Archive
Recent Newsletter Articles
Story by Story (2008)
Story by Story was developed for Beginning ABE students needing (and wanting) systematic and contextual phonics instruction. However, it has been successfully used with many Beginning-Intermediate ESL students as well. This website provides 12 printable Story by Story lessons that each include the story text, a word study, and sentence-writing exercises. Read More
How to Be a Successful Online Student
ESL instructor Dan Bruski describes how he led his low-intermediate ESL students through a project-based learning activity around composing a list of rules and expectations for their online class. The culmination of the lesson was the creation of a video on "How to be a successful online student," which has an authentic use for orienting new students. Read More
Total Physical Response (TPR): A Curriculum for Adults
Learn about the "how" and "why" of using TPR in the classroom and explore a lesson routine that can be used for a wide variety of TPR topics. A great resource for teachers who are new to incorporating TPR into their lessons. Read More
8 Strategies for Building Relationships with ELLs in Any Learning Environment
Learn how educators can build authentic relationships with ELLs in virtual and hybrid settings, as well as how they can connect students' experiences to meaningful instruction. This article was written for a K-12 audience, but ABE teachers will find the recommendations to be helpful and easily implemented with adult learners. Read More
Reducing Stress and Promoting Mental Health in the ABE/ESOL Classroom
The ideas in this resource were developed through the Managing Stress to Improve Learning project at World Education in Boston, MA. The project was informed throughout by trauma-informed practice and recent research on how the brain is affected by chronic, toxic stress. The authors have tried here to include very practical, hands-on approaches to help teachers practice— proactively and responsively—creating safe and stable learning environments where students can manage their stressors and persist in their learning goals. Read More
Stress Reduction in the Adult Basic Education Classroom
Teachers recognize the value of their classrooms as safe venues for adults to practice healthy coping skills and to develop supports, but they are not always comfortable knowing how to respond to the emotional needs of students. While teachers are not therapists, they can be educated in approaches that promote emotional and psychological well-being, and incorporate strategies into the classroom that help students to learn more efficiently. Read More
Problem-Solving Resources – Robert Kaplinsky
Kaplinsky's website is devoted to helping students become better problem solvers, critical thinkers, and mathematical reasoners. It contains free, downloadable lesson plans that are leveled from K-8th grade, are built around real-life situations, and take a problem-based learning approach. Both Kaplinsky's lessons and Problem-Solving Framework have useful applications inside and outside of the math classroom, and could be used to help students unpack a writing prompt, understand a complex question on the GED test, and so on. Read More
Photocopiables
A site with some well put together grammar resources for both teachers and students. A lot of the material is grouped around a specific grammar topic that is based on a theme to help contextualize the grammar for instruction. Read More
Virtual Math Manipulatives
This resource contains numerous math manipulatives to use in your virtual classroom. Everything from coins to fraction pieces to number lines to algebra tiles – this resource has it all! Read More
Sight Words
For teachers serving beginning-level adult readers and working on alphabetics, this website provides a FREE source of sight word flashcards, games, lessons, and activities. All are focused on the Dolch Sight and Fry Instant lists; two collections of words that all beginning readers (at GE K-3) should recognize without sounding out letter by letter. Read More