Functional Skills and 2010 GCSE's

To thrive in an economy defined by innovative application of knowledge, we must do more than absorb and feed back information.  Learners and workers must draw on their entire spectrum of learning experiences to apply what they have learned in new and creative ways.  Diploma and it's Pedagogy QCA/08/3908

Functional Maths Tasks E1 - L2

SCAFFOLDING WORDY GCSE Questions to Support Students

Supporting Problem Solving in Algebraic Context - Click here    

The following PowerPoint presentations are the result of a collaboration between myself and Alex Cufflin who is an AST at Rawlins College in Loughborough.  The files present a GCSE question in 5 formats with the aim of helping pupils break questions down themselves and hence eliminating the need for the support in the longer term. 

1 star option is the easiest and 5 star the hardest.  1 star gives guidance and highlights key values, 2 star gives guidance, 3 star highlights, 4 star gives a few hints and 5 star gives very little help.

Check out this excellent YouTube Clip discussing the Teaching of Maths - Click here

For a wide range of contextual resources including Bowland amongst many other - Click here

KS3 Functional Skills resources - available free

Strong links between FS and the renewed Frameworks will be an essential part of the new 11-19 curriculum, as FS impact on the revised GCSEs for English, mathematics and ICT from 2010 and will be a mandatory part of Diplomas from September 2008.  Look at http://excellence.qia.org.uk/functionalskills for Teaching and learning functional mathematics.  Also take a look at the QCA website for Mathematics in the new secondary curriculum

Progression through the Functional Skills Levels Document - Click here
Overview of the structure of the new GCSE's for the 3 main examination boards - Click here

Functional Skills Starter Questions

Many thanks to a team of teachers from Brighton and Hove for the following PowerPoint presentations which are designed to be used as a Starter question to prepare pupils for less structured problems, the answer is provided as well as common mistakes to look out for.

AQA
 

Latest update regarding functional skills and modular GCSE - Click here
30 exemplar tasks listed in alphabetical order can be obtained by clicking here
Additional guidance including detailed commentary of 10 of the tasks can be obtained by clicking here

Edexcel

OCR

OCR are producing a series of podcasts to answer your questions about functional skills - Click here further information can be found on their website - Click here

ASDAN

For a summary document on the 14 specialised Diplomas Click here