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Have any of you taught English classes to non-English speaking seniors? If you have, what textbooks did/do you use? Thanks!

We went to the library and got out a selection of beginner's ESL books and workbooks. I divided them into pairs and the pair worked together on the book and tape or video. When they felt confident that they knew the material they taught another pair and the other pair went through their book which was slightly different with them. Most of the beginning books cover the same material so they get it from two different view points. There were lots of pictures and they liked the videos.

I also got several simple ESL programs for the computer and they learned to type which really made them feel special and helped a lot with spelling. There is an ESL vocabulary program to learn typing.

We always stopped for tea/coffee and snacks and the students would take turns bringing in something special we baked - I gained 5 pounds at least that session.

Mostly though, they wanted to brag about children, grandchildren, their former countries and family and jobs. They brought in pictures and prepared a little talk to give to the whole class on their interests. It was amazing what some of them had done - one was a ballerina for her country's national ballet and one man was a talk show host in his country. We got pictures of their country off the Internet so they could illustrate their talks if they didn't have pictures of their own. Then we made up little books for them to take home to read with the script from the talk and copies of the pictures. More people took home books from that bookcase than from all the other material we had available.

We had a TV station nearby and I used to pick up the script from the morning news each morning and we would watch the video I had made of it and then follow along with the script. That provoked a lot of discussion and questions. It was just the summary of two or three minutes but took us 20 minutes or more to do.

I got them dictionaires in their own languages and English and they would look up a few words that interested them and put them in their own dictionaries. I got $1 store address books for them so they were small and easy to access.

We also volunteered at the local school once a month and at Immigration giving a tea for new Canadians and that involved a lot of talking and directions.

Gradually they began to bring in documents and forms that needed filling out and so we would go through those things together and explain why the department needed the information and how to best give it.

Several of the students were illiterate in their own language so we got more advanced students from their language group to teach them to write in their own language. Those volunteer students also helped to relay messages when the students couldn't understand us or vice versa. We visited several senior's homes and each student found a partner and carried on visits after class and I think soome friendships developed that carried on until their friend passed away.

Most of the seniors wanted a job of some type to help out the family and so we tried to arrange a match of talent and need in the neighbourhood. We lost most of the men students within one or two months to a local mushroom plant that needed workers but established an English program at lunch for them so they could continue to learn. We also had classes on the bus that took them to and from work and that was fun and worked out not too badly, especially when we hired a young Canadian mushroom picker to teach the class.

We had lots of parties to celebrate all Canadian holidays and holidays from their countries and included families so they had to learn games and songs for those occasions. We went on outings as often as possible, to the library, the local stores to check out bargains and explain about products and for them to explain about products they used as there were sevearl ethnic stores in our area.

We had nurses, doctors and social workers come to speak and taped their talks so we could write out the scripts and go over what they had said. It is amazing how many metaphors people use when they give a talk. They left brochures, often in the student's own language. I think the most dramatic talk was from the local policeman because most of the students were scared stiff of him. He started to drop in once a month or so for tea - probably because our snacks were better than the donut shop but he was such a character that they all came to love him and trust him.

We explained about their rights and gave them options of what they could do if they were suffering from elder abuse and so on.