Help! Functional Skills - is anyone teaching this?

[FunctionalSkills]

Hello!

I am teaching functional skills maths to adults for the first time this year. (I am a qualified teacher but not used to teaching maths.)

I am really floundering with finding resources (using twinkl and photocopying a book at present) and also with the high level of additional needs in the class. I don't have the time to support all the learners, and even with an TA I feel the learners aren't grasping my lessons.

Does anyone teach this that can give me some pointers!?

Thanks :)

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Am interested in this area.

Hi RedGiant! Are you teaching at the moment? I would say run..... but I do like my learners just feel like a 1 man show at the moment!

CGP have workbooks and revision cards for functional skills.

Do you have access to a SENCO to ask questions about supporting those with SEN?

Hi, which awarding body are the functional skills you're teaching attached to? The awarding body sites (such as Pearson) have resources.
Also, have a look at CGP books and a website called Skillsworkshop

Ah yes have got a copy of the cgp books but not per learner.

I've got good general SEN knowledge so my issue isn't really general adjustments. But more that they aren't picking it up...

Hi yes pearson! I've found sample papers and some odd sessions but not regular weekly worksheets to build a lesson round.

Will have look at Skillsworkshop. Thanks!

Those teaching it - how do you structure a level 1/level 2 class as I'm finding the huge variety of ability really tricky.

I teach Level 1. A mixed class is hard! If I had to I would start with the topics that are on both papers e.g percentages and teach the whole group to L1 then give the L1s some practice questions while I extended to L2 skills.

Resource wise I mainly make my own but ‘passfunctionalskills.co.uk/ is a good place to start.

Ah thanks mouse. I hadn't twigged that site had free resources!

In case it helps what I basically do is a 3 hour lesson each week where we look at a skill. I roughly work through the speciation so number skills first, then measure, then handling data. We do the underpinning work then look at problem solving using exam style questions. If you are with Pearson you will have access to their Exam Wizard tool which allows you to select questions from past papers to build your own paper.

Do you have access to any educational subscription through your workplace? We have BKSB and Blended Learning Consortium resources which we can access.

2.5 hours a week here but I feel I'm reinventing the wheel each week and not sure they're following/ I'm going fast enough!

I have learners that want their level 2 that aren't following quick enough too.

We have bksb but not sure yet how to get learners onto it (a whole other issue). We also have mathswatch. But about half the class only have phones not laptops so not able to access this!

I will find out about the exam wizard tool!

Ok BKSB can be really helpful if you can figure that out. I use it for assessment/homework so not really in class but it helps learners understand where they are and they can work on resources at the right level for them. A lot of mine only have phones and it works ok.

I think the basic issue is that ‘people’ including managers, government and students think FS is the easy option. It really isn’t - we assess all our students and the average starting point is E3 so L1 and L2 is a hill to climb. Pearson themselves admit the problem solving aspect is more difficult on their FS papers than GCSE!!

Functional skills is very similar to Applications of maths in the Scottish Curriculum ( used to be called lifeskills maths). When I was Teaching DD1 that at home there were resources on Bitesize and YouTube and quite a few books available.

The pass rate for L1 nationally is about 30%, not sure on L2 but I doubt it’s high! You’re probably not doing anything wrong, they’re finding it hard because it is hard for them!

Think most of the resources are highlighted here. These students have years of 'not getting it' behind them so often need a fairly hands on approach. Collect some data, tally it, graph it work out averages. Measuring get out all the measuring equip you can find and try it out, covert between measures etc. They also need to keep revisiting their skills, I use stuff like Corbett maths 5 a day to keep them practising. Corbetts sheets can also be good for questions ( some topics you may need the primary site). Forgot there is also mars maths which is a functional skills based site with videos and questions.

So I've looked at passfunctionalskills website - they have worksheets on there. Am I allowed to download these and use them in class !? (I am thinking not /copyright/something?) But I could link them to it for at home?

I don’t think the pass fs stuff is copyrighted? The cgp stuff is. For generic resources there’s also teachingimage, nrich and mathsbot but as it’s not FS specific you have to go through and pick the appropriate stuff out.

I mean it is copyright but as long as you’re not passing it off as your own that’s ok I think? I’ve given out the worksheets in class before…

But I agree with geogteach I do more ‘real world’ stuff than worksheets in class. The worksheets are for practice once they have understood the skill.

Thanks so much . We're on percentages and fractions at the moment - but the leap between explaining what afraction/a percentage is and where they need to be is huge!

I'm definitely on worksheets to practice skills at the moment. I would love to do more real object maths as we move onto shapes and graphs!

I'm struggling to keep on top of tracking learning and just that half way through a lesson learner 1 has forgotten how to subtract with carrying, learner 2 can't read the question, learner 3 has finished and is ready to move on and learner 4 wants you to repeat the task....

I'm sure I'll get there...

Can you go back to basics as you would in reception/Yr 1 teaching? As in cutting wooden pizzas into fractions and having wooden place value block sets of 1s,2s,5s, 10s, and let them make and take apart numbers with the place value blocks, so that they can get a 'feel' for how numbers are built and how to divide them? I think with maths, you either get it in reception or you never get it.

We drew pizza/cake but I've already now used 2 lessons instead of one. And by the end of the lesson they needed to be ordering fractions/simplyfying/equivalent fractions/fractions of an amount... percentages I needed to get from first principles to percentage change and reverse percentages in one lesson.

It actually feels impossible.

Who is saying you need to get them to a certain point? Management? The only way to teach maths to adults is to meet them where they are…you cannot jump ahead that is impossible. What initial and diagnostic assessments have been done to determine these are L1/L2 students?? Or are they apprentices or similar who have to do a certain level? My manager has very high expectations of us but he understands if students come to us without a firm grasp of place value they are not going to be calculating percentages any time soon!!

If you have any budget manipulatives like percentage beads can be great to scaffold weaker learners in class.

If you want to PM me I’d be happy to give you my email and we can talk in more detail. It sounds like you’ve been thrown in the deep end with this class!!