Skills Passport
For Sixth Form
This passport is designed to help you in your independent learning.
Each skill in this passport will help you in your work across the
whole range of your subjects, and it is your responsibility to monitor
which teachers are helping you with which skills.
When you learn a skill, practise a skill, or master a skill, ask your
teacher for a stamp or a signature in your passport. If you feel that
you have not had enough help with a skill, ask a teacher for advice.
Each completed page in your passport will entitle you to a reward.
Planning and
organising ideas
These skills might include essay-planning, mindmapping, spider diagrams, ordering, bullet-pointing
and creating tables or graphs
Subject
Taught
Reinforced
Mastered
Note-taking
This skill includes any form of writing where
you are putting ideas briefly into your own
words, such as taking notes while watching
a film or listening to music, to the teacher or
to other students; condensing ideas from a
longer text, precis, copying from the board
or text in your own words, writing down a
description of an experiment and so on.
Subject
Taught
Reinforced
Mastered
Understanding
assessment
requirements
This skill refers to your knowledge of the
exams you need to take in each subject,
the coursework you have to do, or the
assessments which make up the
qualification. You should have this established early on in the course.
Subject
Taught
Reinforced
Mastered
Timed
question
practice
This skill refers to practising
exam-style questions under
exam conditions, and writing
under time pressure.
Subject
Taught
Reinforced
Mastered
Answering
exam
questions
This skill refers to exam-specific practice,
where you have looked specifically at an
exam paper or exam-style question and
had the nature of the question explained
to you.
Subject
Taught
Reinforced
Mastered
Keywords,
accuracy,
punctuation.
This skill includes practising spellings specific to
your subject, and ‘word of the day’. It also
includes accuracy in grammar and
punctuation.
Subject
Taught
Reinforced
Mastered
Skimming and
scanning texts
This skill includes looking over texts
quickly to extract information. You might
use highlighters or underlining to pick out
details or key words and ideas.
Subject
Taught
Reinforced
Mastered
Locating
information
This skill involves finding the most appropriate
source to locate key information. It could include
using Google appropriately, using a dictionary,
thesaurus or literacy mat, or finding the right place
in a chart, a textbook or a revision guide.
Subject
Taught
Reinforced
Mastered
Redrafting work
Redrafting means that you go back over your own
written work and make corrections to improve it,
sometimes with the help of your teacher or
classmates. Redrafted work should always be an
improvement in quality compared to your first try.
Subject
Taught
Reinforced
Mastered
Referencing
work
Referencing means that you accurately
give references, create footnotes, and
show where your information comes
from. If you reference properly you will
avoid plagiarism.
Subject
Taught
Reinforced
Mastered
Group and class
discussion
This skill means that you are able to
express opinions confidently in a group,
and contribute to discussion in class,
staying on topic, listening, and helping
others to join in with the conversation.
Subject
Taught
Reinforced
Mastered
Questioning
and debate
This skill means that you are able to
ask questions confidently in a class
discussion, challenge ideas using
evidence and evaluate the evidence
produced by other people.
Subject
Taught
Reinforced
Mastered
Evaluation and
comparison
This skill means that you are able to
evaluate or compare different factors,
and decide for yourself which is most
important or significant.
Subject
Taught
Reinforced
Mastered
Peer or self
assessment
This skill means that you are able to use
marking or assessment criteria to evaluate
your own and others’ work, accurately and
fairly.
Subject
Taught
Reinforced
Mastered
‘Word of the Day’ spelling test results
Each week, your form tutor will check
how well you know the words of
the day for that week. These
words are the keywords for
accessing tertiary level education.
High scorers over each term will win
commendations.
Term 1
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Week 6
Week 7
Week 8
Total
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Week 6
Week 7
Total
Term 2
Term 3
End of term
End of term
/38
Term 4
/35
Term 5
/29
Term 6
End of term
End of term
/30
/23
/35