|
|
|
You can now leave immediate comments on the
Skillsworkshop Blog
If you would like to
contribute to this page please
email Maggie.
Feedback, good links, comments,
criticism are welcome. Thanks! |
2007-08 comments
2005-06 comments
Read about this site |
|
 11/11/04
I should like to receive
your newsletter - I work with young people who are school non-attenders
and I use your website a great deal. Sherbet Lemons
has proved very popular and the young people all remember what an
adjective is after doing that activity!
Jane Dixon
Basic Skills Co-ordinator
Monmouthshire Youth Service |
15/11/04
Hello,
I have seen some excellent materials on your website that I would like to
adapt slightly to use with my learners. My name is John Harding and I am a
Basic Skills Tutor for a charitable work-based learning organisation
called Camden Jobtrain.
The materials I am interested in are Level One Literacy, curriculum
reference Rt/L1.2 (purpose of text) The
instructions on the materials directed me to contact you for a DOC file of
the materials so they can be adapted.
Your assistance will be very much appreciated. I have been very impressed
with your website.
Many thanks, John Harding
Skills for Life Team Leader, Camden Jobtrain.
Note: This document is available in Word format to any tutor who
mails in details of where/what/who they teach. Please note that other
documents are only available in Word format in exchange for your own
contributed resources. Read more about this here. |
|
 24/10/04
Dear Maggie,
I am a basic skills tutor at Duchy
College, Stoke Climsland, Cornwall and have been using resources from
your excellent site for some time now without paying anything back.
However, over the summer I put together the attached documents and have
received permission from Duchy College to forward them to you for posting
on the site if you think they'll be useful.
There are two types of document:
Word files - x-ref the
City & Guilds entry level literacy and numeracy specifications (which our
post-16 special needs students are working towards) to the respective Core
Curricula so that you have some idea of the sort of things you could do to
cover the C&G curriculum (they focus tutors' activity onto the areas the
students need for progression).
Excel files - show all
the indicators in any particular level. They are kept in students' basic
skills folders and are used to set targets and track progress (a blank
square indicates an indicator to be achieved, a cross indicates a
particular target indicator for the student, a filled-in square indicates
an indicator achieved). It provides, on one page a quick, visual record
of progress and achievement and is particularly useful in forming and
updating individual learning plans. I tried to be too clever with these
files and, not only provide drop-down boxes to fill in the squares but
also hot-link each indicator to its description. It all got horribly
complicated and time-consuming and I eventually ran out of patience and
time and now just print out a hard copy (to which the students can relate
anyway) for filling-in by hand. But if there's anyone out there who wants
to finish them off, be my guest! On the Entry Level sheets you will see
that some of the boxes have a larger box around them; this indicates an
indicator that is on the C&G curriculum (see above).
Hope these go some way towards my repaying you for access to your
excellent web site.
Regards,
Dave Walkden
PS. Resources that I've used from your site include: Numeracy Practice
Exam Questions (%, ratio,
scale drawings, perimeter),
Smarties Investigation, Prefix
Game, Card based resources,
Newspapers, Adjectives
game, Picture - Articulate Game. |
|
17/10/04
Hi Maggie,
It is a wet Sunday morning here in
Hastings. I'm preparing my lessons for tomorrow - I have a group of 14
students who are improving their literacy through use of our whizzy IT
suite.
I was led to your site by a colleague
on the on-line Adult literacy numeracy MA module I am studying with
Lancaster.
What a wonderful resource. I have my
sherbet lemons and my trusty colour printer is half way through hard copies of the
resources.
I'll let you know how it goes down
with them - all I can offer in exchange is a partial list of some sites
where students can get to samples of the level 1 and 2 on-line tests. Any
good?
I'll attach it anyway - I feel I
should offer something for getting such a wonderful idea all done for me!
Cheers, Marion.
Literacy and Numeracy teacher,
Hastings.
Marion's links for on-line tests
(thank you!)
1) Mini practice tests and then a
chance to do 40 question tests at levels 1 and 2
www.move-on.org.uk/testyourskills.asp
2) Learn direct course to help prepare
for level 2 numeracy test. 0800 101 901
http://catalogue.learndirect.co.uk/courses/100579BS002/
3)
http://www.edexcel.org.uk/sfc/Brochures.aspx?id=82670
4) Level 2 key skills practice tests
http://www.dfes.gov.uk/readwriteplus/resources/livesite/index3.cfm?pf=displayIntro&exid=35
NOTE from Maggie:
 Since
writing the adjective
PDF
(17 pages, 170K) in 2002 I have updated some of the sherbet lemon
resources but never got round to updating the PDF. They are now available
here but please refer to the original PDF for instructions and teaching
ideas.
