Test Your Skill…

Test your SKILL – if you are successful you manage to pick the lock. The door swings open slowly, its rusty hinges creaking loudly. You step forward into the darkness beyond…

In the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, your skill score relates to your expertise in combat, your ability with weapons and your dexterity. In other words, it refers to how well you can do things. This matches with the Oxford English Dictionary definition – “the ability to do something well.”

When explaining a lesson’s objectives to my students I often refer to two types of objective; knowledge and skill. The knowledge-based objectives refer to what the children will (hopefully) know by the end of the lesson and the skill-based objectives relate to what the children will actually do during the lesson. I find this simplified distinction works well for my students and I try to ensure there is a knowledge and skill-based element in every lesson. (I also have a third level of objective, which I refer to as the Application Objective and this is about how the knowledge and skills are combined to achieve the desired outcome for the lesson.)

The term skill, however, is a complicated one that causes much debate amongst educators. There are those who advocate a knowledge-rich curriculum and those who favour a skills-based approach.  There is also debate about whether skills can be taught or do they simply develop through practice?

So, what do we really mean by skills? It’s a term that is open to interpretation with the word skill being used to describe a wide range of abilities, learning dispositions and personal qualities. As a result, skills can be subdivided into Hard and Soft skills where Hard Skills refer to teachable qualities that are easy to quantify – skills that are easy to measure, observe and demonstrate – and Soft Skills can also be referred to as “people skills”, “interpersonal skills” or “21st Century Skills”.

Examples of Hard Skills could include playing a musical instrument, proficiency in a foreign language, sporting prowess, typing speed or computer programming. Lists of Soft Skills often feature such things as creativity, communication, flexibility, resilience, leadership, teamwork, time management and grit.

As you step forward into the darkness something soft brushes against your face making you jump. You stumble forward and trip over something hard on the floor. Do you…

• Reach up to see what brushed against your face? (Turn to ???)
• Bend down to pick up the hard object on the floor? (Turn to ???)