What's New

Site Update (May 12th)

2010-05-12T14:22:00.003Z

I have checked all links on the main activity pages, English, Maths, ESOL Grammar and End Tests, removing dead links as well as adding a few new ones.

I have also checked some of the general pages and will try to cover as many as possible in the coming weeks.

All this activity is in preparation for imminent retirement at the end of next month. I don't know what will happen to the site in the future; I expect it to remain available but not to be updated.

Site Address Change

2009-09-16T12:48:00.003Z

The Skills for Life Website will soon change its address (url) to the following:
http://learning.themanchestercollege.ac.uk/basic_skills
Please change all your bookmarks accordingly.
This is part of the ongoing incorporation of what was City College Manchester into The Manchester College.
The old links will work for a few days or even weeks, but they will disappear.

Updated links (April 23rd)

2009-04-23T15:48:00.003Z

I have updated as follows:

Activities Maths - changed all links for NNS activities (Primary National Standards), and added some interesting Java based activities from NCTM Illuminations
I have updated some of the links on the Background page (as websites change and evolve)

More details on the Maths activities on the Skills for Life Blog.

New Links, March 12th

2009-03-12T16:23:00.002Z

I've added the following links:

QIA New Interactive Tool for (all four) Core Curricula to Background and the related Embedded section to Embedded
Bling It On - a downloadable program - To English and Maths
NCETM Workplace Mathematics to Work-Based Learning
Houghton Mifflin Reading Practice Tests (American) to End Tests and to English

ESL Bits (23rd Feb)

2009-02-23T16:56:00.003Z

I've added a link to BITS Interactive Exercises on End Tests and Interactive English. These use British texts and can provide good practice for meaning and gist for Level 1 literacy tests, though the questions are on the easy side. Thanks to Larry Ferlazzo for this.

Online Dictionaries (Feb 5th)

2009-02-05T15:51:00.003Z

I've reviewed and updated the dictionaries section on the General English page. New links include the Shahi page which links to Flickr photographs.

More thoughts on the Skills for Life Blog.

Dyscalculia Page (Jan 6th)

2009-01-06T13:07:00.003Z

I have updated the dyscalculia page. Since I last did this - over three years ago - there are now useful information pages from The BDA and from SEN Teacher. I have also found a good research site from New Zealand and an American forum which is both informative and contentious.

ESOL Grammar Activities

2008-11-21T15:32:00.002Z

I have added a page called ESOL Grammar Activities, linked from both the Teachers and Students pages. This page will carry our quizzes and links to other sites' activities for aspects of literacy grammar which particularly cause difficulty for second language learners.

More details on the Skills for Life Blog.

New Quizzes (17 October)

2008-10-17T11:12:00.004Z

I have added some new quizzes for:

Maths: easier subtract, multiply and divide for learners starting towards Level 1 tests
Interviews: a selection from the Moodle project I am developing for Travel and Tourism students which make use of video and are mainly but not exclusively on listening skills. I hope tutors will feel that many students will benefit from seeing the videos.

More details here on Skills for Life Blog:- Numeracy, Inteviews

Red Kite Learning (Sept 24th)

2008-09-24T10:59:00.002Z

I've added a number of links to Red Kite Learning:

The main page and newsletters (to Background)
CV and Interview Assistant (to Jobsearch and Topics)
An interesting video on listening skills to the Speaking and Listening Page

Connected to Red Kite are the numeracy activities from LLU+. The demos are mostly fine, though some of the Level 2 are difficult. I'll add some to Maths Activities. You can access more if you register and create your own for the bank of activities.

Skilled to go (July 3rd)

2008-07-03T15:09:00.004Z

I've put a link to Skilled to go on the English and Math s page.
The site contains excellent learning materials for both literacy and numeracy. The development has been done for the Office of Fair Trading on the theme of consumer protection. Most of the materials are good quality paper-based, though I noticed at least one listening exercise with an mp3 file.

Practice Tests and Functional Skills (July 3rd)

2008-07-03T15:02:00.003Z

I have added links to:
Edexcel's E3 practice tests on End Tests and English and Maths
Edexcel's L1 and L2 practice tests on End Tests and English and Maths; they look the same as those on Move On
I've also put a round up of Functional Skills sites on the Key Skills Page

New Blogs (July 3rd)

2008-07-03T14:57:00.004Z

Added links to two new bloggers:

Skillsworkshop Blog from Maggie Harnew
Students with Learning Difficulties with lots of Skills for Life insights

Welcome to the Blogging World

Speaking and Listening Page (April 9th)

2008-04-09T12:27:00.003Z

I have added a new page for Speaking and Listening, linked of the Teachers Page. This contains so far:

detailed links for all Skillswise listening activities
lists of relevant units in printed DFES packs which have linked audio
lists of relevant NLN materials

DFES and NLN resources are freely available within FE and Adult Learning in England and Wales.

