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Feedback, good links, comments, criticism are welcome. Thanks! This page last updated 30/07/10 |
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Numeracy |
Literacy / ESOL |
preEntry |
General |
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Feedback, good links, comments, criticism are welcome. Thanks! This page last updated 30/07/10 |
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KEY |
Numeracy |
Literacy / ESOL |
preEntry |
General |
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Previous years' comments
03-04 05-07 |
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| Please note if you have feedback for a contributor and his or her email is not on the resource (some contributors prefer not to include this information) comments can always be mailed to maggie@skillsworkshop.org and I will pass them on. Thank you :-) | ||
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Sent: 14 July 2010 Subject: Resources Dear Maggie,
I am a user of the skillsworkshop.org and I want to thank all
those who manage this fantastic site and also, those who have
shared resources and made our job as teachers or trainee teachers
easier.
Over the last year I used these resources as a numeracy trainee teacher at Blackburn College from Blackburn and I would like, in my turn to share a lesson plan and resources for a new curriculum added in 2009.
Many thanks,
Angela Qarini
Note: Angela's resources will be appearing later in the year. |
Sent: 08 June 2010 Subject: Star Award
Hi Maggie
I was delighted to hear about your award and to see your picture in
the
Skills for Life booklet [page 28]. Nice to put a name to a face!
My only comment (positive, of course) is that yours is almost always
the first site I check when I want a specific resource because the
quality of the materials and the linking to the core curriculum are
second to none. I can’t tell you how often I’ve used your
site over the years. And I’m sure I will continue to do so –
especially in the uncertain times of Functional English.
Kind regards, Karen Bruin |
Subject: resource comment Hi Maggie Just wanted to send a comment re: Janice Thorn's E2 Cards and Notes resource. I used it this week in a mixed E1-E3 group after having looked at postcards for the last few sessions (the Happy Holidays set). It tied in really well with my theme, but more importantly, it was an excellent differentiated activity as everyone could access it at their own level. It raised so many different points for development: reading the question, use of capital letters and other punctuation, sentence structure etc. A brilliant all-rounder. Many thanks! Heidi Griffin |
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Sent: 13 June 2010 Subject: Your site
Brilliant!
Well done and thanks. For me, returning to ESOL teaching after a number of years this is a goldmine.
Best wishes
Robert Leach |
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Sent: 06 January 2010 Just to say a massive thankyou to whoever runs the skillsworkshop site and all those who have contributed literacy and numeracy ideas! I teach adult literacy and will start another new position tomorrow and having explored your site these past few days I have been very impressed with all the resources you have available and the degree to which many are embedded in real world contexts. This will really bring the subject matter to life and make it relevant to everyday concerns. Thanks for helping me do my job better and for making learning more enjoyable and relevant for learners. If I think of good ideas in the future I hope I can contribute! Fiona Campbell fionacampbell22@hotmail.com |
Sent: 06 March 2010 Subject: a word of thanks
Dear Maggie,
I think you have created a wonderful community and,
clearly, dedicated a lot of personal time to this endeavour. Keep up the
great work and I will be sure to suggest to people I meet that they
contribute resources to the pool! |
Sent: 04 March 2010 I am an ESOL tutor in the prison service. I would like to say how amazing your site is! It’s provided me with so much help guidance and some cracking resources. Thank you. I can’t begin to imagine the amount of time that must go into a site such as this.
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Sent: 12 October 2009 From: Heidi Griffin To: Tom Gee Cc: Maggie Subject: Noun cards on Skillsworkshop
Hi Tom, I'm a tutor with Bournemouth Adult Learning and I used your new resource, Noun Cards, last week with two mixed ability Literacy groups. Just a short note to say that they were extremely useful and learners enjoyed the activity. Also, it helped with the tricky topic of abstract nouns and prompted some interesting discussions! Many thanks for your hard work. Cheers Note: Tom's Noun Cards can be found here |
Sent: 14 October 2009 I have been trying to find adult based handwriting sheets and found your worksheets after a long trawl through the internet. I am currently trying to help teenagers improve their handwriting and hope that your sheets will prove to be the most useful I have found. I will keep you posted:) Kind regards Janine Brodigan Note: The worksheets Janine used were written by Ginette Kriche and can be found here http://www.skillsworkshop.org/esol/e1e2handwritingpractice.pdf |
Sent: 10 December 2009 From: Elizabeth Snelling Subject: Thank You Thank you for such a fabulous resource. I give home tuition to pupils across a range of age groups and I find it difficult to get material at a basic level that does not look childish. Your site is the answer to a prayer. There is so much material and it’s so logically organised. I hope to summon up the nerve to send in some material of my own. Thank you again elizabeth.snelling@ramorehead.com
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04/10/09
NEW Hello Maggie What a wonderful site you are running. It has saved me so much work over the last few years when setting up an essential skills programme of learning in a children and families' centre in Havant, Hants. Thank you Linda Hoole |
25/06/09 Hi Maggie
I just thought I'd drop you a line to say that I'm finding your site fantastically useful.
