Knowing the demands

Welcome to the Embedding Literacy and Numeracy Module

Bridging the gap between learner skills and course demands

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Background to Knowing the Demands

What are the literacy demands of the workplace you are training learners for, or of the programme they are likely to pathway to?

Are you giving students enough opportunities to practise the reading, writing, speaking and listening skills they will need to pathway successfully? What types of texts and tasks do you need to give them practise with?

Before you give your learners a reading or writing task, analyse how difficult the text or task is.

Electrical symbols library

Are learners likely to have seen a text like this before? Does it have technical or specialist vocabulary that learners may be unfamiliar with? What writing skills does the writing task require? 'Map' these skills against the Learning Progressions; then incorporate this into your teaching plan.

'Mapping' a text or task shows you what knowledge and skills a learner would need in order to read that text or do that task with understanding. Think about the complexity of the text or task in relation to what you learned about students' literacy and numeracy skills, from the LNAAT results and other initial assessment information.

When you map tasks that are used in your course against the Progressions, and compare this information with what you know about the learners (see 'Knowing the learner'), you will be able to determine your priorities and select suitable teaching activities and materials (see Knowing what to do').

Reading

Workbase has analysed the literacy and numeracy demands of a number of trades. Check the literacy profiles that are relevant to your programme. Can you include more opportunities to practise these skills in class?. The Learning Progressions contain instructions on how to analyse texts and tasks in terms of their literacy and numeracy demands. Examples of mapped tasks are also given. Look through the hard copies of the Learning Progressions books (available at the Learning Centre at Otago Polytechnic), or follow the link to the digital versions

Media

Four short videos showing a workplace L & N programme in a timber company. The fourth video shows how the tutor uses visual tools and authentic problems to help students understand some numeracy concepts relevant to the workplace]

Examples

Here is an example of literacy and numeracy learning learning outcomes for students in a level 3 Cookery programme Look at this example of literacy and numeracy learning outcomes. Are any of these relevant to your course? Look at this example of a mapped numeracy task. Here is an example of a lecturer mapping her expectations for students in terms of their writing (rather than content knowledge)for a report writing assessment task in the Level 2 Animal Care programme example. After the lecturer had mapped the task, she developed a teaching activity she could embed in her online programme to help students with report writing. She provided an annotated model that students could refer to. Report