Useful Links

This new section of the Excellence Gateway replaces the old QIA Embedded Learning Portal. The new front-end makes it much easier to locate dozens and dozens of great printable resources – all mapped to the core curricula, Key Skills and occupational standards. The main focus appears to be E2-L1. However, there are many Milestone 7-8 / Entry 1 literacy resources in the Family Care section and some vocational resources such as nursing and construction include literacy and numeracy skills up to Level 2.

30+ vocational areas are covered: horticulture, social care, family health, early years, cleaning, food hygiene, trowel occupations, communication for international nurses, E2E, retail, catering, hospitality, hairdressing, warehousing, construction, painting operations, construction, production line manufacturing, cross sector skills (health and safety, food hygiene, first aid, ICT), transport and sports leadership. Dozens of useful worksheets, example texts and teaching ideas for each vocational area.

The printable “Skilled for Health” materials address people’s needs for a better understanding and improvement of their health. More than 50 topics are covered including: giving up smoking, mental well-being, immunisation, taking temperatures, talking to your doctor, etc.

Plus 92 generic interactive activities cover underpinning literacy and numeracy from Milestone 7 to Level 2.
Note: If you have difficulties viewing the interactive materials on lower resolution monitors press F11 to view full screen.

PlusMaths is a great online magazine covering all sorts of different things. I love the Maths for Skills poster and the puzzles.

Some of the ideas can be used in a classroom setting, or to create debate about maths in ‘the real world’. The packages are fab for this and can really help reinforce your own knowledge and understanding if you’ve ended up teaching Maths/numeracy without really having a firm background in it.

A brilliant and truly useful, free web based tool that takes a pieces of text and turns it into a complete lesson. Once you have pasted or typed in your text it takes you through it step by step, giving you the option of creating cloze exercises, vocabulary, grammar and comprehension questions.
It is particularly useful for ESOL teachers as it breaks the text down into different tenses, relative clauses, use of adjectives, etc. However it can be used for any topic /subject and is a fantastic starting place for creating DARTs (directed activities relating to text). You end up with a printable and editable lesson / worksheets and a lesson plan (these can all also be stored and managed online).

Has a wonderful printables page with a superb set of 28 fully customisable worksheets covering money, time, place value, handwriting, letter fans, certificates and much more.
Many online (and downloadable) activities on the software page, including wonderful touch screen activities (or for introducing a mouse) for pre Entry learners and some excellent money activities for Entry level numeracy.

A a wonderful trio of sites (teaching, learning, reflection) from retired academic, James Atherton. The contents page of the learning sections looks like a mind map showing the relationship between different teaching and learning theories. Too much to describe – just go and take a look!

ARKS (Adult Returners Key Skills) is an EU funded project that has some fantastic, very large PDF resources covering: Learning Styles (the “three channels”), Study skills, IT, Communication, Numeracy, Participation and Tutor Training. There are worksheets, tutor notes, examples and much more.
I’ve recently re-visited this site and have found parts of the 300 page Chapter 4 Writing resource useful for embedded Functional English – especially report writing, sentence structure and using paragraphs. All resources are well laid out with clear fonts, lots of white space and a range activities interspersed with information.
A gold mine!

A fabulous DfE funded site aimed at enhancing professional development in Maths teachers across all sectors and levels. There are news items, message boards, regular email magazines, stacks of resources and links to some very interesting blogs from maths teachers, etc.

I was introduced to this site in 2008 whilst studying for the Level 5 Additional Diploma in Teaching Mathematics and would now be lost without it. Becoming a member of the NCETM is an absolute must for anyone undergoing professional development in teaching numeracy/mathematics. The forums are lively and enlightening – I recommend a visit to the Maths Cafe to get a taster.

There are so many teaching and CPD resources for FE maths and numeracy that it’s hard to know where to start but Thinking through mathematics is one of my favourite areas.

An educational site from the Office of Fair Trading. You need to register (free) but there are some fabulous Word/PDF resources (and MP3 listening resources) here. The site has just been updated (Sept 2011) and has a more intuitive and easier to use structure.

New features include:

• repackaged adult education materials – ready-to-go packs include delivery guidance, curriculum references and all activity parts and signpost whether the activity has a literacy or numeracy focus
• a Tell a friend function – making it easy for you to let colleagues know about the free resources
• a Discussion board – to share your views and comments on using Skilled to go materials with others.
• They are also offering free half day training sessions in London and will even consider coming to your venue if you offer to invite other teachers from your local area.

The adult education resources area is arranged in 5 main categories. Buying & Selling, Technology (mobile phone contracts, etc.), Utilities (electric bills, etc.), Scams, and Buying & Running a Car.

Copious teacher’s notes, templates for letters of complaint, Look-Say-Cover-Write-Check tables, key words, annotated bills, and more. The listening MP3 activity about mobile phone contracts would be ideal for teenagers. There are also videos (dodgy dealers, car boots), more MP3s (making a telephone complaint, etc), role play cards, dimension cards (don’t buy furniture that’s too big!), etc.

The CIMT Mathematics Enhancement Programme, based at Plymouth University (previously at Exeter University) has been one of my favourite and most used sites over the past 10 years.

Printable resources
100s of PDF worksheets – grouped by school year / NC levels, but many are ideal for adult use. Download the two Certificate of Achievement (now called Entry Level Certificate) workbooks to get an idea of the breadth and quality. The Year 7 area is particularly good for place value, decimals and fractions. The GCSE Revision Foundation Pack is also good. Most worksheets also have optional associated downloads such as OHP slides (also suitable for displaying on an interactive whiteboard), answers, revision exercises, lesson plans and mental maths tests. Also take a look at the Puzzles.