This three page update includes: a new OHT (un-mask slowly from top
to bottom as you ask learners to describe each feature), a teaching review
sheet (used when I did a 'Sherbet Lemon micro-teach'), lesson objectives and an updated
student fill-in worksheet.
PDF (4
pages. 210K)
More adjective resources for Entry 2 upwards
here. |
|
22/09/2004
Hi Maggie,
Wow!
This stuff
['Colours and Clothes' 43 page
word games booklet, large 450K PDF]
is great! We've already used the Lost and Found stuff [Lit Unit 1 Lost & Found
Skills for Life Entry 1 resource],
so this additional material is just brilliant. Thank you!
Just one little niggle, but it will confuse my students, on the colours
and clothes word
fills, the words are given in lower case, but the letters already filled
in are in upper case. A lot of my students only use upper case and some
don't even recognise lower case, so I don't think I'll be able to use
those in a group situation as they stand. How easy would it be to change
them in Acrobat?
Other than that really little thing, they're absolutely fantastic - where
do you get all the ideas from, cos I can see me adapting these resources
for other subjects!
Karen White
Learning Facilitator, Moving On With Learning, University Of Liverpool.
25\08\04 |
Your comments really do help!
The correspondence here between and
Karen and me led to some alterations in the word game files. Although
they were only small changes they can make all the difference to learners
and their tutors!
Amended versions of the two Word
Fills and the Missing Word worksheets are available here:
Updated word game pages
PDF
(35K) |
22/09/2004 continued...
Hi Karen
I see exactly what you mean about the word fills - I think my thinking was
that it would also be practice in changing lower to upper case etc. but I
take your point I hadn't thought it through especially for ESOL students.
I have quickly changed them in Acrobat for you (sorry no time to edit the
answer sheets atm) please see attached files. ...
Maggie
22/09/2004 continued...
Dear Maggie
More comments hot off the press!
Just tried the "In
a Pickle! Missing words" [1966
World Cup, 29 page word games booklet, large 330K PDF]
worksheet with some learners, and it went really well except that some of
the learners were confused by the letters next to each word. They wanted
to put "a" in the blanks, or some of them were writing the letter and the
word! |
|
I am a tutor
with about 3 years’ experience, about to embark upon Cambridge ESOL Cert
in FE teaching stage 3 & Cert for ESOL subject specialism. I have found
your website absolutely invaluable, as have many of my colleagues. I
expect to have to create resources on my course – I will send them your
way if they are any good!
Thank you very much for your selflessness in sharing so many great
resources.
Nicola
Brooklands College, Weybridge, Surrey
08/2004
PS. The literacy resources I have found the best for my L1/L2 ESOL
students have been: Word endings er,ar,or;
Adjectives game;
Adding suffixes to words ending in e;
Newspapers
and Prefixes. |
Dear Maggie,
I have recently started tutoring basic skills numeracy and literacy (since
Jan 2004) and have found the resources on your site excellent.
I would be delighted if you could add me to your email mailing list. Many
thanks for this and for putting together such a user friendly and
informative website.
Becci
07/2004 |
|
 12/06/2004
Hi Maggie,
Just thought I'd tell you how much we (i.e. me and my learners)
are appreciating your L1 and
L2 practice questions. We have exams coming up of course, and
although we have lots of practice Key Skills papers and they are
essentially the same as BS, the questions are mixed, and we like how
you've grouped them all together in your worksheets, percentage
questions, ratio and proportion etc. It is making our revision easier.
Thanks. Di. |
29/02/2004
Hi again,
The resources are really good. I am running the Move On programme at my
college.
The site is excellent and many of the people at Uni (University of Leeds,
Level 4 Literacy specialists) are using it for teaching.
Cheryl
Leeds College of Technology 28/2/04 |
14/03/04
Thank you for your excellent resources. We had a wonderful session
bringing numeracy to life using the Smarties activity and having the bonus of eating the data afterwards.
The site gets better every time I visit it.
Thank you,
Gail Adams, numeracy tutor, New College, Swindon.
09/03/04 |
|
 08/02/2004
Hello Maggie,
I have used your articulate game
many times now, very good resource. I am looking for anything on using the
telephone, as I work with Adults with Learning Difficulties, I thought it
would be a good idea to show the learners how make an emergency call if
needed as most of them have never used the telephone before; I intend to
use a little role play with this and make it fun; any ideas?
Kind regards, Margaret Handley. (Tutor, Warwickshire)
----------------
Note: Anyone any ideas? Please
email
and I'll pass any ideas on to Margaret. I asked Margaret if she had
any objections to me posting this letter on this page (see right). |
Hi Maggie,
Thanks for your quick reply. I do not mind at all if you post my comments.
