ACES Resources
TIF Overview & Categories
Sample Lessons – Critical Thinking (CT)
These lessons were created using a newly designed TIF lesson plan template. They include ideas for incorporating important topics like DEI (Diversity/Equity/Inclusion) and SEL (Social Emotional Learning), as well as strategies for adapting the lessons to a variety of delivery models.
Sample Lessons – Developing a Future Pathway (DFP)
These lessons were created using a newly designed TIF lesson plan template. They include ideas for incorporating important topics like DEI (Diversity/Equity/Inclusion) and SEL (Social Emotional Learning), as well as strategies for adapting the lessons to a variety of delivery models.
Sample Lessons – Effective Communication (EC)
These lessons were created using a newly designed TIF lesson plan template. They include ideas for incorporating important topics like DEI (Diversity/Equity/Inclusion) and SEL (Social Emotional Learning), as well as strategies for adapting the lessons to a variety of delivery models.
Sample Lessons – Learning Strategies (LS)
These lessons were created using a newly designed TIF lesson plan template. They include ideas for incorporating important topics like DEI (Diversity/Equity/Inclusion) and SEL (Social Emotional Learning), as well as strategies for adapting the lessons to a variety of delivery models.
Sample Lessons – Navigating Systems (NS)
These lessons were created using a newly designed TIF lesson plan template. They include ideas for incorporating important topics like DEI (Diversity/Equity/Inclusion) and SEL (Social Emotional Learning), as well as strategies for adapting the lessons to a variety of delivery models.
Sample Lessons – Self-Management (SM)
These lessons were created using a newly designed TIF lesson plan template. They include ideas for incorporating important topics like DEI (Diversity/Equity/Inclusion) and SEL (Social Emotional Learning), as well as strategies for adapting the lessons to a variety of delivery models.
TIF-Lens Series: “Zoom In” on Critical Thinking (CT)
TIF-Lens Webinars and Workshops provide hands-on practice using the A-C-E-S process to integrate TIF (Transitions Integration Framework) skills from the targeted category.
TIF-Lens Series: “Zoom In” on Developing a Future Pathway (DFP)
TIF-Lens Webinars and Workshops provide hands-on practice using the A-C-E-S process to integrate TIF (Transitions Integration Framework) skills from the targeted category.
TIF-Lens Series: “Zoom In” on Effective Communication (EC)
TIF-Lens Webinars and Workshops provide hands-on practice using the A-C-E-S process to integrate TIF (Transitions Integration Framework) skills from the targeted category.
TIF-Lens Series: “Zoom In” on Learning Strategies (LS)
TIF-Lens Webinars provide hands-on practice using the A-C-E-S process to integrate TIF (Transitions Integration Framework) skills from the targeted category.
TIF-Lens Series: “Zoom In” on Navigating Systems (NS)
TIF-Lens Webinars and Workshops provide hands-on practice using the A-C-E-S process to integrate TIF (Transitions Integration Framework) skills from the targeted category.
TIF-Lens Series: “Zoom In” on Self-Management (SM)
TIF-Lens Webinars and Workshops provide hands-on practice using the A-C-E-S process to integrate TIF (Transitions Integration Framework) skills from the targeted category.
2020 Census Resources – NCL
In the spring of 2020, households across the United States will be asked to participate in the census. The National Coalition for Literacy (NCL) put together this collection of resources to help Adult Education professionals talk about the census and help learners understand why their participation is vitally important.
A Walk in My Shoes Documentary Series: First Generation College Students
This series of 5 short videos was created by Kansas State University College of Education. In each video, a first-generation college student shares their inspirational story. The videos are a great resource for bringing diverse voices and perspectives into the classroom, and they would make for wonderful conversation starters.
Career Connections
This series of videos provides learners with the opportunity to hear a firsthand account of what it's like to be working in 100 different career fields. The videos could be used to embed career awareness into every day ABE and ESL lessons or to bring a particular career pathway to life for a stand-alone course.
Career Conversations from the American School Counselor Association
There are several Career Conversations toolkits, each with a specific focus. Each toolkit is organized around various mind sets and behaviors that are strikingly similar to the categories in the TIF. Learning strategies, self-management skills, and social skills (similar to effective communication) are all represented, and there are questions that align to each area. The toolkit questions are rich and engaging, and they could be used in myriad ways with adult learners.
Career Foundations Curriculum and Bridge Program Lesson Plans
The Career Foundations Curriculum, written for students who read at a 4th grade level or above, focuses on career exploration and goal setting. The Bridge Program lesson plans help students prepare for careers in healthcare, early childhood education, or transportation, delivery and logistics (TDL).
