What this manual contains

This manual contains eight lesson plans to help older adults enhance their literacy skills while learning about health topics that are of interest to them. The lesson plans are entitled:

  1. Determinants of Health for Older Adults
  2. Active Living
  3. Healthy Eating
  4. Understanding Food Labels
  5. Food Safety
  6. Visiting your Health Provider
  7. Understanding Medication Labels
  8. Practicing Prevention

In addition to short readings on the above topics, lessons include a variety of literacy activities such as fill-in-the-blanks, word searches, brainstorming, matching-the-columns, scrapbooking exercises, and completing a crossword puzzle. Learners can practice their writing skills by developing a weekly calendar of exercise activities, completing sentence starters, writing about their own experiences, developing a daily menu using Canada’s Food Guide and completing a sample menu plan obtained from the Dietitians of Canada website. Other writing activities include listing some of the questions seniors might ask when visiting a health provider, writing a short story about a successful visit to a health provider, as well as entering information into a personal medication record book.

Learners can also practice their problem-solving skills by answering questions on food labeling activity sheets, as well as other questions related to prescription labels, over-the-counter medicine labels and warning labels.