Pracitcal skills are the focus for a suite of Literacy North Otago classes beginning next week.
Literacy North Otago manager Helen Jansen said the programmes, for "second-chance learners'', was a step towards bringing people into the learning environment at 34 Ribble St, in Oamaru, funded primarily by the Tertiary Education Commission, by providing life-skill programmes.
"Take that book, open it at that page, it didn't work for them last time, it ain't going to work for them,'' Ms Jansen said.
Instead, programmes like: Pimp my Wardrobe, which got learners sewing, flat cooking, household budgeting, computing for work, and household or vehicle maintenance, could engage those who needed to improve their literacy or numeracy skills.
"It's enabling people who haven't had a great deal of success with their schooling to come and engage in things that will be really useful in their everyday life,'' Ms Jansen said.
"Basic numeracy - you can't cook without basic numeracy.''
A programme Ms Jansen was quite keen on was a drawing class offered by Oamaru art teacher Amanda Dennis.
The former secondary school teacher picked up literacy courses only last year, but the programme Ms Dennis developed, Drawbridge, could develop "precursor skills for reading and writing and numeracy''.
" ... she's taking you through steps and stages of paying attention to things and really focusing, in a way that you're not actually reading and writing, so the brain hasn't got its alarm bells up that it's got for reading and writing.''
Ms Dennis called Drawbridge "a programme that links learning and thinking by drawing''.
Her style had always been "lateral and divergent''.
"The way I'm teaching it ... if you've got a picture of a landscape ... turn it upside down and you confound your intellect.
"Before you know it, when you are analysing things in that way, you are actually getting the vocabulary to think.''
