Coordinator tip

You may also find it helpful to work through the Numeracy module at the Literacy and Basic Skills practitioner training website listed in the bibliography. You can sign up for the online course at no cost.

Once you determine the answer to these questions, you can decide which of the following streams best fits the learner:

You may also want to ask the following questions as part of your intake process to gain a better understanding of a learner’s abilities:

  1. What are your goals as far as improving your numeracy skills?
  2. How many schools did you attend while growing up? (Note that frequent moves may have resulted in gaps in learning.)
  3. What was the highest grade that you completed in school?
  4. What areas of mathematics were most/least difficult for you? Why?
  5. What grades were you in when you started to experience these difficulties in mathematics?
  6. Did you receive any help for these difficulties? If yes, was the assistance
    helpful? Why?

Conclusion

Current thinking among educators suggests that numeracy teaching and learning must go beyond a narrow focus on computational and operational skills and knowledge. It must also integrate mathematics into learners’ lives in authentic and active ways. This involves a wider range of skills and knowledge on the part of the learners, in particular the ability to reason and communicate mathematically. It also requires that tutors be aware of how to develop and implement numeracy instruction that is active and authentic.

This unit will help tutors to gain a better understanding of numeracy and how they can incorporate it into their tutoring sessions.

To find out how much we are talking ourselves into failure, we have to begin to listen to ourselves doing math.

Sheila Tobias