Using what is around you

Supporting your students, whilst learning continues to adapt from the transition of the classroom into the home. What can they use to bring their learning into context and enable them to understand different areas of the qualification? We’ve asked some practitioners for top tips for learners using items from their home environment.

• What is the ratio of doors to windows in your house/flat? Simplify this ratio

Sue Knox,  Blossom House School

• Use their surroundings; “Imagine you wanted to redecorate your living room, measure the length etc”
  

Lisa Robinson, CT Skills

• Encourage learners to read something they wouldn’t normally read everyday.
  

Chris Briggs, Pearson

• Use the situation to your advantage (great discussion topic, presentation topic, reading activity)
  

Donna Kavanagh, CONEL

Challenges with engagement

Maintaining learner engagement now comes with the added challenge of virtual learning. We’ve asked some practitioners for top tips for learners to help them stay on track with their learning progression.

• Be engaging, build a rapport, ask how the learner is coping with lockdown or work.

Angela Choke, Hart Learning and Development

• Maximise your time with the learner. Learners may not be able to devote much time to webinars/tutorials, so try to set them pre webinar work so that the contact time is as useful as it can be.

Mike Corcoran and George Collins, Buttercups

• Make yourself available out of normal office hours. This is especially so for work based learners on the front line, as they are more likely to be responsive and it is the right thing to do.

Mike Corcoran and George Collins, Buttercups

• We've found video chats really useful to keep the personal touch to learning. 

Linda Ryall, BCP Council

Preparation for online teaching with your learners

How you approach the preparation for keeping your students on the learning pathways is different for everyone, here are some top tips from one deliverers approach:

• Talk to your colleagues and share good practice
• Be flexible- lessons may not be the same time as usual
• Keep your sense of humour
• Clear objectives for the lesson
• Quizzes (short, sharp activities) 
• Set up 'rooms', whereby learners can break off into groups to discuss
• BE PREPARED WITH RESOURCES!

Donna Kavanagh, CONEL

Adapting to maths at home learning

Maintaining relatable context for your students' learning is key, ensuring they still establish the understanding required for their qualifications in the home environment.

• Find a book, Write down the number of words in each of the first 10 sentences. Work out the mean average of the number of words in the first 10 sentences. Then work out the median/mode/range.

Sue Knox, Blossom House School

• Find a recipe from a cookery book that serves 4 people. Scale the recipe up or down for 2/6/8/10 people.

Sue Knox, Blossom House School

• Find a food packet that is in the shape of a cylinder/cuboid. Measure the height/width/depth/diameter. Calculate the volume/surface area.

Sue Knox, Blossom House School

• Set them a project, this might be the area of their garden, how many two metre spaces can they fit in to it for social distancing.

Jayne Woodland, Bridgwater and Taunton College 

• Get them to make something – a cake, biscuits and send you a picture of the finished product, this then links to all sorts of topics (ratio, weight, fractions, temperature, time just to name a few).

Jayne Woodland, Bridgwater and Taunton College

Adapting to English at home learning

Maintaining relatable context for your students' learning is key, ensuring they still establish the understanding required for their qualifications in the home environment.

• One thing that I've set up with my learners, which has engaged them and worked  well in terms of supporting learner wellbeing, is asking them all to write a diary / diary entry which can then eventually be shared with their classmates.  
• I asked them to share their feelings in these diaries as well as descriptions of the things they are doing. This is obviously far more relevant to them right now than the usual FS writing tasks which relate to a world which isn't currently happening and it's also helping them to feel more connected to each other. 
• Once they've written the diary entries, I'm turning them into worksheets which can embed proofreading, reading style questions and other exercises, such as turning the 1st person into 3rd person to practice subject verb agreement.

Beth Williams, CALAT

For further information on supporting Functional Skills providers through Covid-19 visit our website.

Chris Briggs, Sector Manager Post 16 English and Maths