Essay on the importance of teaching functional skills in the classroom

Abstract

The study of functional skills in classroom is a very significant, as it provide the most basic and fundamental skills that school children and young students will later use in life during a wide range of everyday life situations, both in their professional and personal. DfES established the functional English, maths and ICT, "provide an individual with the essential knowledge, skills, and understanding that will enable them to operate confidently effectively and independently in life and at work" (DfES, 2005a).

Functional skills are abilities that can be applied by the individual in everyday life situations. There are a wide range of teaching approaches to functional skills. In the case of young children, the teaching of these skills can be offered as a specific module. Nevertheless, these skills are also being taught in four other ways:

Discrete: taught by specialists as a separate subject from other areas. Its advantages are: students' progress is assessed more easily and smaller teams make the management communication easier. On the other hand, students may not understand the purpose of learning these functional skills.

Partly embedded taught by specialists and is applied in a flexible way in other study areas helps students to see the relevance and purpose of the skills taught. For the success of this approach, specialists and main teachers have to work closely together to establish the links between specific subjects and the functional skills to be taught.

Mostly embedded is taught by specialists reinforcing functional skills by applying them to purposeful contexts in the student's program. Students see how functional skills can be applied in practice and teachers help students to relate to those skills of their pupils' previous experiences. Nevertheless, the success on this approach relies on communication.