With a week break from my usual routine, I’m taking this week to write a series of posts. There’s no theme, just thoughts I’ve been considering for a while.
I’m an instructor in a couple of adult literacy program. Currently, my focus has been on numeracy (math). In my classes, there are usually 10-16 adults working a wide variety of basic math skills (decimals, fractions, percent, ratio, geometry, etc.). Over the years I’ve moved to a “package” system where I give the learners a small package of work on a specific skills for them to work on at their own pace. I found that this practice in several other classes I have an supply instructor it. I usually mark their work as they go, and double check everything when they complete the package. I have a series of assessments (tests, assignments, etc.) to prepare them for the ministry-mandate assessment. This system works because it’s a low stress environment and learners have sense of progress without feeling overwhelmed.
It’s not a perfect system but seems to work well enough. It does, however, require that I have packages ready, sorted, and organized before. Also means I need to have specific plan in place for what skills are necessary. I also can’t plan too far ahead because sometimes there are gaps in a learner’s knowledge that aren’t obvious.
I avoided creating a system until recently because I wanted to able to adapt the order I gave out the packages based upon learner’s needs but now there are just too many different files to keep track. So I’m going to create a simple checklist template. This would also let me give something out to the