A teachers guide to using literacy, language, numercacy and ICT

In the last few blogs we have looked at lots of different ways to improve the way we all do things in the classroom and this last post will add the cherry on the cake!



Now, something every learner will need you to do, no matter what the subject you teach, is provide them opportunities to practise their literacy, language, numeracy and ICT skills. This should be done in every session and is mainly done by using different teaching and learning techniques.

We're going to start a virtual course, this will give us a chance to look at different ways of improving literacy, language, numeracy and ICT - the course we're going to use, in homage to the illustration above, is Cupcake Decorating Course.



So, you're now a Cupcake decorating tutor, what can you do to introduce functional skills to your course, you really need to think about two things, your teaching and learning techniques and assessment.

So, here goes.....

A quiz works in a few different ways, not only does it assess the learners it also helps imparts literacy.



This could be done throughout the course as it is important to monitor learners progress. For example it could be used as initial assessment to find out how much learners know about cupcake decorating, there then could be a quiz once a week to assess how the learners are getting on. This improves the the learners literacy as they have to read the questions and write the answers.

Card matching game will also improve literacy of the learners. For this course, learners could match combination of flavours for example - mint and chocolate (a personal favourite!) Or, the learners could match different decorating techniques they think would look good.


Presentations may sound daunting, but they help in so many different ways.



 Setting your learners research presentation topics will impart both literacy and language. In this course the topic could be something along the lines of - You are producing cupcakes with a theme of the Queens Jubilee, you have to produce 12 cupcakes with 6 different flavours or designs - what would they be?



Learners would have to research different things surrounding the theme etc, this would help embed literacy and ICT skills through the research and by potentially producing a PowerPoint presentation. It also embeds language as the learners will have to present their creations to the rest of the group. This could also be used as a good assessment method for the tutor.

A tutor led group discussion is another way of imparting language as it allows the learners to discuss a topic giving there views and opinions. This could be part of the project mentioned above, the tutor could ask for initial ideas and the group would talk about these ideas and get some constructive feedback.

We've already looked at one option of including ICT skills in  your session, research. This is a valuable technique as it increases the knowledge of the learners and increases the functional skills. It is also really good for independent learning.

In this course there are a few things that you can use to improve ICT. One option would be creating a spreadsheet in Excel.



This could be used to work out quantities of ingredients and help to keep within budgets. For example a budget could be set and the Excel chart could be used to keep a record of what you've bought and how much this cost. Different scenarios could be used, for example if you were to make X amount of cakes what quantity of ingredients would be needed and how much would it cost. So in this exercise not only would you embed ICT skills by using Excel and working out Excel formula's, you would also be embedding numeracy skills.

So, what do you need to remember when you're teaching any course, functional skills! You're not just teaching them new things about your subject - you have to include ways to improve the learners functional skills.