CareerKit Project (NYSED/CUNY)
The NYSED/CUNY CareerKit Project is a library of hundreds of contextualized high-quality lessons that instructors can pick and choose from to suit the needs of their learners and program. The kits were developed to introduce learners to careers in ten different sectors, while also building core reading, writing, research and math skills.
COVID-19 Lessons: Learning Strategies
The COVID-19 outbreak presents an unprecedented opportunity to help our students develop TIF skills as they try to understand everything that is going on. Here are a few of the ways that we can help our learners practice Learning Strategies skills.
COVID-19 Lessons: Navigating Systems
The COVID-19 outbreak presents an unprecedented opportunity to help our students develop TIF (Transitions Integration Framework) skills as they try to understand everything that is going on. Here are a few of the ways that we can help our learners practice Navigating Systems skills.
COVID-19 Lessons: Self-Management
The COVID-19 outbreak presents an unprecedented opportunity to help our students develop TIF (Transitions Integration Framework) skills as they try to understand everything that is going on. Here are a few of the ways that we can help our learners practice Self-Management skills.
Culips
The Culips website houses over 400 audio episodes that can be used to teach "conversational English for everyday use." The searchable website makes it easy to find an episode that discusses themes related to a variety of common ESL topics, such as wellness, employment, and hobbies.
Digital Citizenship Curriculum from Common Sense Education
This digital citizenship curriculum is helpful for teaching learners how to safely navigate online content. Lessons include topics such as why people publish misleading or false information online, how to interpret an online news article, and how to assess the validity of online information.
English as a Second Language Podcast
English as a Second Language Podcast was developed to help students learn English by listening to short, engaging conversations about high-interest topics. Use it with your ELL students to help them develop essential learning strategies such as making predictions, making use of background knowledge to understand new ideas and identifying main idea when reading and listening.
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.
Film English
The Film English website is an expansive collection of video clips that can be used to teach a variety of effective communication skills by providing examples of gestures, body language, and other non-verbal communication that cannot easily be conveyed through sound alone. The searchable website also offers ESL lesson plans to accompany each video.
Growth Mindset Toolkit
This resource includes research about the benefits of fostering a growth mindset and videos and lesson plans that will help teachers talk about mindset with their students.
Integrating Career Awareness Curriculum Guide
This downloadable curriculum guide, including adaptable handouts, focuses on integrating career awareness skills into ABE/ESL classrooms. The curriculum is divided into four sections: The Cultural Context for Career Awareness, The Self-Exploration Process, Occupational Exploration, and Career Planning Skills.
Learning Network
This online resource was developed by the New York Times to help facilitate both teaching and learning with NYT content. It includes a huge variety of articles with question sets, photos and videos, writing prompts, and fully developed lesson plans with high quality downloadable materials.
LearningExpress Library
This online library is a comprehensive collection of resources geared towards helping adults achieve their education and career goals. It covers topics such as job search and workplace skills improvement, skill building in reading, writing, math, and basic science, career certification and licensure exam prep, college and grad school entrance test prep, GED test prep, and more.
Managing Stress to Improve Learning
The Managing Stress to Improve Learning project by the New England Literacy Resource Center strives to share resources, activity ideas, routines, and research that will help teachers empower their students to manage their stress in order to better focus on learning.
Minnesota Career Information System (MCIS)
This Adult Education version of the Minnesota Career Information System (MCIS) provides tools and resources on a variety of skill and interest assessments, detailed information on over 500 careers, a resume creator tool, and tips for conducting a successful job search. MCIS is a very powerful and useful tool for programs doing Adult Diploma and for anyone wanting to build career awareness with adult learners.
NewseumED
The Tools for Teaching Media Literacy section of the NewseumED website includes activities, lessons, and case studies that explore how the language in news stories influence us and how to differentiate between fact and opinion, recognize bias, and make decisions that are informed by reliable evidence.
NYSED/CUNY CareerKit Project
The NYSED/CUNY CareerKit Project is a library of hundreds of contextualized high-quality lessons that instructors can pick and choose from to suit the needs of their learners and program. The kits were developed to introduce learners to careers in ten different sectors, while also building core reading, writing, research and math skills.
Paying for College Guide
According to the website, "For many people, how to pay for a college education is one of the first major financial decisions they'll make. These guides cover some of the big decisions you’ll face and will help you understand your options for financing your college education."
Problem-Based Learning at University of Delaware
The Problem-Based Learning resource collection from the University of Delaware contains a variety of tools that teachers can use to begin implementing a problem-based learning approach in their classrooms, including evaluation tools, videos, and over 100 problem-based learning scenarios with lesson plans.
