Resources
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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.
Creating Questions to Engage Critically with Texts
The strategy described in this article provides tools to create questions that help students engage critically with central texts and examine them for issues of power and social inequity. The activities suggested here also encourage readers to bring their knowledge and experiences to the reading of a text.
Academic Language and ELLs: What Teachers Need to Know
This article helps educators understand the role that academic language plays in their classrooms and in ELL student success. The article also includes information on social vs. academic language, as well as numerous examples of the different kinds of academic language needed for all students to fully participate in classroom activities and assignments.
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.
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.
The Pronunciation Doctor YouTube Channel
Marsha Chan demonstrates how teachers can use multiple textbooks to improve language learners' pronunciation through a variety of techniques. Teachers will also find videos of professional development workshops on pronunciation instruction, and examples of adult ESL learners engaging in pronunciation activities in the classroom.
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.
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.
The 3 R’s: Reaping the Rewards of Routines
Participants in this workout will establish a learner routine that aligns to one or more CCR standards. This workout includes looking at some videos about instructional routines on the Teaching Channel website.
Learning for Justice
Formerly called Teaching Tolerance, Learning for Justice provides free educational resources founded on their Social Justice Standards, which are divided into four domains: Identity, Diversity, Justice and Action. Their website includes free lessons, learning plans, student texts and tasks, teaching strategies, film kits, printable posters, and a learning plan builder.
The Joy of ESL with Teacher Kelly
Find great examples of lower level assessment tools, including needs assessments, rubrics and checklists, and self-assessment resources that can be adapted for various topics and content.
COVID-19 Rapid Response Report from the Field – ProLiteracy
From the ProLiteracy website: "The report includes information gathered and compiled by members of the E-BAES Taskforce and EdTech Center staff that describes adult education’s response to the pandemic. Findings are intended to inform the field and offer useful suggestions from which adult education and literacy practitioners can benefit."
Zinn Education Project
The Zinn Education Project is a vast resource collection that contains a variety of materials for teaching history through a social justice lens. The resources include, among other things, posters, audio clips, film clips, songs and poems, and PDF copies of teaching materials. They are perfect for building the Critical Thinking skill of learning to recognize bias, assumptions and multiple perspectives.
What’s Trending in Distance Reading Instruction?
This April 2020 MN ABE Connect newsletter article included “trending” ideas, platforms, and resources for distance reading instruction (meaning, recommended more than once). All were collected from MN ABE teachers attending several ELA/STAR/EBRI Virtual Coffee Break webinars or participating in the STAR 19/20 training cohort.
Ideas for Providing Distance STAR Instruction
This March 2020 document provided early ideas from STAR trainers across the country for implementing distance STAR instruction. Not all may be appropriate or reasonable for your ABE program; however, they were intended to inspire creative thinking about how to "carry on" with evidence-based reading instruction (EBRI) during the pandemic and school closings.
We Speak NYC
These videos and accompanying materials (including short stories, study guides, and glosses) develop listening and vocabulary skills in a classroom or independent learning setting. Topics include education, health, emergency preparedness, domestic violence, workforce development, adult education, early childhood education, worker rights, mental health, and immigration legal help. Appropriate for high beginning to high intermediate learners.
Carringbush Teacher Training Videos
The videos are a series of teacher training resources developed by Carringbush Adult Education for teachers of foundation level adult EL learners. The videos feature systematic approaches to teaching pronunciation, vocabulary, and text, and include error correction techniques as well as other tips and tricks that are based on research findings.
Transparency in Learning and Teaching in Higher Ed
Transparency is an important part of creating equitable learning environments in which all students can find success. The Transparency in Learning and Teaching in Higher Ed (TILT) website hosts a useful collection of resources to help teachers better understand what transparent assignments look like and how to start creating them.
Project-Based Learning: The Online Resource for PBL
This website contains links to numerous PBL resources, including guides for designing projects, a project library, teaching and learning online strategies, and articles about PBL.
Project-Based Learning: Explained
This short video explains the essential elements of Project-Based Learning (PBL) and how they enable collaboration, critical thinking, and communication to develop.
New Resources
CCRS for Adult Education
The College & Career Readiness Standards for Adult Education (CCRS) is the document that lays out the standards for English Language Arts/Literacy, Math, and Foundational Reading Skills. CCRS is one of the three components - along with the Transitions Integration Framework (TIF) and the Northstar Digital Literacy Standards - of the Minnesota ABE content standards.
Success Skills Library (NCTN)
The Personal & Workplace Success Skills Library is a curated collection of resources to guide the integration of personal and workplace success skills into curriculum and instruction, advising and coaching, assessment, and program design. The library is fully searchable and is an excellent resource for those who want to embed more transferable skills into their ABE instruction. This resource touches on all 6 of the TIF categories.
Levels of Learning Mathematics
Developed by Appalachian State University, this resource outlines the levels of learning math proposed by Mahesh C. Sharma: intuitive, concrete/experiential, pictorial/representational, abstract, applications, and communication. The chart explains each level and gives an example of what that level would look like in the classroom.
Presenter Information
Get information about stipends, reimbursements, and other instructions for presenters.
MN ABE YouTube Channel
The MN ABE 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.
Upcoming ABE Events
May 12, 2021
6:30 pm–8:00 pm
Online
I Hear You! Effective Listening Instruction for English Language Learners
Online
Registration Deadline: WED. 5/12/21 Come learn how explicit listening instruction builds a foundation for literacy skills and fosters independence for language learners. This workshop will identify authentic learning tasks that English learners encounter daily, try out a variety of listening activities across multiple levels, and discuss which… Learn More
Online
May 13, 2021
10:00 am–11:30 am
Online
Remote Tutoring 101
Online
Registration Deadline: THU. 5/13/21 Join Literacy Minnesota Adult Basic Education and ESL trainers for a virtual workshop on how to be an effective tutor from a distance! Learn best practices for connecting and communicating one-on-one with adult learners on the phone or online, get suggestions for correcting errors… Learn More
Online
May 13, 2021
2:00 pm–3:30 pm
Online
Integrated Education and Training (IET) 101
Online
Registration Deadline: THU. 5/13/21 Join us to learn more about the basic components of IETs! This webinar will focus on the key components of IETs, articulate the value of an IET delivery model, discuss resources to support the development of an IET, and outline the process for IET… Learn More
Online