LESSON	TEACHER	FULL LESSONS
1	D. Alexander	Navigating Homebuying
2	D. Alexander	Navigating Homebuying
3	N. Coffey	Navigating Homebuying
4	N. Coffey	Navigating Homebuying
5	N. Coffey	Navigating Homebuying
6	A. Dumas	Homebuying in a Homeless Shelter
7	D. Jarrat	When Students Are Ready
8	E. Allman	Thinking for Yourself
9	V. Gouvea	Content Based Instruction

 

1) Navigating U.S. Financial Systems by Dulany Alexander, Operation Bootstrap

Before the class dived into the topic of homebuying, I decided that the students and I should discuss the general content and intention of the overall curriculum framework. I briefly outlined the five strands, and then announced that the teachers had decided to teach a Navigating Systems unit. I drew a "mind map" with the words "Navigating Systems" in the center of the blackboard. We started with the word "navigating." Using its cognate, students examined the idea behind the word. Was it the same as driving? Could a passenger navigate? Did a vehicle have to be involved? In the end, we decided that the core idea behind the word "navigating" was the ability to give directions for how to get somewhere. Next, we moved on to the word "systems." We compared various systems that were different here in the United States than in the students' countries of origin. The list was much broader than what I had imagined - everything from how to cope with snow, school closings, winter clothing, to the unfathomable ways of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. We decided that the homebuying curriculum touched on two of the systems: housing considerations and finances in America.

After the students identified these two important systems within the larger one of homebuying, we agreed that the financial system touched everyone and was, therefore, useful even to those who had no interest in homebuying.

More than half of the class had lived in either their parents' or their own homes before coming to the United States, and most hoped, someday, to own a home. But none had ever encountered a home buying system like ours. To begin with, buying a home for cash was the only homebuying system that they were familiar with, and consequently, they were very eager to understand the American banking/credit/mortgage process. Learning about housing issues per se was less of a concern to the students.
 
 

2) Mystery Words by Dulany Alexander, Operation Bootstrap

Throughout the whole homebuying unit, I encouraged students to converse with Americans by incorporating a standing feature to their homework assignments that I called 'mystery words'. Each homework assignment included a mysterious English word or phrase that students hadn't yet heard of. The students would then ask an American to define that word or phrase. Then the students would bring their now-defined words and phrases back to class. For one of these assignments I pointed to an electrical outlet on a wall and asked: "What do you call this?" They were to mimic me and come back with the answer. For rain gutters and downspouts, I drew a sketch of a rain gutter. For this assignment, students could either point to an actual gutter on a house or use my sketch. For the following assignment, I gave them the words: "fire hydrant" and asked them to find out what it meant. One of the most successful mystery word assignments was when I showed the students a photograph of a house under construction and pointed to some exposed studs. They were then asked to describe studs to an American and come back with its correct name. These mystery word assignments were very popular, and the students never let me conclude a class without sharing the results of their findings and making sure that we all truly understood the new word.
 
 

3) Find Someone Who…Survey by Nancy Coffey, Operation Bootstrap

The purpose of this activity was to get a feel for the students’ experiences and desires around home buying and finance. It was very enjoyable and gave all of us an idea of who the classes' "experts" were on various topics. The format can be adapted to fit any topic. It also provides practice in asking yes-no questions.
 
 

4) Guess the Category by Nancy Coffey, Operation Bootstrap, Lynn

Each week I gave the students a list of 10 new vocabulary words to study for a sentence dictation the following week. We often played warm-up word games to strengthen vocabulary retention. One such favorite was a game we called Guess The Category. To play, one student leaves the room while the teacher writes a category on the board. An example might be "Banking Terms." The student returns and sits with his/her back facing the board. The other students in the class shout out phrases like checking account, customer service representative, canceled check, teller or ATM machine. The student in the chair must come up with the category.
 
 

5) Crossword Puzzles by Nancy Coffey, Operation Bootstrap, Lynn

As we developed a larger homebuying vocabulary base to work with, I made crossword puzzles on the computer software crossword puzzle-maker, Wordcross. The use of crossword puzzles in the ESOL classroom is a very versatile and creative method of reinforcing vocabulary; students love it. And as in many other instances, they worked together in pairs to complete it. (Wordcross HI TECH of Santa Cruz 202 Pelton Avenue, Santa Cruz, CA 95060 408-425-5654 $44.95)
 
 

6) Using the Adult Literacy Curriculum by Ashley Dumas, Project Hope

We used the FannieMae Foundation's Adult Literacy Curriculum, How to Buy Your Own Home concentrating on lesson two in the first chapter. This section, entitled "Getting money to buy a home," defines financing terms such as down payment, mortgage payment and interest to name a few, as well as explains such key concepts as credit history and closing costs.

I approached the topic of homebuying with a general in-class discussion. Were students interested in the topic? Why? Did any of the students already own homes? What did they think it would cost to own and maintain a home? After that discussion, we worked with Unit 1 of the curriculum workbook, "Do you want to buy a home?" Students had little difficulty understanding the vocabulary and concepts presented in this unit. There was some confusion with the terms "borrow" and "lend," but after using ALRI lesson materials developed for this purpose, the students could use the two terms correctly.
 
 

8) Mapping Exercise of Real Estate Jargon by Eunice Allman, Quincy College

In order to gage how much my students already knew about homebuying, we did a whole-class mapping exercise. I put the terms "to rent," and "to buy" on the blackboard, and recorded the terms that my students came up. I explained that these terms were part of the real estate "jargon". We had already explored the notion that every discipline and setting has its own jargon and vocabulary. Thus I was able to connect this new topic to my overall syllabus. The words generated from the mapping exercise included the following: loan, bank, owe, lease, contract, security, deposit, mortgage, deed, record, Probate Court, evict, multi-family, condominium, commission, taxes (Federal & State), foreclosure, FannieMae.

The three students who own homes generated most of these words based on their own dealing with the housing market. One of these students in particular, a Vietnamese woman named Ha works in a bank and was familiar with the bank's role in the homebuying process. She discussed her experience buying her home in Dorchester and contributed a lot of useful information to the discussion.
 
 

9) Borrowing/Lending Discourse by Veronica Gouvea, Roxbury Community College

We began with a general discussion of the idea of being a home owner as opposed to being a tenant. Students wrote outlines listing the advantages and disadvantages of being homeowners. Later they wrote compare and contrast compositions based on their outlines. These essays led us into a further discussion of borrowing money and the differences between the terms "bank" and "lender" agreeing to the more general term "lender." I felt it was important to make clear that whatever the reason for borrowing, much of the language is the same.