As you work through these tools, you'll meet terms you already know from reporting: learner plan, goals and progress. But in most programs those words come pre-filled with the funder's categories or the categories used in a generic curriculum. Planning then becomes a matter of fitting a learner into the categories. Here, the same words mean something different. They're filled with the learner's own purposes and your reading of what they need to fulfill that very real literacy demands aligned with those purposes. Setting the ready-made categories aside to see the learner directly takes deliberate effort at first since it runs against a habit that the reporting system trains.
Start with your program. Before planning with any learner, get honest about the context you're planning within — what your program actually does, where the flexibility is, and how much of your teaching is already anchored to a practice rather than generic instruction. (→ Program context tool.)
Have the conversation. Sit down with the learner and find out what they're actually trying to do in their own words, not fitted to your program's and the funder's categories. Discuss what brings them here, what they already do well, who helps them, what they want to work toward. This conversation produces the learning plan, completed together and written in their words. (→ Conversation guide, which leads to the learner's → Learning plan.)
Align goals to practices. Now do the translation only you can do: take the learner's stated goals and work out which practices they belong to, and how you'll bring practice-based instruction to them within your program's context and capacity. This is where the learner's purpose becomes a teaching plan. (→ Instructional planning tool.)
Study the practices you'll teach. For each practice you're focusing on, look closely at what it actually demands — its texts, its purposes, the thinking it requires, the strategies that serve it. Gather the resources you'll need. (The practice briefs are linked in the → Instructional planning tool.)
Build an instructional routine. Now build the repeatable way you'll work a real text or task from the practice — the rhythm you and the learner return to, not a new lesson plan each session. A routine gives the teaching a dependable shape while leaving plenty of space for addressing the specifics of what each text asks. (→ Instructional planning tool — the lesson-routine step.)
Understand the learner's enabling skills. As the learner works within a practice, notice which underlying skills the practice brings to the surface — where they're capable, where it's effortful. Informally evaluate them against the real demands of the practice, not in the abstract. (→ Enabling skills tool.)
Teach in the doing and notice growth. Do the real work, with the learner engaged in the actual task, and teach the underlying skills where the practice needs them. As you work, watch for growth — the specific, observable choices and actions that show a learner is doing the practice more confidentially and independently. Choose a final task that's real, not a proxy. (→ Progress reference.)
Close the loop and repeat. What you notice sends you back to the initial conversation and learning plan: a shifted goal, a new practice, a skill that now needs attention. The routine begins again.
Every tool on this page — the conversation guide, program context tool, planning organizer, skill profiles and progress reference — is a Google Doc you can edit and make your own. They are starting points, not fixed forms.
If you have a Google account, open the tool and select File > Make a copy. That saves your own version to your Google Drive, which you can change however you like. The original stays as it is for everyone else. If you'd rather work outside Google, select File > Download and choose your prefered format (i.e. Word, Open Document or PDF), then edit the copy on your own computer.
Either way, adapt the tools to fit your context: reword a prompt, drop a section you don't need, add one you do. They should work for how you actually teach, not the other way around. You know your program and your learners, so treat these as your's to adapt.
Good planning starts with honest self-knowledge. Before you can plan with individual learners, it helps to understand the context you’re planning within — what your program actually does, what you actually teach, and where the flexibility is.
This tool moves through three steps. The first two ask you to look at your program in familiar terms — what it offers and what learners actually do with reading and writing. The third step maps that onto the seven practice types. Generic instruction has its own place in the map to help you recognize the role it has and where there is room for instruction better aligned to learners' goals.
This will take abut 30 minutes to complete. Go through the tool once and revisit when there are program changes.
Use the conversation guide at the start of a program, as goals shift, and whenever a check-in makes sense. The questions are prompts, not a script. Listen for what the learner tells you, notice what they don’t say, and let the conversation go where it needs to go.
The questions focus on literacy, but numeracy and digital skills belong equally in the conversation and the plan. Adapt the prompts as needed for learners whose goals centre on numeracy, digital skills or a combination of all three.
Conversation and observation are continuous. You will learn more about a learner from six weeks of watching how they approach a text than from any intake conversation. This guide is a starting point, not a one-time event.
The conversation takes approximately 30-40 minutes to complete. Complete with each learner and revisit for 10-15 minutes if goals change.
This plan gathers what you've already done into one place. It builds on your program context, your conversations with learners and the instructional briefs you've reviewed. The plan moves through three steps.
Align the learner's goals to practice types. Work out which practices a learner's goals belong to. The planning template documents this for a single learner or a whole group.
Study the practices you'll teach. Each instructional brief is linked, so you can review what the practice demands before you teach it. As you review, start gathering key resources.
Build an instructional routine. This is a repeatable way of working a real text or task from the practice. Unlike a lesson plan, it isn't new content built fresh each time; it's a dependable rhythm shaped by what the text itself demands.
This is a reference tool for the educator. This is not a form to complete with the learner present. Use it to recognize growth in any six of the seven practice types, and to choose a final task that fits the learner's goals. Learners are likely focusing on one or two practice types. Reporting isn't included because it's not a purpose the learner is pursuing, so there's no learner growth to watch for.
What growth looks like is drawn from observation — what you notice over time, not what a learner scores on a task. The things to notice are specific and observable. These indicators are markers of growth that emerge when a learner has the time, support and real opportunities to take part in the practice more fully. Final task options are real tasks, not proxies. They ask the learner to do something genuine in the practice, not to demonstrate comprehension to the educator.
Each practice type also includes a short overview of why the practice matters, drawn from the instructional pages. That overview does double duty. For you, it's the rationale behind the teaching. On paper, it turns the individual practice records into a trail you can put in front of a program official during a monitoring visit — evidence that the work is deliberate, grounded and worth the space it takes. It's a way to push back, and to make room for this kind of teaching.
