There are three new We Speak NYC episodes, which together with Shola’s Voice, form Season 3: One Home Sofa Love: A Housing Romance Under One Roof https://vimeo.com/884883306 Season 3 features intersecting characters and a unified theme: the…

ABC Everyday Numbers is a numeracy program based in Canada that offers free resources to adult learners looking to improve their math skills. Learners can download free workbooks or take online courses on their own. The workbooks are…

Curious about generative AI? Already using it? Educators associated with World Eduation’s various projects have created an abundance of great resources. They help to both understand the evolving technology (the potential and pitfalls) and showcase…

Have you ever struggled to help your students understand the Americans with Disabilities Act form they are required to sign? Programs may have translated it into multiple languages and provided some examples, but it can…

Baruch College's Tools for Clear Speech program offers in-person and online services for Baruch students. One section of their website, however, is publicly accessible: Tools To-Go. We have limited time with our learners in class,…

The Change Agent is an adult education magazine for social justice, written by and for adult education students and adult education teachers. Each issue is centered around a theme – recent themes have included Mental Health,…

The 2023 New York City Primary Elections are here! Early voting has started and the final day to vote is June 27th, 2023! All 51 City Council seats, plus some District Attorney and judicial races,…

A slow reveal graph is a teaching tool that starts with a numberless graph (or map, diagram, etc.) without labels. As the class notices and wonders about the graph, the teacher slowly reveals the original…

You may be familiar with the Southwest ABE's Reading Skills For Today’s Adults website, where you can find readings on a variety of topics and at different levels. As with any materials, you need to…

In record time, District 79 in New York City has set up its website for transition to the GED test, and there is a wealth of resources here. Teachers can click on a number of…

Ew... worksheets? But how many of us haven't wanted practice questions that include high-quality explanations of wrong answers? And for students who struggle with reading, or repeatedly fail the HSE reading test, opportunities to practice…

An easy guide "A Guide to your Covid-19 Vaccination" published by Public Health England in January 2021 Easy to read materials about the COVID-19 vaccine are essential for English Language Learners (ELLs) and basic education…

This website is ideal for low level readers and those who need fluency practice to do on their own. With levels from 1-16, each level features approximately ten texts on a wide range of topics,…

One of the biggest challenges for HSE prep teachers is helping students master the science concepts they need to pass the GED.  For instance, students need to understand cell biology, and the fact that one of…

In the brave new world of distance learning, many of us are searching for digital lessons to use with students.  A good source is Ed.Ted.Com: Lessons Worth Sharing.   You have probably heard of Ted Talks, the…

As ABE/HSE teachers, we face the continual dilemma of so much to teach, and so little time to teach it—that is why it makes sense for us to teach literacy strategies in the process of…

It is as important as ever that members of all communities in the United States stand up and be counted. This has been a particularly important message for communities that have historically been undercounted in…

One of the easiest messages to get across to students is how to manage their own healthy habits. The Times in Plain English has some articles on the topic, and also a great visual with…

Many adult education teachers are looking for resources and developing lessons to help our students understand the coronavirus. We will use this post to create a space where teachers can share the materials they find…

Census forms are in the mail! It's time to start talking to our students about the Census. Census 2020 wants to make it clear that you "count" and you need "to be counted". This is…

One of the main barriers to students' progress as readers is fluency. If you have ever taught a class in which some students finish a reading selection at lightning speed while others labor along sounding…

Short videos can be a great way to introduce or review content learned in the classroom. One of the problems I always face as a teacher, though, is finding videos that are simple, clear, and…

Move over, Newsela. Move over, Commonlit.org... There is a new website in town, and it is devouring the competition. Shout out to Katti Wachs at the LaGuardia Community College Adult Learning Center for calling my…

Lien Buys Food and Inge Cuts Hair are two of the 40 theme-based Bow Valley College Readers available for free to ESL literacy teachers. Bow Valley College has produced wonderful free literacy readers at seven…

The last decade in the adult literacy field has been one challenge after another. The latest is the new TABE 11/12 (coming to New York State in July 2019). If you are an ELA teacher,…