I've just used the 'Fred's full. Stop' exercise [part of 'The Importance of Punctuation'] by Margaret Lagoyianni with a mixed ability group and it worked really well at all the levels. One learner was just getting full stops in the right places while at the other end of the scale one was adding all sorts of conjunctions and relative clauses to make it more stylish. Great to find a single text that can help them all develop punctuation in so many different ways. One learner even commented that this 'is a great way to improve your punctuation'.
I've also used some of Margaret Adams' stuff this term - a drop down exercise on a letter about square oranges (which got some funny looks for a few minutes until it dawned on everyone that it wasn't meant to be taken seriously!) and a crossword on spelling words in formal letters which complements it nicely. Another great resource that developed students' skills and understanding in so many more ways than just working on spelling words. We discussed the purpose and tone of the letter and revised letter layout and endings, and then got into prefixes dis- tri- and so on...
So, there you go. Couldn't help but just give you (and your contributors) a bit of praise there :-)
Best wishes Jo Dixon Southampton
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 27/09/09
NEWHello Maggie, Many, many thanks for the extremely useful 'Teaching Functional Maths' information sheets. I've a huge file of collected handouts, handbooks, criteria and what-have-you from so many sources that it was all getting terribly confusing. Your sheets lay it all out in a very clear way. The next problem, of course, will be assessing the learners' completed examination assignments but I am expecting to have a much better handle on it all by then. Regards, Janet Wilkins, |
18/08/2008 (in answer to Andrew's post below)
Hello Andrew, I have also been thinking about the use of cursive writing, prompted by trying to find more (and adult centred) ways of helping those with dyslexia in particular. I notice that more experienced teachers than myself seem to like a word shape method, with each letter in a separate box, although I have never really been able to see that this helped much. However, cursive writing does indeed present a word shape, but in a fluid, joined-up way, whereby the completion of one letter leads on to the formation of the next – rather than isolated letters in boxes.
I know Phil Beadle has been getting a bit of stick following his recent ‘Can’t Read, Can’t Write’ TV series, but I think the use of a calligraphy to help enjoy the beauty of writing may have some merit. For someone who finds writing difficult and therefore slow, the need to form letters carefully means that they are no slower than anyone else when practicing this skill. The discipline and consistency of the letter formation may also be helpful, I think. However, by ‘calligraphy’ I don’t mean to suggest some overly florid style, but well-formed, flowing, and easy to read. My grandfather only ever wrote in a form of copperplate because in his day students were taught to have a pride in the work they produced!
I am going to try out cursive writing with adults when we all return to college and would be very interested to know who you get on too. My email is janet_w@rfdc.ac.uk.
Incidentally, being rather aged (I came late to the joys of teaching) I was taught to use ‘joined-up writing’ in Primary school. I wonder if this is still the case?
Good luck, regards, Janet
Note: this comment will also be posted on the Blog as a comments under the "Teaching Handwriting to Adults" post of July 30 2008. |
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07/12/2008
Hi Maggie!
I am currently teaching ESOL Numeracy Entry 3 and I found your website extremely useful for finding resources and printing materials for my class.
Sort of encourages me that I should share some work with you too who can benefit the other teachers like me.