Further details on Skills for Life Blog.

Fire Extinguishers, etc (March 19th)

2008-03-19T13:40:00.003Z

I have added 5 simple matching quizzes about Fire Extinguisher labels. These have been designed for Hairdressing students I support who get the labels confused. I imagine they could be used for other curriculum areas as well. They are listed in Quizzes under Hairdressing.

Other new links include:

a series of new links on different pages for Move On, including their E3 Fractions Hot Topic
BESOL, a blog for ESOL students in Blogs
Spelling City, a Look, Cover, Say which lets you save lists and do other activities with the lists to Interactive English and English Activities
Football Academy, literacy and numeracy games on a football theme from Learndirect Scotland, to Interactive English

Video Jug Punctuation (March 5th)

2008-03-05T16:46:00.002Z

I've added links to three "how to use" Punctuation videos, Capital Letters, Apostrophes and Commas to the English Activities page, and a general link to all videojug's Punctuation videos on the Elearning page. They are very clear and English English, but they are so comprehensive they will be more useful for L2 learners. More on Skills for Life Blog.

I've also added other links for 2 mental arithmetic games, Odd One Out and SumDiv, to Maths Activities.

Embedded Learning Portal (Feb 8th)

2008-02-08T16:12:00.000Z

I've updated today all the links to all the "DFES" Embedded Learning materials, mostly on the English Activities and Maths Activities pages, where all the E3, L1 and L2 activities are listed. I've also changed the key from "DFES" to "RW+".

I'll probably find more links that I've missed. I guess this a change of server following the break up of the old DFES.

ESOL Scotland (Feb 6th)

2008-02-06T14:45:00.000Z

I've added links for these:

ESOL Scotland, a general site which also has good downloadable free teaching resources for ESOL and Literacy (to Interactive English and English Learning Resources)
Teachers TV which has videos useful for demonstrating embedded skills (to Elearning, Embedded and Work-Based Learning)

More details on Skills for Life Blog

Site Search (Jan 24th)

2008-01-24T17:01:00.000Z

I've added a Google Custom Site Search to the front page (Index).

Dustbin Quizzes (Jan 21st)

2008-01-21T12:23:00.000Z

I have added a couple of "Dustbin" quizzes on the spelling page, using the Classtools site. It's early days but it looks interesting.

I've also checked and updated the Topics and Jobsearch pages.

Move On Tests in City and Guilds Format (Jan 18th)

2008-01-18T11:45:00.000Z

The Move on Site has now three practice tests for Literacy and Numeracy at both levels in a format closely resembling the City and Guilds format, linked from here. Unlike City and Guilds own tests you can review questions afterwards in the Move On fashion. These will greatly help learners prepare for the tests.

New Activities (Jan 17th)

2008-01-17T11:35:00.000Z

New activities added recently include:

2 quizzes to Grammar, linked to Level 1 End Tests style questions, also on End Tests and English Activities
A new quiz for E3 calculations to Maths quizzes and Maths Activities - hopefully more to follow
4 Data Handling activities for Maths Activities, from the Gold Dust Resources aimed at teachers but useful demonstrations for Level 2 learners as well
The Free Rice vocabulary game to English Resources

More details for some on Skills for Life Blog

New Links (Dec 18th)

2007-12-18T13:21:00.001Z

New links added today or recently include:

MindMeister - free online mindmapping (to Elearning)
Inspiration Lane - daily updates of ESOL teaching ideas - great and inspiring for any teacher (to Elearning)
Visual Dictionary links pictures to meanings (to Learn English)
Blogs from Rash Kath from India starting from Mathematics Learning (look for Videos as well) (to Elearning)
English Page - EFL site with Tense Work found useful by one of our dyslexia teachers (to Interactive English)

More details for some of these on Skills for Life Blog

Word Sorting Activity, Peter Symonds (Sept 26th)

2007-09-26T14:02:00.000Z

Today:

I have added a link for a series of Word Sorting activities from the Houghton Mifflin site to the Interactive English page.
I have updated all links for Peter Symonds College interactive activities and added a link to a general index of many of these activities. The old links are now on a protected intranet.
I have started correcting some out of date and dead links.

Some more details on Skills for Life Blog.

Skillswise at E3 (August 24)

2007-08-24T11:38:00.000Z

I have added links for the new Skillswise Entry 3 modules to the relevant pages (Interactive Sites: General, English, Maths.)

I will add specific module links to the English and Maths Activities pages as soon as time and access to a network point allow.

More details on Skills for Life Blog.