The 10 Introductory CareerKit Lessons for ESOL Beginning and Low Intermediate level students – adapted from NYSED/CUNY CareerKit Fundamentals Unit 1 - have level-appropriate information about the various sectors along with robust language practice. Students…

My Undocumented Life: Up-To-Date Information & Resources for Undocumented Immigrants  is a web site created by Carolina, a former undocumented immigrant who faced the struggles of navigating the American educational system. Its main mission is…

In 2018, the Emmy-winning ESOL/Civics series, We Are New York, was rebranded with new name, new website, and seven new episodes, known collectively as Season 2 of We Speak NYC. The 10 original We Are…

The Minnesota Literacy Council (MLC) has created a large set of science lesson plans on the content assessed by the GED exam. The MLC science lesson plans cover the same three subdomains tested in Earth…

If you are looking for a great way to get an overview of the English Language Proficiency (ELP) Standards in Adult Education (AE) published in 2016, look no further. LINCS (Literacy Information and Communication Services)…

This behemoth of a site may seem overwhelming at first, but can provide useful resources for adult educators. The site provides both a very large bank of lesson plans searchable by grade and topic, and…

This is that rarest of things—a high-quality, free, online resource made specifically for adult educators. Although the “Just Write!” Guide is mainly about writing instruction, there is a lot of material here regarding pedagogy in…

Sara Van Der Werf is a teacher in Minnesota, who has been teaching middle school and high school students for the past 24 years. She writes about teaching on her highly-recommended blog. For the past three…

The Change Agent is always a great source of themed  student writing, and the current issue (September 2017) on Career Pathways is no exception. Students write in this issue about their own career successes and aspirations,…

Now more than ever, students need an education in civics.  Civics is central to the GED Social Studies, but there are more urgent reasons to teach students about this American democracy.  Students need help in…

The Minnesota Literacy Council ESL Story Bank is a group of stories written specifically for adult ESL learners at the lowest levels. They are part of the Minnesota Literacy Council’s Adult ESL Curriculum with Transition…

The guy with the pipe in his mouth is the one you want to talk to.  That’s HERB, the “mascot” for the CUNY Graduate’s Center website Social History for Every Classroom.  Herb presides over a…

This document is a wonderful resource for teachers who want a crash course on how to teach vocabulary effectively along with dozens of really fun vocabulary games that can be used for reinforcement and review.…

On the evening of April 4th (the second night of the 2017 COABE1 conference), some 30-40 adult educators from around the country came together after a long day of workshops for some extracurricular inspiration in…

The NYSED/CUNY CareerKit Project is a set of curricular resources for HSE and high level ESOL students that blend critical literacy skills with career exploration, planning and preparation in 10 different growing industries. Each of…

The Mathematical Practices that are in the College and Career Readiness Standards for Adult Education define what it means to be a mathematically proficient student. As adult education instructors, our job is to help our…

On February 8th, 2017 Eric Appleton and I hosted a webinar to explore the math content on the TASC test, focusing our attention on the most recent GHI forms of the exam. We were joined…

I have a 4 year old daughter and she asks a lot of questions about the world. Sometimes she asks questions that I can only kind of answer. It is sometimes challenging to break these…

If you're like me, you're compulsively reading news about the candidates for president, thinking about the state of our democracy and anxiously waiting for Election Day. Recent news has probably come up in discussion among…

The GED RLA  test requires that students understand basic sentence structures, punctuation marks that are used with these structures, and an understanding of certain types of grammatical errors.  Grammar Bytes has a wealth of resources…

We work hard to help our students build their academic skills and develop the content knowledge they need to earn their HSE diplomas, but there are many other factors that can make or break our…

In June of 2016, DRC CTB released item specifications documents for each of the five tests on the TASC exam. The documents define the content and format of the test for item writers, but they…

One of the most common questions we hear from math teachers is "Where can I find good problems for my students?". There are more than a dozen sites reviewed on CollectEdNY that answer that question but…

In adult education the main credentials available to students are often quite far off from where the student begins with us. Whether it is a High School Equivalency Diploma, Citizenship or mastery of TOEFL, the…

The CUNY HSE Curriculum Framework provides direction, structure and materials for teaching math, science and social studies (integrated with reading and writing) in the new era of HSE instruction. The complete framework is available for…