Thanks a lot for putting up this free resource online for new teachers like me! Best Regards
Surriya Mughal Coleg Glan Hafren |
30/07/2008 I have a query about teaching handwriting for adults and wondered whether you might be able to post it on your comments page, as our internet security system does not allow us to access a ‘blog’. I believe that it is helpful to teach cursive writing to learners to improve spelling ‘automaticity’, but was wondering what the current thinking on this is within the adult teaching community – is it beneficial to teach this skill at any level, or should I aim to integrate this skill at a specific level, say E2 and above? Would it be counterproductive to teach this skill at all to adult learners? I have had some good results with some learners, but obviously this may not be the case in general and I would like some guidance in this area. I would really appreciate some insight into this one. Best regards Andrew
Note: This query will also be posted on the blog where you can answer directly using a comment (I will then forward any responses to Andrew). Alternatively you can email Andrew or me direct. See response above... |
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 23/04/2008"Improving Eidetic Memory" numeracy resource Hi Maggie I saw this resource and downloaded it for a Learning for Life class whose members might benefit and also created a version based on the idea for pre-Entry level learners dealing with smaller groups of numbers. It's an excellent resource and I can report that the learners have enjoyed using it very much. The Smiley Game, as we have called it, is going to be a regular feature in each session! I'd like to add that it's also worked very well used slightly differently - for learners who have difficulty with one-to-one correspondence. We have used it on the Smartboard with the learners actually touching the smiley faces and counting. Again, it was perceived as an enjoyable activity but the improvement was quite marked as we progressed through the slides, even in one brief session. My thanks to the contributor of the resource, and to all involved in the maintenance of your excellent site. Louise Davies Jones (Burton College) |
21/05/2008 Hello I just thought I'd drop you a line to say 'thank-you' for providing this amazing site. I'm the one and only Basic Skills Tutor working with 6th formers in a very large school. Most of my pupils are extremely disaffected and have varying needs of SEN, so they can be both extremely challenging and also fantastically rewarding. The site is invaluable and I use a lot of the resources in varying ways. Hopefully one day I will come up with something original that would be useful to others. Until then thanks again and please don't go anywhere! Nancy Burn Basic Skills Tutor |
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05/08/2008 I trialled your beautiful word maps in my ESOL Numeracy class. They were (politely) interested but as you suggest, how directly useful they are, I'm not sure. They tie in with my frequent mantra 'oh, that comes from the Greek' etc, as if that might be helpful to ESOL Adult Numeracy students struggling to learn new concepts in a foreign language, who aren’t necessarily too bothered where the disparate bits of English come from! What I do think would be useful would be a chart of the numeracy prefixes - kilo, milli, centi, deca, etc - to pull together all the words needed in measures and shapes. Perhaps a second page for the 'minor royals' of hexa, hepta, etc Many thanks, Helen Baldwin, Worcester Sixth Form College Number 1 and Number 2 word maps here and teaching ideas sheet for using Word Maps here. If anyone has used the maps successfully I'd love to hear from you! |
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13/03/2008 Maggie, I am a Skills for Life Tutor at Ludlow College. I am working on a project to develop on-line teaching resources for our students who cannot attend regular classes. We are using Moodle to bring together existing on-line resources and present them as self-contained packages to our learners. Are there any copyright issues if we present links to your superb website via these Moodle packages? I would also like to say that I use Skillsworkshop all the time, for inspiration and ideas for my Numeracy classes as well as for worksheets etc. It is a tremendous resource and, along with Maths4Life, is enhancing the way I teach considerably. Ruth Riley, Ludlow College Hi Ruth No there are no copyright issues so long as you are not putting resources on another site or selling them for profit. Good luck with the Moodle project and, if anyone at Ludlow has resources they would like to share – you know where to send them! Maggie Please see About this site for more details about copyright and contributing resources. |
Hi Maggie Thank you for your wonderful Spring Newsletter jam-packed with brilliant ideas and suggestions as usual. Due to your dedication and hard work the web site has grown tremendously during the last 7 years - what a fantastic achievement!
I have now retired unfortunately. I would
have liked to go on for a few more years but my arthritis, plus a few
other health problems (sadly associated with age!) had other ideas and so
I retired just about a year ago. However I still do one evening a week
voluntary work at the Youth Education Service in
My eldest granddaughter, currently revising for SATs in May, had wanted some help with maths problem solving and I have just spotted some items in the newsletter which might help her. After all, even at 11 years old I think it's much better if you can see a point to maths and how important it is in daily life!
Well Maggie,
sorry to ramble on I think I'd best leave you in peace now. Once again
thank
you
and
all
the
contributors so much for providing so many wonderful resources.
Kind regards
Best wishes
Yvonne
YES
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04/02/2008 Hi Maggie I cannot begin to tell you how wonderful it was to discover your site and all the wonderful resources which were actually FREE!! I am a retired tutor doing some voluntary work for a Charity in Manchester city centre. I run a 'Numeracy and Literacy' group and started from scratch. I knew very little about Adult education although I did some training many years ago. I didn't even know about the DfES Skills for Life material! So you can see I had a lot to learn. Sourcing suitable material with the limited funds available has proved to be very difficult. I started to think that I would have to write my own and then I discovered your site. So far I have used several of the worksheets for our Entry 1 learners. I've written some worksheets myself as well, they are not up to your standards yet as my computer skills are rather limited but I'm learning new things every day so hopefully I will soon be able to send something back. I want to send my thanks to you and all the contributors to your site - you are fantastic! Jan Hughes |
03/02/2008 Dear Maggie I am delighted with your site on the internet! I teach at an MLD school where learners not only have learning difficulties but behaviour problems too. I often have to invent work to make it accessible to the students - and to alter and find many different ways of approaching the work. As you may imagine some of the students find great difficulty in learning and retaining information. Your Adult Numeracy work is very helpful and I have certainly found various worksheets at the right level. Thank you once again for all your work Will Smith, Chesham. |
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01/02/2008 Who stole the world cup? Hi Maggie, Just to let you know I’ve used the above resources and they worked a treat. Thank you, Julie Dale (Regent College).
http://www.skillsworkshop.org/genlit/pickles.pdf |
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14 May 2010