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Helpful resources

Skills Builder Education Toolkit

A toolkit for building essential skills at all levels of education - including the Skills Builder Universal Framework and the Skills Builder Principles.

Skills Builder Inclusion Toolkit

A comprehensive guide for Teachers and Facilitators, to building essential skills in learners with additional needs. Includes the Expanded Universal Framework, which breaks down each skill into teachable nuggets, and six Principles for robustly building skills.

Introduction

These lessons are a great introduction for those who are new to the Skills Builder Partnership. You'll learn about the work of the Partnership and explore our flagship product for educators: the Skills Builder Hub.

LESSON 1

An Introduction To The Skills Builder Partnership

In this lesson, you will learn about the work of the Partnership.

5 minutes

LESSON 2

An Introduction To Skills Builder Hub

In this lesson, you will explore our flagship product for educators: the Skills Builder Hub.

5 minutes

Keep it simple

These lessons are a great place to begin teaching essential skills. You'll learn what essential skills are, and how to talk about them using the Universal Framework. Then you'll consider how to support your learners and the wider community to use the Framework too.

We've arranged the lessons in an order below, but feel free to complete them in an order that suits you.

LESSON 1

What Are The Essential Skills?

An introduction to the essential skills

10 mins

LESSON 2

The Skills Builder Universal Framework

How the Universal Framework provides a language to teach and assess essential skills

10 mins

LESSON 3

Learners: Fostering a Common Language

How the Universal Framework makes use of low abstraction, highly tangible descriptions to support learners.

10 mins

LESSON 4

Educators: Fostering a Common Language

How the Universal Framework supports and is supported by metacognitive learning strategies

5 mins

LESSON 5

Recognising and Rewarding Effort

Efforts schools and colleges in the Skills Builder Partnership are making to celebrate learner achievement

10 mins

LESSON 6

Using Visual Cues

Easy ideas to enrich the learning environment to better support the language of essential skills

5 mins

Start early, keep going

If we want students to master the essential skills, it is imperative to start teaching them as early as possible and then continue to make them a consistent element throughout education.

This set of four short lessons each focus on a specific phase of education. Choose the phase that applies most to you.
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Each lesson takes no longer than 10 minutes.

LESSON 1

Essential Skills For Learners Under 5

Essential skills in Early Years settings

10 minutes

LESSON 2

Essential Skills With Learners Aged 5-11

Essential skills for younger learners

10 minutes

LESSON 3

Essential Skills With Learners Aged 11-16

Essential skills in the Secondary phase

10 minutes

LESSON 4

Essential Skills Post-16

Essential skills in Further Education

5 minutes

Measure it

Great teaching is supported by robust assessment. This applies to essential skills teaching as much as any other subject.

In this lesson you will learn more about using the Skills Builder Universal Framework as a tool to assess and inform formative practice. This lesson works really well in combination with the lessons from the ‘Focus Tightly’ module.

‘Measure it’ has one lesson, which will take no longer than 10 minutes to complete.

LESSON 1

Measure it

Using the Skills Builder Universal Framework to inform formative practice.

10 minutes

Focus tightly

Once you have a sound understanding of your learners’ strengths and gaps, it is time for directed, focussed teaching and practice.

These two lessons go into more detail about the specific knowledge that needs to be taught for each step, and some of the ways Skills Builder has made it easier to practise the specific elements of each skill once they have been taught.

LESSON 1

Focussed Teaching

Each step of each skill requires specific knowledge and teaching.

10 minutes

LESSON 2

Focussed Practice Using The Skills Builder Hub

Once the knowledge has been taught, it’s time for focussed practice.

5 minutes

Keep practising

To accelerate progress in the essential skills, they should be used and reinforced as often as possible whenever you have the chance with those students. Over the course of this principle you will consider: Are there regular opportunities for students to use their essential skills? When they do, are these opportunities highlighted clearly to them? Is there regular opportunity to actively reflect on the skills and how they have been developed?