Infographics are everywhere and our students need to develop literacy skills to make sense of them. This resource is a very good way to kickstart an exploration of infographics in your classroom and one you will…

"About 1 in 5 adults in the U.S. lacks the math competence expected of a middle-schooler, meaning they have trouble with those ordinary tasks [calculating a tip, doing fractions to double a recipe, know how…

A terrific online resource for beginners is the REEP (Arlington Education and Employment Program) World. REEP is a Virginia-based agency that has been helping adult immigrants and refugees to learn English, job and technology skills…

Looking for a way to incorporate an intelligent and cohesive way to teach U.S. history? Overwhelmed by the many websites out there, each with one or two valuable texts or resources? Well, you are in…

This free website is a valuable resource for adult learners who are learning to read and write for the first time or those transitioning from an alphabet such as Arabic or Chinese to English. HandwritingPractice.net…

Quizlet.com is a site for teachers and students to create word cards for vocabulary learning through reading, listening, matching, spelling and flashcard games. There are many great things about Quizlet. It's a free site full…

This page is a wonderful resource for teachers who want a crash course on how to teach vocabulary effectively along with dozens of really fun vocabulary games that can be used for reinforcement and review.…

The focus of Education Resources at the Library of Congress is on using primary sources to have students understand how people and events have shaped history. To encourage interest and introduce the lesson, the teacher starts…

If you have not yet been introduced to Joy Hakim, don’t delay. Hakim is the author of a U.S. history series entitled A History of Us. This series, told in a lively, engaging way, was…

Over the last few months, a few of us in the CUNY Adult Literacy/HSE Program have been working on a lesson set on evolution. While poking around the Internet and educating ourselves, we have found…

Many of us adult educators are familiar with Howard Zinn, the revolutionary historian who wrote “A People’s History of the United States,” and “A Young People’s History of the United States.” If you are a…

Newsela was always one of the greatest gifts teachers could ever receive—newspaper articles on current events worldwide that could be reprinted at different reading levels for students with varying literacy needs.  Well, just in time…

StoryCorps houses audio interviews on various themes (Family, Identity, Friendship, September 11, and Work, among others) that are terrific for listening practice and theme-based content. The interviews are rich for the content that they provide…

Which One Doesn't Belong? (WODB) is an instructional routine that helps teachers create a classroom culture of inquiry, exploration, and collaboration, making math more engaging and meaningful for students. The basic structure is simple -…

At this point most of our students have access to some sort of mobile phone.  Are you using these in your instruction?  I have met teachers who send text messages to their students and have found tools…

When I was a student, in every mathematics class I had, the teacher presented problems and explained how to solve them. The teacher would do a sample problem with us, then give us a worksheet…

Years ago, when beginning some work on percentage with some HSE students (they were called GED students at the time), I posed the following problem: Veronica's math class has 25 students. If 7 of them…

As adult education instructors, we know that our students bring all kinds of preconceived ideas about math into the classroom. Many see math as boring—a subject governed by processes, rules, and formulas that has little…

How often do you use video with your students? How often do you think your students access video? Perhaps you are using the Flipped Classroom model ( typical homework and in class work are flipped--students…

GCF stands for Goodwill Community Foundation and through their Learn Free website they share over 125 tutorials divided into sections Technology Basics, Living in the Online World, Microsoft Office, Essential Skills, and Work and Career.…

"So I'm there on the beach with my friend Ben when we notice a taco cart up the road. Ben wants to walk straight over, but I'm thinking we walk a lot slower in the…

Do you need information about grammatical rules or ideas about how to teach persuasive writing?  This site has free information and lesson plans for everything that your students need to know to be successful on…

Research tells us that writing instruction is more effective when we use rubrics as a teaching tool and a tool for assessment.  Students who have the goal of passing the HSE exam should know the  Essay Scoring…

Sometimes the most difficult struggle for our students is actually putting pen to paper and generating text.  They are unsure of how to start and how to develop their ideas and sometimes their frustration causes…

LearnZillion is a great resource to use for teachers who wish to refresh their knowledge of mathematical content as well as instructors who wish to deepen their understanding of what the content standards of the…

