Welcome to Infographics! A Toolkit to Get You Started

ABE, HSE, Math, Pre-HSE, Science, , ,
Infographics in the Classroom Teacher Toolkit

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 keep going back to throughout the year.

The California Academy of Sciences has put together an Infographics in the Classroom Teacher Toolkit that employs infographics as a way “for students to practice key science literacy skills”.  If you are new to infographics and would like to know what they are and how to use them in the classroom, this is a great place to start!  Continue reading Welcome to Infographics! A Toolkit to Get You Started →

Number Sense: Helping Adult Numeracy Students Close the Gap

ABE, ESOL, HSE, Math, Pre-HSE, , , , , , , ,
Estimation 180

“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 much change to expect from a cashier] and aren’t qualified for many of today’s jobs.” 

I came across this quote in an article called “Early Number Sense Plays a Role in Later Math Skills“. The author attempts to trace this statistic back to a root cause and comes up with a University of Missouri study done with 7th graders who were given a test to assess a variety of math skills needed to function in the world as an adult. They found that the students who were behind on the seventh-grade test were the same students who had the least number sense or fluency in mathematics in the first grade.

Continue reading Number Sense: Helping Adult Numeracy Students Close the Gap →

English Practice for Beginners

Low Level ESOL, Technology
REEP World

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 for 40 years.

What makes the site so accessible for low-level students is that REEP has made it very easy for these students to access the materials by keeping the written language (including instructions) to a minimum, and maximizing the use of visuals to guide students and help them navigate.

Continue reading English Practice for Beginners →

From Annenberg to You (with Love)

HSE, Social Studies, , , , ,
America's History in the Making (Learner.org)

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 luck. If you are reading this review, you now have access to a comprehensive online curriculum for teaching U.S. history, divided into periods, with excellent primary sources to illustrate key themes and points as well as excerpts from texts written by historians that will give you, as teacher, an in-depth understanding of each period. Continue reading From Annenberg to You (with Love) →

Design Your Own Handwriting Sheets

ABE, ESOL, Low Level ESOL, Reading, Writing, , , ,
HandwritingPractice.net

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 allows teachers to create handwriting sheets using their own text: letters, words, sentences, or paragraphs. The big advantage is that the handwriting worksheets are customizable: no more downloading pre-made, babyish-looking resources for our adult learners. Teachers can make worksheets relating to “grown-up” themes we deal with in our ESL classes. Continue reading Design Your Own Handwriting Sheets →