Tag Archives: background knowledge

From Annenberg to You (with Love)

HSE, Social Studies, , , , ,
America's History in the Making (Learner.org)
· Appropriate for: Building teacher background knowledge, Use in class, For student independent work · Available: Lessons, Texts/Readings, Videos, Assessments · Readiness: Resources can be used as they are · Engagement: 3 = very engaging

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) →

Deepening our Understanding of Evolution

Science, ,
HHMI BioInteractive
· Appropriate for: Building teacher background knowledge, Use in class · Available: Lessons, Texts/Readings, Videos · Readiness: Resources need to be/can be adapted for adult education classroom · Engagement: 2 = engaging

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 some wonderful resources for science education, which we will share over the next few months.  Continue reading Deepening our Understanding of Evolution →

A People’s Website

HSE, Social Studies, , ,
ZinnEd Project
· Appropriate for: Building teacher background knowledge, Use in class · Available: Lessons, Texts/Readings, Videos, Hands On Activities · Readiness: Resources need to be/can be adapted for adult education classroom · Engagement: 3 = very engaging

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 teacher who has enjoyed using excerpts from Zinn’s books in class, you will love this website, with lots of free teaching materials on history that will be engaging and accessible to students. Continue reading A People’s Website →

Mistakes in Math: Expected, Respected and Inspected

HSE, Math, Pre-HSE, , , ,
Math Mistakes
· Appropriate for: Building teacher background knowledge, Use in class, Knowledge of teaching · Available: Assessments · Readiness: Some resources are ready for the adult ed classroom and some would need to be adapted · Engagement: 3 = very engaging

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 identify as men, what percent of the class does not identify as men?

I used it as a quick assessment to see what kind of understanding I could build off and what kind of misconceptions I could draw out. Continue reading Mistakes in Math: Expected, Respected and Inspected →

Deepen Conceptual Understanding in Math with Virtual Manipulatives (and it’s fun!)

HSE, Math, Pre-HSE, Technology, , , ,
National Library of Virtual Manipulatives
· Appropriate for: Building teacher background knowledge, Use in class, For student independent work · Available: Lessons, Problems, Assessments · Readiness: Resources can be used as they are · Engagement: 3 = very engaging

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 National Science Foundation and was developed at Utah State University. It has since undergone numerous revisions and additions and presently contains over 100 virtual manipulatives. Continue reading Deepen Conceptual Understanding in Math with Virtual Manipulatives (and it’s fun!) →