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.
ProCon.org
ProCon.org is a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization devoted, in part, to promoting critical thinking. They carry out this mission by providing research on controversial issues that help students learn how to question information, evaluate opposing views, and debate important topics.
Reading Skills for Healthcare Workers
The Reading Skills for Healthcare Workers website helps learners explore the field of healthcare. The website contains 175 readings, including pre-reading questions, target vocabulary, a text-dependent question set, and two prompts for writing practice.
Retrieval Practice
Retrieval practice is a learning strategy based on the idea that students need to practice recalling and using the information that they learn in class on a regular basis, and not just when it’s time for a test or quiz. The Retrieval Practice website was created by a cognitive research scientist to be “a hub of research, resources, and teaching strategies based on the science of learning.”
Right Question Institute
Resources to help students develop questioning skills that will enable them to get the answers that they need in order to navigate all of the systems in their lives.
Schoology
Schoology is a Learning Management System that enables students to practice a variety of Self-Management and digital literacy skills, and enables teachers to create courses, organize materials and resources in folders, provide easy access to links, create assignments, and set up discussion boards.
Skills Commons
Skills Commons is a collection of Workforce Training-related open educational resources (OERs). The website is fully searchable, enabling users to look for materials by material type, institution, credential type, industry or occupation.
Skills to Pay the Bills
This resource from the United States Department of Labor was designed to teach “soft” or workforce readiness skills. The materials are organized according to six key skill areas: communication, enthusiasm and attitude, teamwork, networking, problem solving and critical thinking, and professionalism.
Social and Emotional Learning for Adult Multilingual Learners Toolkit
The Social and Emotional Learning for Adult Multilingual Learners Toolkit was created to “offer explanations, tips, materials, and links to help ESOL teachers and programs better understand and integrate social-emotional learning [SEL] into the adult English language classroom.” It also helps adult education instructors understand the connections between ABE and SEL. Although this resource was developed to be used with non-native speakers of English, the information and activities could be used with any adult learner.
Street Law
Street Law is a global, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization devoted to developing classroom and community resources that educate people about law and government. The Street Law Resource Library contains a vast array of teaching activities, lesson plans, case studies, and articles that are organized according to topic, audience, and type.
Teaching Skills That Matter – Critical Thinking
The Teaching Skills That Matter initiative provides high-quality teaching materials and instructional videos that highlight 9 skills that are essential for success in work and community life - including Critical Thinking. The lessons are also designed to build knowledge in 5 key content areas: Civics Education, Digital Literacy, Financial Literacy, Health Literacy, and Workplace Preparation. The toolkit lessons can be used with both native and non-native English speakers, and they were designed by national experts in each content area.
Teaching Skills That Matter – Navigating Systems
The Teaching Skills That Matter initiative provides high-quality teaching materials and instructional videos that highlight 9 skills that are essential for success in work and community life - including Navigating Systems. The lessons are also designed to build knowledge in 5 key content areas: Civics Education, Digital Literacy, Financial Literacy, Health Literacy, and Workplace Preparation. The toolkit lessons can be used with both native and non-native English speakers, and they were designed by national experts in each content area.
TeachThought
The TeachThought website has many curated resources for teaching Critical Thinking and Digital Literacy skills, including a podcast and articles for teachers that describe best practices, new approaches, and ways to cultivate a 21st century classroom.
TIF 2.0 Lessons
This folder contains new example TIF lesson plans that were updated in 2023 as part of the TIF 2.0 project, using a newly designed lesson plan template. They include ideas for incorporating important topics like DEI (Diversity/Equity/Inclusion) and SEL (Social Emotional Learning), as well as strategies for adapting the lessons to a variety of delivery models.
Transitions Integration Framework (TIF)
The TIF is the cornerstone of ACES (Academic, Career & Employability Skills) and was designed to provide ABE programs and instructors with guidance on the effective integration of transitions skills into instruction at all levels of ABE.
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.
Trello
Trello is an app used for collaboration and project management, allowing users to create virtual boards to manage their workflow, and then customize those boards by adding lists and cards. Users can also attach files, checklists, and comments to the cards, as well as sharing their boards. A student working on her Adult Diploma, for example, could create a board and share it with her teachers in order to get virtual feedback and support.
Work Readiness Curriculum
A curriculum designed for use with low-level adult ESL learners (CASAS range 153-210), specifically adults with interrupted formal education. It has a speaking/listening and vocabulary-building focus.
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.