Knowledge and understanding of Minimum Core

Module 2 Task 1: Knowledge and understanding of Minimum Core

For professional formation, all teachers will need to demonstrate personal skills in language/literacy, numeracy and ICT at Level 2 or above (such as GCSE). They are called functional skills and they are considered necessary for everyday life.

Teacher trainers must develop their own knowledge and understanding of language/literacy, numeracy and ICT and use this knowledge and understanding within their subject specific teaching to develop the key skills of their students. Teachers will have to embed these skills into subject specific classroom teaching and show awareness of those skills in their specific subjects.

In my case, as a Maths and Science teacher, level 2 numeracy is embedded in the subjects, so numeracy is checked within the subjects.

Regarding language/literacy and ICT, I am planning to do the following in order to develop and improve my teaching and assessment of learner’s functional skills:

Language/literacy (refers to reading and writing in English language)

-      Check spelling, punctuation and grammar in written work (e.g. small projects or homework). Get students correct themselves or make peer correction.

-      Have an English dictionary in the classroom and encourage them to use it when they have doubts about spelling or meaning.

-      Have quizzes of the meaning of key terms.

-      Get students to make posters of key terms and their definitions and post these around the classroom.

-      Encourage students to read as much as possible and to report back to the group about what they have read.

-      Teach the terms skimming, scanning and close reading and practice these using subject specific materials, such as science news, reports or articles.

-      Widen my own use of vocabulary in my teaching and resources.

-      Teach the term ‘Standard English’ and the potential differences between Standard English and other dialects of English. Be explicit about the political nature of this distinction.

ICT

-      Use the computer (e.g. PowerPoint) when doing presentations in the classroom.

-      Encourage (or require) students to use the computer when doing presentations in the classroom.

-      Let the students use the classroom computer whenever it is necessary and useful in the given situation.

-      Get them present homework and written work in a word-processed program, whenever it is possible.

-      Prepare tasks that involve the use of the internet or computer programs in general.

-      Encourage students to look for information on the internet about a topic that is going to be taught in the following lessons or about a topic that has been taught in class.

-      Play computer games that are related to a specific topic that is interesting for the subject.