Continual Professional Development
Great section on common maths misconceptions with 8 downloadable resources and a help section with worked examples in 10 topics (aimed at primary school teachers but useful for any teacher that wants to brush up their maths).

Online interactive resources
A series of excellent interactive tutorials based on the printable worksheets (see above). For example, check out the Year 7 and Year 8 tutorial pages. Students can complete these online (also work well as paired activities if you don’t have one computer per student) and then print sheet with scores as evidence to put in folders or portfolios.

Embedded and contextualised resources
A great Topical Applications of Maths area with resources and lesson plans. Topics covered include: Fair Trade, lottery, global warming and many more.

Eclipse Crossword is a completely free downloadable program that is fast and powerful but easy enough for students to use to create their own puzzles – whilst practising spelling and sentence writing (for the clues) at the same time! Thanks to Janet Wilkins, Royal Forest of Dean College College, for suggesting this link and for contributing several crosswords.

We now have a collection of Eclipse crosswords files for a range of levels and topics (type Eclipse into the search box).
Crosswords can be printed with or without a word bank, answer key, etc. and can also be saved as interactive web pages (these make a good whole class activity on a smartboard).

Report comment bank is a free, online report writing tool that will save teachers hours. Many functional skills teachers, like myself, have a large number of pupils to write reports for – this should make their life much easier in report season. There are over 20,000 report comments available so you should find something for your subject.

Literacy Assessment Online is great for assessing literacy standards. It is 100% free for up to 25 pupils with no obligation.

The following tests are available :

Reading comprehension 6-9
Reading comprehension 6-14
Listen and spell 6-9
Listen and spell 6-14
Phonics – consonant blends
Phonics – consonants and vowels
Phonics – high frequency words
Phonics – non words
National Phonics Check – replica

These literacy tests and phonics tests are a superb way to obtain benchmark literacy data and track progress of a class.

This is a new website from the British Council which has loads of resources for ESOL learners and teachers. There are online lesson activities, lesson plans and worksheets. Resources are based around appropriate topic areas for ESOL learners in the UK.

A subscription directory of over 3,000 illustrations created for educators. It has an easy to use flashcard creator with fully editable text and choice of 4 different formats.
The pictures are designed primarily for adult students and was originally developed for ESOL teachers.

If you do not have Smart Notebook installed on your computer you can use this online viewer to access .notebook files.

Wrtitten by Year 1 teacher, Christopher Thorne, this is a free YouTube phonics resource (also available at www.MrThorneDoesPhonics.com). It contains over 200 free literacy/phonics/grammar resources for early readers and anyone with English as an additional language.

This is a site with exercises for learners of English based around football (produced in conjunction with the Premier League). It is probably more suitable for ESOL learners, but there will be sections that could be used for Adult Literacy or Functional Skills learners – as long as they like football!

This is a resource which has been produced by the Action for ESOL campaign. It consists of a newsletter which addresses real-world issues affecting ESOL learners.

The newsletter can be read online or printed off as a PDF file. It is accompanied by a range of teaching and learning materials at different levels based on the articles and stories in the main publication, again these can either be used online or printed as PDFs to use in class.

A number of activities designed by a tutor at an Australian TAFE (FE College equivalent) for teaching literacy to Construction learners.

Note that some of these activities are intended for learners at the original institution, but that there are a number of video clips that could be used by anyone. The other activities could serve as inspiration for developing new materials/exercises.

A collection of over 3000 images sorted by category for use in class, or as resources. Images can be downloaded, in different sizes, by clicking on the ‘Actions’ button on each individual image’s page.

All the images are licensed as Creative Commons, which means that as long as you attribute the source and do not use them for commercial purposes there are no copyright restrictions (more details here http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/ ).

They have been put together by teachers around the world; if you want to contribute, this page explains how:
http://sandymillin.wordpress.com/2011/05/18/how-to-join-in-with-eltpics/

This page describes a simple activity that was used with Level 1 Adult Numeracy Certificate students recently when introducing fractions.

Till rolls are cheaply available in most stationery shops. The desks happen to be a round 60cm wide. Each student had a length of till roll and had to divide it up into a fraction that was suggested by the teacher, then mark each of the sections of the strip of paper with the name of the fraction.

At the end of the activity, students collectively ‘built’ their fraction wall and the tutor asks questions about equivalents between the various families.

N2/L1.2 (find value of a fraction) springs to mind as does N2/L1.1 (compare fractions), but there is also practice at measuring and dividing, especially the more confident students who copped for 1/7th (60 divided by 7 to one decimal place).

TES Resources, the space for teachers to share free learning materials including lesson plans, activities, games, teaching ideas and worksheets. Upload, adapt, edit and download classroom resources today.

This site includes many useful resources including an easy read version of a new report on How Fair is Britain?
I’m finding the report a rich vein to plunder for all sorts of ESOL and literacy lessons. It would also be good for entry level Functional English.

There is also a very good short video overview of the report (4 minutes) which is ideal for promoting discussion about E&D in any group.

Includes a huge, complete reading scheme (Stairway to Reading) aimed at struggling beginner readers (children – but there are no childlike graphics and almost all the resources are very suitable for adults). Includes a complete set of 40 phonic based lesson plans, flashcards, a huge (100+ pages) of related bingo games and a super 124 PDF of reading material ranging from CVC word lists to complex, multi-paragraph texts (up to to Entry 3).