Embedding functional skills

The role of the Learning Coach entails the delivery of ESOL Employability to 16-18 years and 19 plus Learners. While ensuring the completion of achieving City & Guilds Employability with ESOL learners, it is part of the course outline to embed functional skills. Embedding functional skills facilitates gentle touches of literacy and numeracy within the course subject. The purpose of this is to compliment and transfer these skills to the subject delivered.

Delivering Employability covers a umber of topics one of those topics will cover Career Planning. Within the topic of Career Planning, the Learners are required to learn about interview skills, C. V preparation and application forms. The Learners will learn how to achieve these skills and complete tasks with the use of I. T and written skills. To incorporate functional skills in this topic the Learning Coach will involve the learners with word abbreviations and meanings, word searches, budget price quizzes and time travel games.

The activities are Just a few of many skills that can be transferred into very useful learning; they are used in the form of I. T smart board, handouts, games and quizzes. All of these activities involve literacy and numeracy the aim is to make learning fun and more memorable to ESOL students who struggle with the English language. The purpose of facilitating this is to embed basic numeracy and literacy to the learners in a gentle fashion. By facilitating this, a simplistic form of learning will ake place to embed functional skills.

Another advantage of incorporating functional skills into learning activities, allows for the learning differentiation in learning levels. When facilitating learning activities it is possible to allocate the same activity to a large group but in different ways to account for higher and lower levels of learning without causing a divide in the inclusivity of the group. Other ways to incorporate functional skills are with I. T this can broaden the learning approach with learners.

The variety of practical activities and skills gained using I. T are beneficial to Vocational courses. They provide successful outcomes for learning with the reward of working independently or within groups. It also provides additional skills of use with I. T, which is now very much a part of the processes in Educational, Employment and personal use. The ESOL course includes additional literacy and numeracy structured courses for learners to insure they are given full support with their education on the skills for life courses.