Author: abeketb2

As the year draws to a close it is, for me, a time of reflection. In the past few months I have reflected a lot on the reasons why I chose to work in Adult Literacy and Basic Education. It has been such a helpful process while there is a sea of change around and has helped me affirm the reasons why I came to this work and why it is important to me. A diagram that I came across was one that I found particularly interesting. I honestly don’t know where I found this so I can’t give anyone credit for it (so if anyone comes across this on line please let me know and I will give full credit to the creator!). It isn’t my own but has helped me greatly in my reflective process. What do I enjoy doing? What am I good at? What contribution does this make to the world around me? What fires me to work harder and longer? For me it is important to work in an area that supports equality and challenges social injustice. Working in an environment where I can be part of a Team that can create opportunities for people to make changes to their lives, their families and their communities so that we can all benefit is critical. Seeing the change evidenced in very real ways is heartening....

Hello I hope you are enjoying being back in the adult literacy centres and working with your learners. I also hope you had a refreshing mid-term break. You are all very familiar with the writings of Dr Howard Gardner about ‘Multiple Intelligences’. In his 1983 book ‘Frames of Mind- the Theory of Multiple Intelligences’ he outlines 8 behaviours that can be considered as Intelligences. They are Linguistic, Logical/ Mathematical, Visual/ Spatial, Kinaesthetic, Musical, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal and Naturalist. In the introduction to his 2011 revised edition of the same book he refers to Existential/ Moral as perhaps being as additional Intelligence.  In this introduction he also states that ‘Human minds are highly differentiated entities’. We know this from our work with Adult Literacy learners. Where Gardner’s theory helps us greatly as educators is that by identifying multiples intelligences he helps us think about different ways we can delivery tuition that meet both the individual and group needs. A good lesson plan, and a well delivered session, will be prepared to teach a variety of ways so that the concepts, skills and knowledge being shared can reach all students and the unique blend of intelligences they possess. When many of us think about Multiple Intelligences we also think of learning styles and I am sure many of you have used www.vark.com with your learners to help identify their learning styles or learning modalities. We can...

  Last month I posted and shared about Lesson Planning. This is another wonderful visual that I came across on my late night ‘surfing’ and thought that it captured Bloom’s Taxonomy really well. You can download it in full size  here. Benjamin Bloom was an educational psychologist who chaired the committee who devised the taxonomy in the 1950s. This outlined a classification of learning objectives. The taxonomy was developed to promote higher forms of thinking in education on order to move away from rote learning. They identified the three domains of learning as cognitive, affective and psychomotor or, as many of us say, heart, head and hand. The attached visual deals mainly with the cognitive learning domain.  This visual helps us refine our thinking – are we asking students to create or evaluate? Are we hoping that by the end of the lesson or module or programme they will be able to analyse or apply? I hope this will be helpful in your work in preparing lesson plans, course outlines and schemes of work. If you want to learn more, or refresh your thinking on Bloom’s taxonomy I recommend visiting the following website http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/bloom.html Aoife McCormack County Adult Literacy...