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Print Discuss
This relatively new website contains printable lists of conversation questions arranged by topic or grammar point. Most conversation lists contain simple warm-up questions and a vocabulary word list.
Arlington Education and Employment Program
This site has extensive resources for teachers and learners, including a full life skills-based curriculum, interactive story links for beginners, and collections of links on a variety of topics including typing, pronunciation, and citizenship.
Beyond Citizenship: True Stories for the Civics Class
These true stories allow students to benefit from other students’ experiences by using the approach of using real life situations as material in the classroom. Each story is accompanied by pre-reading questions, new vocabulary, and post-reading activities to assist students in applying the situation in the story to their own life experiences.
Listen in English
On this website, find short clips of TV shows, movies, news, and academic stories accompanied by vocabulary building activities and listening comprehension questions from beginning to advanced levels. Learners and teachers can make free accounts in order to access expanded discussion activities.
Federal Reserve Education – Critical Thinking
This is an excellent resource for teaching financial literacy and personal finance skills. The collection can be searched using keywords or by applying filters for audience, type, topic, or standards. No account is needed to access all the resources.
Federal Reserve Education – Navigating Systems
This is an excellent resource for teaching financial literacy and personal finance skills. The collection can be searched using keywords or by applying filters for audience, type, topic, or standards. No account is needed to access all the resources.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
Sight Words
For teachers serving beginning-level adult readers and working on vocabulary, 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.
e-Advanced Alphabetics
NEW SLIDES RECENTLY ADDED! This electronic, screen-shareable resource includes Google slide sets (in PDF format) for remotely teaching compound words, common suffixes, common prefixes, and related word families.
The Change Agent Resource Packets
These high-quality, relevant materials provide a basis for teachers who want to start conversations about facing racism, racial equity, and other social justice topics pertaining to race in the U.S. The lesson packets are free to download, edit, and use.
ESL Literacy Readers (Bow Valley Readers)
This collection of 40 theme-based readers features adult ESL learners engaging in everyday work and life activities. The learner page provides ESL students with access to seven levels of stories written specifically for adults. Each story focuses on a different learner and has an accompanying listening track so learners can listen as well as read the story.
ELA Activities from March 31 newsletter article
For your convenience, the ELA activities from the March 31 newsletter article "The 3rd 'C' in CCRS - Focusing on Community Right Now" can be accessed here.
New Resources
Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility
Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility is being added to the Featured Resources as part of our effort to look at ACES/TIF through the important lens of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and social emotional learning (SEL). Part of how they fulfill this mission is by sharing a robust collection of classroom resources that focuses on helping people understand current issues, celebrate diversity, and explore intersectionality. The lesson collection is very well-organized and can be searched using key terms and/or by applying various filters.
Center for Global Environmental Education (CGEE) – Hamline University
CGEE provides online classrooms activities, videos, and images for K-12 students that are adaptable for adult education. Many of these resources are focused on the watershed health of the Mississippi River and Lake Superior. Activities include interactive demonstrations of watersheds and more intentional action projects such as Adopt-a-Drain.
Carbon-14 Dating & Half-Life
Carbon-14 dating is a popular topic on the science GED. This resource provides a comprehensive lesson plan that explains the concept of half-life to students, with particular emphasis on how to read and interpret a decay curve graph.
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
March 29, 2023
6:30 pm–8:30 pm
Online
Phonics in Adult ESL: Recommendations, Activities and Resources
Online
Registration Deadline: WED. 3/29/23 Phonics–the knowledge of the sounds letters make when they are combined to make words–is essential to beginning literacy and beginning level English language instruction. But, many teachers and tutors lack the knowledge, confidence and resources to teach the topic. Attend this session to learn… Learn More
Online
March 30, 2023
2:00 pm–3:15 pm
Online
ABE-Dev Ed Affinity Group Meeting
Online
Mark your calendar NOW, for this school year’s online ABE-Dev Ed Affinity Group meetings. Attendees are provided two meeting options to discuss the same content, allowing for greater practitioner engagement. The upcoming meeting options are: Thursday, March 30 (2-3:15pm) or Friday, March 31 (10-11:15am) Affinity Group meetings are facilitated by… Learn More
Online
March 31, 2023
10:00 am–11:15 am
Online
ABE-Dev Ed Affinity Group Meeting
Online
Mark your calendar NOW, for this school year’s online ABE-Dev Ed Affinity Group meetings. Attendees are provided two meeting options to discuss the same content, allowing for greater practitioner engagement. The upcoming meeting options are: Thursday, March 30 (2-3:15pm) or Friday, March 31 (10-11:15am) Affinity Group meetings are facilitated by… Learn More
Online