I love the web site; so much there to use, it really helps with my work. I
shall have a look now for any worksheets on telling time, I'm sure there
will be.
The food game sounds good (note - coming soon!). I take a
group looking at food (Healthy Living) I take an exotic fruit in each
week, I let them feel and smell the fruit then taste it, this has been a
huge success, you can then follow on with a worksheet explaining about
the fruit, origin etc. Q&A it works.
--------------------
Thanks for this idea Margaret. I'm going to try it next term when
our topics are health and road safety... |
25/02/2004
Dear site owners and contributors,
Many, many thanks for all your hard work in producing stimulating and
highly appropriate resources for all levels. I am currently using many of
your offerings and have received positive feedback from the learners. The
resources are researched and developed to a level that I would not be able
to achieve myself at this time, so I am very grateful for this wonderful
site!
Eve Davey
Associate Lecturer, Basic Skills
The Henley College 22/2/04 |
|
Your site is
my lifesaver! I'm just completing the Level 4 Cert for Adult Literacy
Specialists and am very grateful for all the brilliant resources you
provide, especially because the course has been exhausting and demanding!
Best wishes
Gill Wells, Skills for Life Co-ordinator.
Paston College, Norfolk. 2003. |
New 05/02/2004
Maggie - I am really impressed
- your website gets better and better - I have just been into the
Embedding ILT
section for the first time, it is wonderful. How on earth do you find
the time? Mind you - here I am, typical Basic Skills tutor, sitting
trawling the Internet for resources on a Friday night - we're all the
same!!! Thanks for being such a wonderful help, and inspiration, to us
all.
Di Mellor, Darlington College. 01/2004. |
Amy Burgess,
a literacy tutor from Weston-super-Mare College writes... "Hello Maggie,
I've now used your Purposes of
Texts resources with three groups of students and found them very
useful, so thanks very much.
At the end of one session a student said 'Whenever I see a piece of
writing now I'll look at it in a different light.'
With a couple of groups the activity led on to some good discussion about
the use of images and logos. " |
|
"Fabulous Work, was a joy to read. Keep up
the good work." from Cheryl Hughes in North London. |
Dear
Maggie,
I have just used the listening exercise which includes the Skills for Life
sounds from My Place,
with your Widgit worksheets.
I had a group of 4 ranging from M7 to E1, who don't get on well with each
other and will not usually sit next to one another etc, but this
interested them all.
I taped the sounds onto a cassette because I could get better volume with
a tape recorder.
We had a lively discussion about HGV vs tractor sound and an even better
one about the difference between police car, ambulance and fire engine
sirens. |
We decided one of the last country sounds was a horse ( I thought it
was someone jogging) but there was no horse picture so perhaps that should
be included in the Widgits.
The sentences didn't go down so well but the whole exercise was useful I
thought.
Thank you.
June Mill
(Community Ed, East Riding, Yorkshire).
Nov 2003
Note: I have since sent June an updated worksheet that includes a
horse picture. Please email if you
would like a copy. |
|
Thanks to the students for giving a group at Littlehampton lots of
ideas about
how to do a project. Rosemary Jackson. |
|
Gill Johnson, who
works in community education in Suffolk, says, "I recently came across
your excellent resources while searching the Net for ideas to teach the
subject of using persuasive language and adjectives.
I have adapted and used your 'Chomwell Green'
ideas with several groups now and all have enjoyed it and told me what a
good session it was.
Your well planned sessions and links to the curriculum have helped me to
implement more group teaching into my lesson planning." |
Hilary Scotton from
Sutton College of Learning for Adults says, "Your
prefix activities involving the use of cards was
right up my street as I often use card-based activities in my
Spelling
Workshop.
The group is small so I dealt out a full set of prefixes to each student." ... and a suggestion
from David Morley, a student in Hilary's class: "Turn
the activity into a competition. As
students name a word with the correct prefix they
should turn over that prefix card. The first person to turn over all their
cards was the winner."
"It worked very well," concludes Hilary.
|
Penny Turner, from Kent Adult Education, says, "We followed up our work on
'Chomwell Green' and persuasive
language/adjectives by discussing holiday brochures.
Students enjoyed making up their own 'holiday hotel' descriptions in the
style of such brochures and had fun writing a 'hotel from hell' as well!"
|
|
You can now leave immediate comments on the
Skillsworkshop Blog
If you would like to
contribute to this page please
email Maggie.
Feedback, good links, comments,
criticism are welcome. Thanks! |
2007-08 comments
2005-06 comments |
|
|
