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abc English Teacher Training
abc English is a collection of resources for teachers and tutors who work with adult and adolescent English learners who are developing basic literacy and language skills. abc English offers free Teacher Training resources which serve as asynchronous professional development opportunities. Training includes video examples of instructional techniques, a sample lesson outline and a teacher's guide as well as a Webinar video.
Literacy Now: Downloadable Material
This website includes books from Literacy NOW workshops, and testing materials developed for ESL Programs. These have been developed and curated by Tacoma Community House. You will find tools for the Language Experience Approach (LEA), A Speaking and Listening Handbook, and three different volunteer handbooks for those supporting Beginning ESL Literacy students.
Contextualizing Adult Education: Learning from Six Decades of Experience and Research
September 2020, ProLiteracy released a research brief focused on the importance of contextualizing adult education. Read more to learn about what research has to say, as well as strategies to contextualize instruction with adult learners.
Pathway to Literacy Level Teacher Training
This training module explores definitions of adult EL emergent readers, best practices, lesson planning and learning activities, and showcases the Adult ELL Pathway to Literacy curriculum and assessment; a free resource for adult literacy level teachers.
Differentiated Instruction from TEAL
This excerpt from the TEAL Just Write! Guide unpacks differentiated instruction in the ABE classroom and provides examples of how it can be used to support learning, particularly writing instruction. Read to the end to find their Differentiated Instruction Fact Sheet!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
New Resources
Beginning ESL Literacy Distance Learning or In-Class Units
The Beginning EL Literacy (NRS ESL Level 1, CASAS STEPS 160-183) lessons provided here can be used in class, or assigned out of class as proxy hours by a TVM-certified teacher. The lessons are paper-packet based, and each has a QR code link to a video for the lesson. Each unit contains 5 lessons. Each lesson introduces 6-8 new vocabulary words, and is meant to build knowledge based on previous lessons.
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
March 9, 2026
6:30 pm–8:30 pm
Online
Volunteer Core Training Module 1: Overview of Minnesota Adult Education and Program Accountability
Online
Registration Deadline: MON. 3/9/26 Venue: Online (see details below) Participants learn about Adult Basic Education programming in Minnesota, demographics of learners, instructional content standards as well as initial and on-going assessment. This session wraps up with learner motivations, barriers and persistence. Learn More
Online
March 10, 2026
6:30 pm–8:30 pm
Online
Teaching Intermediate Alphabetics
Online
Registration Deadline: TUE. 3/10/26 Venue: Online (see details below) Teaching intermediate alphabetics (syllables, prefixes, suffixes, root words) is a great way to help students build their decoding and comprehension skills. Come learn a variety of fun and easy-to-use routines and activities for helping intermediate-level readers develop these important… Learn More
Online
March 11, 2026
2:00 pm–4:00 pm
Online
Antiracist Praxis Study Circle
Online
Application Deadline: FRI. 2/13/26 Many of us have heard the terms antiracist and DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), but how do we actually implement these large frameworks into our adult English classrooms? This study circle goes beyond defining antiracism and explores how the research around Translanguaging by Ofelia… Learn More
Online