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Best Practices for Serving LGBTQ Students

This is a guide for educators on how to work towards creating a more LGBTQ-inclusive school environment. This guide includes four key areas: policy checkup, classroom culture, instruction, and family and community engagement.

A Strategy of Giving Corrective Feedback to ELLs

This article explains how using sentence frames and explicit feedback can provide the right balance of structure and scaffolding for English language learners.

Understanding Trauma: Learning Brain vs. Survival Brain

This short video reframes trauma in the classroom in terms of "learning brain" versus "survival brain" as a way to make it easier for teachers think and talk about trauma with students.

Trauma and Learning: Impacts and Strategies for Adult Classroom Success

Exposure to potentially traumatic events, which can have a significant impact on brain mechanisms for language learning, is high in adult ELL classrooms. This article outlines strategies that target attention and memory networks which may make it easier for adults to learn.

Teaching the Skill of Self-Correction

This article offers several suggestions on how teachers can help students to take ownership of their reading, monitor themselves while they are reading, self-correct when they need to.

Differentiated Comprehension Checks

This article explains how using differentiated comprehension checks is a way to reach all students in your classroom. It helps students understand grammatical features by asking a quick series of tiered questions during a story or conversation. This is a meaning-based technique that promotes comprehension.

Visible Thinking

Visible Thinking is a flexible and systematic research-based approach to integrating the development of students' thinking with content learning across subject matters. This website provides a convenient way to learn about Visible Thinking as well as thorough descriptions of the ideals, routines and activities that were developed from research in K-12 schools.

Talking Politics: Valuing Different Perspectives

This video from Edutopia demonstrates how high school students learn how to share and listen to opposing beliefs with empathy in the classroom.

Teaching Grammar to Adult English Language Learners: Focus on Form

This brief from the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL) provides a research-based rational as to why there is a need to teach grammar within a meaningful context. Teachers who struggle with questions of how much, when, and how to teach grammar will find this brief both informative and thought-provoking.

Supporting ELLs in PBL Projects

This article from Edutopia outlines how Project-Based Learning (PBL) is valuable for English Language Learners (ELLs) when it teaches academic vocabulary, encourages collaboration, scaffolds structure and function, allows assessment and differentiation, and leverages their native language.

Looking at the Bigger Picture: 7 Tips for Using Project Based Learning in the ESL Classroom

This article gives an overview of project-based learning, including why it is good for ESL students and what the teacher's role is. It also provides seven tips for successful project-based learning implementation in the ESL classroom.

Incorporating Goal-Setting in Adult ESL Classrooms

This PowerPoint outlines goal-setting projects and their results in beginning level adult ESL classrooms. Images of handouts and descriptions of activities are provided.

Learner Goal-Setting

This article addresses the question, "What can instructors do to help students set goals, monitor progress, and reach goals?" with research-backed strategies and suggestions for practitioners.

Error Correction

This article provides strategies for how and when to correct learners' mistakes and suggestions for how to make error correction a part of your classroom routine.

ESL Teaching Methods: Teaching Grammar Creatively

This article from the Reach to Teach blog offers best practices for teaching grammar in an effective and engaging manner for learners of all ages.

Best Practices for Teaching the Whole Adult ESL Learner

This chapter by David Schwarzer describes some research-based best practices for teaching adult ESL students centered around the idea of whole-language principles.

Cultural Identity and Teaching

This article discusses the role that culture plays in shaping the values and practices of teachers, both consciously and subconsciously. It offers recommendations for how teachers can build awareness of their own cultural values and beliefs, and suggests ways that teachers can build and present culture in their classrooms.

3 Tips to Make Any Lesson More Culturally Responsive

This article by Zaretta Hammond discusses three easy strategies that teachers can use to leverage the brain’s memory systems and information processing structures and make their lessons more culturally responsive to the diverse learners in their classrooms.

A Framework for Culturally Responsive Teaching

This article addresses the roles of motivation and culture; analyzes some of the social and institutional resistance to teaching based on principles of intrinsic motivation; and outlines the norms, procedures, and structures for effective culturally responsive teaching.

New Resources

Transitions 101

This webinar provides the basics of what is meant by “Transitions” in adult education. ATLAS and the Minnesota Department of Education give an overview of relevant work and professional learning options around adult career pathways, IET, transitions to post-secondary entry, and more!

Video #6: Analyzing Our Lessons with the Culture Tree

The Culture Tree helps us name tangible parts of culture, so that when we look at our lesson plans, we can figure out how much of the content is based on our own culture and ways of seeing/thinking of things. Therefore, once we name what part of culture the lesson connects with, we can then think about what kinds of discussion questions or content will invite learners to share about their own experiences. This makes class more relevant and helps learners bridge information they already know to new skills and knowledge.

Videos Series: Moving Equity Forward in Adult Education

Moving Equity Forward in Adult Education is a series of short videos around DEI/antiracism topics in adult education. Each video and accompanying discussion questions will package an important concept that works toward justice in a format that is easily accessible for educators. Videos cover topics such as understanding culture, discovering learners’ funds of knowledge, being a warm demander, and using diverse teaching materials.

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PD Catalog

Get an overview of all MN Adult Education professional development (PD) activities in one convenient, searchable place!

PD Catalog

Presenter Information

Get information about stipends, reimbursements, the MN Adult Ed policy on use of images in presentations, and other instructions for presenters.

 

MN Adult Ed YouTube Channel

The MN Adult Education YouTube Channel is a free online PD resource that you can use to explore teaching techniques and classroom ideas in action! Find out more in this MN ABE Connect newsletter article.

 

ATLAS Announcements & Future PD

Check out the latest list of ATLAS professional development announcements and opportunities! This is the document that is shared at all ATLAS events.

 

Virtual Meeting Resources

Find resources for conducting online meetings/events/presentations! You are welcome to use and adapt these materials to fit your own needs and context.

 

Upcoming ABE Events

February 10, 2025 9:00 am–4:00 pm
See Moua-Leske
The Upper Room
100 West College Drive, Suite #300
Marshall, MN 56258 United States

It Begins With Us

The Upper Room
100 West College Drive, Suite #300
Marshall, MN 56258 United States

Registration Deadline: FRI. 2/7/25 COST: $45 per day Come join us for our annual It Begins with Us Conference on February 10-11! We will be at a new location this year at The Upper Conference, located in downtown Marshall. Day 1 will be an immersive and interactive Virtual Dementia… Learn More

The Upper Room
100 West College Drive, Suite #300
Marshall, MN 56258 United States
February 11, 2025 9:00 am–4:00 pm
See Moua-Leske
The Upper Room
100 West College Drive, Suite #300
Marshall, MN 56258 United States

It Begins With Us

The Upper Room
100 West College Drive, Suite #300
Marshall, MN 56258 United States

Registration Deadline: FRI. 2/7/25 COST: $45 per day Come join us for our annual It Begins with Us Conference on February 10-11! We will be at a new location this year at The Upper Conference, located in downtown Marshall. Day 1 will be an immersive and interactive Virtual Dementia… Learn More

The Upper Room
100 West College Drive, Suite #300
Marshall, MN 56258 United States
February 12, 2025 1:00 pm–2:30 pm
Minnesota Department of Education
Online

WebChat with MNABE

Online

Registration Deadline: WED. 2/12/25 WebChat with MN ABE is a webinar discussion led by state ABE staff from the Minnesota Department of Education. Web Chat webinars provide updates from the state ABE office on new and emerging issues and an opportunity for local ABE staff to ask questions… Learn More

Online