Functional Skills links

Free UK guide explaining GCSE results, English and maths resits, private entry and when Functional Skills may be an alternative. It is written for 16-year-olds and parents, and no TheLearnDen account is required.

Editor's notes

Useful reading, especially for parents and students that are unfamiliar with UK post-16 educational options.

Free reviewed videos, lessons, worksheets, practice, games and parent guides for UK Maths, English and Science from Year 1 to Year 10, including GCSE foundations. Search by year, subject or topic. No TheLearnDen account is required.

Editor's notes

Bring Functional Skills Maths into a familiar real-life setting with this print-and-go café maths challenge. Learners work with realistic menus, prices, customer orders and special offers while developing confidence with everyday money calculations.

Activities include:

A new site run by UK Maths teacher Iain. The Level 2 Functional Skills Maths content descriptors have been broken down into 70 free, detailed video tutorials with associated worksheets (practice questions followed by scenario questions) provided as large image files - not PDFs. There are also videos with past paper walk-throughs and times table tips, plus links to past papers from all the FS awarding bodies. Videos are short and snappy and great for self study, reinforcement and revision. Foundation GCSE is also covered (separately) 👍👍🏿👍🏽

A new series of comprehensive Functional Skills Maths books now available from talented mathematician and teacher Marsida Horeshka who you may already know from her popular Functional Skills maths site https://marscademy.com/ (previously known as Maths Made Fun). The three Entry Level books are now available on Amazon (and soon from other booksellers).

An incredible collection of free worksheets from OUP. Designed to support the excellent book ‘Maths the Basics’ by June Haighton et al (see our separate entry about this book) but can be used independently. I haven’t looked at them all ( there are more than a 100 - plus answer sheets!) but they seem to cover Entry Level 3 to Level 2. 
In addition there are many other useful downloads including tips and hints for non-specialists on delivering Functional Skills maths, English and ICT and much more. 

I’ve only briefly skimmed through but some of these new mastery resources for L1 & L2 Functional Maths (and GCSE resits) look amazing! Includes full 33 hour (22 x 1.5 hr lessons) schemes of work, lesson plans, handouts and slides. 
 

Language feature spotting in songs - Eurovision through the ages edition! 8 songs that have all won Eurovision and use various language features. Suitable for L1 and L2.

Editor's note

Very topical and jolly 3 minute video.  Lyrics appear clearly, word by word, on screen. Covers rhetorical questions, simile, repetition and more. Teachers will probably want to watch in advance and formulate their own question prompts. PS. Some of these songs made me feel old!

Three graduated online basic skills tests (but new questions can be generated for each test) based on original PDF  basic skills tests from AQA. The tests are just one of many hundreds of excellent resources on the mathsbot.com site which is owned, written and maintained by maths teacher Jonathan Hall. 

I absolutely love these starter quiz templates for L1 Functional Skills Maths and L1-L2 Functional English from Pearson Edexcel and Jonny Kay. The main link below sends you to an PDF overview - scroll to the end of the PDF for direct links to the templates and sample quizzes.