage information in the antibiotic or paracetamol pages as recommended doses - these pages have been developed for instructional use only.
Some pages contain references to activities that should be conducted only with appropriate supervision, such as cooking and household cleaning tasks.
Here’s how:
Print or upload the pages for your students. Discuss written instructions and give examples of everyday household and community settings where instructions are important. Demonstrate how to find key words in the text and to search for information in the graphics and visuals as well as the text. Remind students to use decoding skills and to read the text several times before answering the questions. Provide resources to support application tasks or prompts as needed. This will often be an internet research task, a discussion group or a home-based practical activity.