April 2008        Bulletin #3

INSIDE THIS ISSUE:

Community Literacy of Ontario

Essentially Yours:

Training in the Essential Skills

Let’s Go!

Putting Essential Skills into Your Practice

CLO’s Essentially Yours: Training in the Essential Skills project will wrap up in April 2008. A new, self-directed training module will be added to CLO’s Literacy Basics website www.nald.ca/literacybasics/ and registration forms have been circulated for two on-line training sessions on Centra.

This is CLO’s final installment of the Essentially Yours: Training in the Essential Skills bulletins. In the first bulletin you were introduced to the Essential Skills (ES) and their definitions, the story behind ES, the ES website, and the ES profiles. Bulletin #2 introduced complexity levels, and explored how authentic workplace materials can support ES development by encouraging learners to master a variety of skills in a relevant environment. Bulletin #2 also examined the NOC codes and showed how learners could explore potential occupational interests, and the skills required for those occupations.

In this issue, CLO will compare similarities between the ES levels and the levels currently used in most agencies to assess literacy and basic skills. We will also continue to explore the ES website, ES profiles, and how ES are currently being used in literacy.

The ES website has undergone some changes since our last bulletin! Several new tools have been introduced and some of the links have been repositioned. We encourage you to visit the website often to become familiar with current material and to have timely access to any new resources. The “new” Essential Skills Toolkit link is a great addition to the main menu, and this bulletin will review some of the new tools, and show you how they might be used in your programming.