Essential Skills Activities
Feedback
Activity: Deductions on a Pay Stub
- I didn’t have to adapt the activity for my class. It was a bit difficult for the
students who haven’t worked in Canada or don’t have pay stubs with cheques in
their countries. After doing vocabulary, the students worked with a partner to do
the first activity. (The vocabulary sheet is a great reference for the teacher.) The
students did the second activity on their own, the next day.
- The 2 practice papers for Pay Cheque Vocabulary are confusing. Most of
the vocabulary words are the same on both papers and some of the sentences are
the same. Next time, I would put the words and sentences on one paper.
- Sentence 6 on the Reading a Pay Stub paper uses the present perfect tense.
We’ve practiced present perfect as a formulaic expression but have not expanded
on it, so it was difficult for many of the students. (They thought it meant from the
beginning of 2009 to the end, and so calculated the tax for a full year. I also think
that the word “total” confused the students.) Next time, I would change it to the
past tense and re-word it for clarification. (How much tax did ____ pay from the
beginning of the year to now?)
- I have a sample pay stub in my files that I’ve developed in the past. I’m going to
use it as an Assessment Outcome Task.
This is a very good activity. The students were very interested in the pay stub
information and asked a lot of questions. The students who work or worked in
Canada were able to provide some information to the class.