Functional Skills

Explain ways to embed elements of Functional Skills in your specialist area

Functional skills which includes Mathematics/Numeracy, English/Literacy and

Communication Technology (ICT) is very important to the development of the

student to improve existing skills / knowledge of the student and enables them to gain

greater confidence when faced with issues which they may need basic knowledge of

numeracy, literacy or ICT.

Within my field of a Trade Union Health and Safety Officer I would embed elements

of functional skills in Mathematics this can be achieved by presenting the student with

problem solving questions rather than just simple calculations questions.

A simple maths question may look like – “Calculate the area of a rectangle with sides

of 2m and 4m”. To embed more functional skills we could change this to a more

realistic situation which may look like – “we have a new office 200 feet by 350 feet

which needs new flooring. Create a report to show how much flooring would be

needed in yards and inches and use this web site www.flooringforyou.com to

calculate the cost of the flooring and with it being an office we need to know legally

how many office work stations we can put in and how may people at one time can

legally work in the office under the Health and Safety at work act this information can

be found on the HSE wed site www.hse.gov.uk ”. This example promotes all three

functional skills Literacy skills are required to create and present a report of their

findings.

Numeracy skills are required to enable the students to measure and size the room for

the flooring and also to measure how many work stations is required and how many

cubic feet each person will need to work legally safe within there working

environment.

ICT - from the web site addresses I give the students this will enable the students to

surf the web page or links that they require this will help the student to find the... [continues]

Read full essay