Archive
Recent Newsletter Articles
Online Writing Lab (OWL)
This website offers resources for understanding and teaching prewriting, outlining, paragraphing, quoting, paraphrasing, summarizing, avoiding plagiarism, and many other writing skills for students at grade levels 7-12. Read More
Making Sense of Decoding and Spelling
30 scripted lesson plans and related materials for teaching intermediate-level adult students how to accurately decode and spell multi-syllable words. It begins by reviewing short vowel syllables, continues with the most common and useful spelling patterns of English, and always applies taught skills to repeated readings of short passages. Read More
Just Write! Guide
This resource from Teaching Excellence in Adult Literacy (TEAL) “aims to help adult education instructors improve the writing instruction they already use in their programs.” It is not a curriculum, but a guide to increase familiarity with evidence-based writing instruction and translate research findings into teaching practices. Read More
In Their Own Words: Reading and Understanding Through Paraphrasing
Effective paraphrasing builds students' reading and writing skills and boosts comprehension of complex texts. Summarized here are materials and techniques for teaching paraphrasing in various ABE contexts, including addressing paraphrasing for the GED 2014 Extended Response. Read More
In Common: Effective Writing for All Students
The writing samples included here are split into two types: on-demand writing and range of writing. The on-demand samples show progression of writing with one topic in K-5 and 6-12. The range of writing samples shows the possibilities for integrating writing tasks across content areas. Read More
Grammar Bytes
A great resource for use with pre-GED, GED, diploma, college-prep learners and advanced ELLs. It can be used in the classroom with groups, during individual sessions with volunteers, or to help students build grammar skills at home or in an open lab. Read More
Getting Started, Moving Forward with the CCRS Writing Standards
These two handouts provide nine reading-writing tasks that incorporate close readings of informative or narrative texts and writing production of sentences, paragraphs, or essays. Read More
Every-Day Edits
This free website offers monthly sets of printable paragraphs for "everyday editing" by students at reading grade levels 3-8. All include ten errors in spelling, grammar, punctuation, or capitalization. All include an answer key for immediate feedback. Read More
English Grammar 101
This free website has 15 modules of multiple lessons (and reviews) on nouns, pronouns, verbs, sentence parts, adjectives/adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions/interjections, verbals/phrases, clauses, capitalization, punctuation, and troublesome words. Read More
Diana’s ELL Writing Practice
This website is used as a companion to classroom writing instruction for Low Intermediate ELLs. Each of the 3 sections (Parts of Speech, Verb Tenses, and Sentences) has multiple lessons; all include a voiced-over video (based on class handouts) and quiz (multiple choice or fill-in-the-blank) with immediate feedback. Read More