Gordons, Basic Skills Agency (July 11)

2007-07-11T09:17:00.000Z

I have added more links for:

Gordons on Maths Activities

I have updated links for:

The Basic Skills Agenc y on Background

Further details on Skills for Life Blog

Being Dyslexic, Maths Quizzes (June 14)

2007-06-14T16:09:00.000Z

I have added the following today:

a link for Being Dyslexic to the Dyslexia Information Site s page. This is a general UK Dyslexia support site which features forums, where you can "ask the expert", amongst many other things
3 new simple quizzes on Number Bonds to Maths Quizzes; recent quizzes also added to Maths Activities page

More Mental Maths Quizzes (June 12th)

2007-06-12T08:48:00.000Z

I have added 3 more quizzes to encourage mental maths at approximately L1 or L2 to the Maths Quizzes page. Two look at multiplication techniques and one at division.

More on Skills for Life Blog.

New Links (24 May)

2007-05-24T15:42:00.000Z

I've added the following links:

direct links for City and Guilds format practice end tests on the End Tests page
links for new embedded schemes from Totally Skilled on Embedded page

More Blogs (4 May)

2007-05-04T15:35:00.000Z

I've arranged all blog links to a new page: Blogs
The new links here included a couple that are dyslexia oriented, plus Larry Ferlazzo's, which gives frequent, more or less daily, updates of ESOL/EFL links. I have put a link to his static Teacher's Page on the Learning Links page.

New Links (27 April)

2007-04-27T14:08:00.000Z

I have added:

Scientific Calculator (online tool) to Maths general
2 blogging links with relevance to literacy (to Elearning Page): Minnesota, New York

More details on Skills for Life Blog

22 March - Beauty Quizzes

2007-03-22T15:39:00.000Z

I have added today to the Quizzes page a short series of Beauty Quizzes. These are aimed purely at Beauty Therapy Level 2 students who are having difficulty with names of muscles and arteries (anatomy). A few more may follow.

New on Site - March 9 2007

2007-03-08T16:13:00.000Z

Added today:

Link to dyslexics.org on the Dyslexia Information Page - an interesting, sober view on dyslexia and how it should be addressed in Primary School.
A link to a wiki I am building on Underpinning Skills for Numeracy Level 1 and 2
Updated word lists in Spellsheets

More details on the Skills for Life Blog

New on February 23rd 2007

2007-02-23T16:42:00.000Z

I have added today:

(On the Elearning page) links to a YouTube maths video group (and some selected videos). The list is maintained by Rebecca Newburn and I have added some of her sites.
(On the Dyslexia Information page) a link to Dyslexia Scotland - it's a beautifully designed site.

Additions 20 February 2007

2007-02-20T15:47:00.000Z

There seem to be very few new usable Skills for Life links recently. One I have added today:

Think Metric has a range of ideas aimed at the general public about all sorts of metrification issues; it also includes a neat quiz you could use as an icebreaker. The main link is in Learn Maths, the quiz is also in Activities Maths

I have added some of the Canterbury Cross quizzes to Activities Maths. As these are exe files they may cause loading problems on some servers and with some browsers.

I have added a section to the Elearning page, with details of wikis, blogs, podcasts etc with even the vaguest relevance to Skills for Life. Hopefully this list will develop into a page in time.

I have also corrected answers to Subtraction with Words in response to an email. I'm always happy to correct wrong answers in the quizzes.

More details on the Skills for Life Blog.

New Additions Jan 25th 2007

2007-01-25T11:30:00.000Z

New links include:

New Mnemonic link on Topics - a class list from Wiltshire College from The Adult Basic Skills Resource Centre
2 links for listening materials using podcasts on Interactive English - Breaking News and Podcard s
a Niace hosted portal for Skills for Life for Offender Learning
Some runnable or downloadable exe files for Numeracy activities from Canterbury Cross Primary School

Further thoughts on some of these on Skills for Life Blog.

New links - 9 January 2007

2007-01-09T12:01:00.000Z

Just 2 links:

Firstly for Keith Burnett's blog for his GCSE Maths students - GCSE Maths Help. More on Skills for Life Blog.
Secondly a very interesting paper on M-Learning which gives an overview with direct relevance for Skills for Life. I found this direct link through a search for something else; I cannot find a link from the site.

New Additions December 19th

2006-12-19T16:08:00.000Z

I have added some new quizzes for mental arithmetic to Activities Maths. I have tried to tie these in with other Level 1 things like mean and area.

I have also added a link for the National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics to Background. The NCETM claims to be a one stop portal for maths teaching from primary to FE, but there is not much for post 16 numeracy.

More information here on my blog.

Purpose of this Page

2006-12-18T19:03:00.000Z

This page, really a blog, is designed to record changes to City College Manchester's Skills for Life Website. All significant changes will be recorded here. Older changes are still at Old What's New. Please change your bookmarks accordingly.

The reason for this change is to allow changes to followed via RSS. You can subscribe to the RSS of this page by following the Atom link below, or by copying the link location into your RSS reader. There is a useful tutorial here, part of this wiki. I use Pageflakes as a home page, which allows a number of elements on pages including RSS feeds.

This change also allows you to add comments on the changes, although you will need to have or to set up a Google account to do this.