TESL 0140: Unit 1 - Needs Assessment For Buying a home


Needs Assessment - Buying a Home

While the concept of needs assessment is not new, my experience is more in line with big picture needs in a corporate context.  Since I am not yet working in the classroom I do not have a significant amount of experience around classroom lesson needs assessment.  

For those of you reading this blog post - I look forward to your comments and suggestions.

Note that for the specific context around buying a house there is a non-profit company in Winnipeg called New Journey Housing and they are a great resource for information on buying and renting in Manitoba.  They work with newcomers to provide support around renting and purchasing good, affordable housing in Manitoba.  I referred to their site after I completed my needs assessment to validate some of the content and ideas I included in my needs assessment.

I also expanded the context of the assignment to include some information around financial literacy as this is a difficult concept for many newcomers and to which knowledge is directly related to the subject of the assessment.  I have noted it in the needs assessment contextual content around "why" and added content around financial literacy to the needs assessment itself.

Context:
You are teaching a CLB 7 class in a part-time five month LINC program. It’s the second month of the instruction. One of the most popular topics your students chose in the initial needs assessment was buying a house. You want to create a short needs assessment to inform your module and lesson planning for this topic.

Why:
At this point the learners have been in the class and any personal information I need I already have access to for the purpose of understanding who the learners are in relation to L1, culture, etc.  This needs assessment is to narrow the areas of interest regarding purchasing a house, and determine if there are any specific needs around financial literacy in relation to home ownership.

When:
This assessment will be done at the end of a class in order to prepare content for the next class or series of classes.  I.e. if the classes are once a week, then I would prepare the assessment for the first class of the 2nd month.  We would do it after the lesson for the day is mostly complete and reserve the last 15 minutes for the needs assessment that will inform the coming lessons.  The context indicates the assessment should be “short”, so I have not allocated more than 15 minutes for learners to complete the assessment.
How:
Questionnaire – see below for sample questionnaire for topics around buying a house.  The questions include some where you can choose one or more responses and some where you are asked to respond in short answers.  The learners may not use their phones to verify information or vocabulary.

Where:
The assessment will be done in the classroom setting. 



Buying a Home


Name:  __________________________________   Date:  ____________________

Please fill in the blanks to help your teacher understand what you want to know about purchasing a house.


You are interested in buying a house.  Are you living there by yourself or with others?  There will be _________________ living in the house.

What kind of house/home would you like to buy (choose all that you’re interested in):

­­­­____  Single dwelling home

____  Condominium

____  Townhouse

____  Other (describe: _____________________________________)

____  I don’t know the difference between the above options

You need to know about:

­­­____  Mortgages/Loans

____  Understanding credit

____  Interest rates and how they work

____  Insurance
o   ____ Mortgage life insurance
o   ____ Property insurance
         
On a scale of 1 to 5, how much do you know about:

                                            Don't know Anything....................................Know a lot

CMHC                           1                2                3                  4                     5


Property Taxes              1                2                3                  4                     5


Credit rating                  1                2                3                  4                     5


Is there anything else you want to learn about that is not listed above?











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