Research tells us that writing instruction is most effective when teachers and students consistently use rubrics as learning and assessment tools. If you are an HSE teacher, you should be using the HSE Essay Scoring…

This Teaching Channel video shows a 6th grade teacher demonstrating how she helps students master the skills of highlighting, annotating, and then writing a response to a prompt using evidence from the text. Notice her…

For many of us, teaching math and science are relatively new endeavors. We came to adult education as generalists with no particular background in math or science, but now that there are new college and career…

A Number Talk is a brief activity teachers can do with students to help build their computational fluency, number sense and their mathematical reasoning. They don't need to be longer than 5-15 minutes and they…

Research tells us that writing instruction is much more effective when teachers use tools that will help students organize their thinking and ideas before writing.  This is called the "Planning" stage of the writing process…

My Favorite No is a great assessment activity that turns students' mistakes into collective opportunities for learning. It can be done with any math topic or content. It takes very little time, so teachers can…

The Common Core requires us to switch from writing personal essays built on our opinions and experience to text-based essays that respond to a prompt using evidence from paired texts. Engage your students in critical…

Illustrative Mathematics is a great resource that brought together teachers, math educators and mathematicians to create mathematical tasks aligned to each standard of the Common Core. There are currently over 1000 tasks, from grades K…

Visual Patterns is a very simple and wonderful website, created by a public middle school teacher in Southern California named Fawn Nguyen. The site is essentially a collection of 157 different visual patterns (and growing). For…

The National Library of Virtual Manipulatives (NLVM) is a website that houses a goldmine of visual models and interactive virtual manipulatives for mathematics instruction.  The library began as a project in 1999 with support from…

The Mathematics Assessment Project (MAP) is a joint venture between the University of California, Berkeley, and the Shell Center at the University of Nottingham, with support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The project…

Inside Mathematics identifies itself as "a professional resource for educators passionate about improving students’ mathematics learning and performance". The goal of the site is to help educators continue to grow and transform their teaching practice. To accomplish this…

Statistics for Action aims to help adults understand how to read and interpret data, and shares resources with which to do that in a classroom or community setting. The site is focused primarily on data…

Veritasium is a YouTube channel of science videos, focused mainly on physics, created by the charismatic Dr. Derek Muller. As of this review, there are 199 incredibly engaging and visual videos, with more being added…

This is a comprehensive career exploration website that every adult student should be aware of. The site allows students to take the first steps toward researching a career by assessing themselves based on broad categories…

This is my go-to website when I am looking for a text about a disease that clearly explains the causes, symptoms, and treatment. Without talking down, the website describes and explains many different diseases in…

If you live in New York City, you will have seen posters advertising “Scishow” all over the subways. What is it? Scishow is a series of videos that covers a range of science topics in…

This comprehensive site for teachers is set up for K-12 teaching but includes many resources that are appropriate for the adult classroom. The site is divided into the following sections: Lesson Plans Lesson plans are…

As much as HSE students need to prepare for the Test, they must also think about life “after the test.” What career choice might work for them? What further study night be needed? There are…

Crash Course provides fun, quirky videos on chemistry, history, psychology, etc. The videos are an entertaining introduction into a full college semester on different topics. The series on chemistry, biology and psychology, for example, each…

Northstar Basic Computer Skills Assessment is a free online assessment of a person's basic computer skills. After taking the assessment you can print out a personal learning plan that will help you improve in the…

Teaching History is so full of useful resources that it can seem overwhelming. The website is divided into three main sections: Teaching Materials, History Content, and Best Practices. You'll find quality lesson plans reviewed by…

This website for history teachers consists of sets of lesson plans for U.S. and world history that are centered around primary source documents. Generally, each lesson begins with an introduction to build student background knowledge…

Derek Owens is a high school (and homeschool) math and science teacher who uses videos to explain basic concepts from his science classes. These videos are great for teachers' background knowledge. It's possible that they…

The Times in Plain English is a site that offers both adult students and their teachers versions of New York Times articles that have been simplified and shortened to meet the needs of students reading…

Once I began preparing students for the HSE test, New York Times Upfront became one of my main go-to sites for social studies and writing materials.  This classroom news magazine from Scholastic includes 1-3 page…