Learning Site for Teachers > Top 5 Picks Archive
Top 5 Picks Archive
ESL Instruction (August 2007)
Retention (July 2007)
Workplace Literacy (June 2007)
Teaching Health Literacy (May 2007)
Teaching Low Level Readers (April 2007)
Teaching Math (March 2007)
- The ESL Wonderland - Resources for Students and Teachers: Tons of resources! This page was created by an ESL teacher for teachers and students. It contains various activities for use in your classes, as well as many links to ESL resources on the Internet.
- Dave's ESL Café: The Classic Site that has been around for many years. Highly recommended by experienced ESL instructors. Go to the Idea Cookbook to find useful materials. There are also discussion forums where students can converse.
- Lesson Plans & Resources for ESL, Bilingual and Foreign Language Teachers: Lots of links! Links to ESL lesson plans and resources, bilingual education, study abroad for teachers, employment opportunities, professional associations and educational standards.
- Randall's ESL Cyber Listening Lab: Great resource for improving your student's language comprehension - includes an ESL Blog, listening quizzes, ESL vocabulary lessons, language learning tips and "watch and learn" videos.
- Prof. Rick Shur's ESL and Computer Handouts: Dozens of handouts for your students - writing aids, grammar and vocabulary exercises and a variety of readings.
- Learner Retention: Tons of resources! This site sponsored by the Literacy Training Networks identifies common characteristics in programs with high student retention rates and have collected over 30 best practice Word documents that these high retention classes use.
- Ideas to Encourage Student Retention: Here are some practical ideas for you to use - over 60 specific ideas and strategies for increasing student retention from Jefferson Community College, Kentucky.
- A Summary of Suggested Strategies for Improving Learner Persistence: Tons of concrete strategies for motivating your students and improving student persistence! During the 2004-2005 fiscal year, California Adult Literacy Professional Development Project (CALPRO) sponsored study circles (composed of adult literacy instructors) across the state focusing on the issue of learner persistence. Later they met with the leaders of the study circles to identify techniques found to improve learner persistence. This document summarizes their findings. You may need to register with OTAN to receive this document. There is no cost. Registration simply allows you access to 1000s of resources provided by OTAN. (This is a pdf document. If you don't have Adobe, you can download it by clicking here.)
- Why Do They Leave?: Check out this link from Canada. It offers a summary of a major literacy study from Canada. For good reflective questions for your practice, scroll to the last page.
- Youth Cultural Competence - A Pathways for Achieving Outcomes with Youth: This Focus on Basics article discusses strategies for retention of the youth in your ABE/GED program.
- The Workforce Education LAB: This "Learning Activities Bank is an interactive resource of work-related basic skills lessons for use by instructors in the workplace or in traditional adult education programs and by adult learners." Dozens of activities that you can use in your classroom.
- Planning, Implementing and Evaluating Workplace ESL Programs: Tons of ideas for including workplace literacy in ESL instruction including suggestions for workplace curriculum topics, learner-centered instructional strategies, adapting curriculum materials.
- Essential Skills: This Canadian Site provides many ideas for teaching workplace literacy. You can use this site to find: " Ways to tailor curricula to your learners' varied occupations or occupational interests , real work examples to integrate into your program and help for your learners in setting their skill development targets."
- Focus on Basics - Special Workforce Education Edition: This issues include teachers’ innovative strategies for math, communications and problem-solving as well as research conducted by literacy instructors.
- Workforce Education Special Collection - Resources for Workforce Instructors: This site from the National Institute for Literacy and the Office of Vocational and Adult Education will connect you to many more resources - lesson plans, research briefs, and activities for your students.
- The El Paso Collaborative: Health Literacy Curriculum: These lessons were developed to meet the educational and health needs of students in El Paso. Some of the Health Information is in Spanish. Lesson topics include: Diabetes, Breast Health, Menopause, Lead Poisoning, Household Hazards and Nutrition. You might find the "Ideas for Collaborating with Health Organizations" particularly helpful. (Recommended by Joy Bates, Literacy Instructor)
- Health Education and Adult Literacy (HEAL): Breast and Cervical Cancer - A complete curriculum for teaching about breast and cervical cancer to adults with limited literacy skills. You might find the word list useful for teaching medical vocabulary. This is a very comprehensive site providing many ways to learn about Health.
- Focusing on Basics: Literacy and Health (This is a pdf document. If you don't have Adobe, you can download it by clicking here.): This 2002 issue includes articles which discuss the ways in which "literacy and health projects are enacted."
- Picture Stories for Adult ESL Health Literacy: "Picture Stories for Adult ESL Health Literacy are designed to help ESOL instructors address topics that affect the health and well-being of their students. The stories are useful for beginner and low-literacy students."
- Health Literacy Study Circles (Scroll down to select a Health Literacy Study Circle): Sample lessons and guides to create your own lesson and unit plans focused on helping your students develop healthy literacy skills. This Study Circle + program from NCSALL "enables adult educators to focus on building skills related to reading, writing, oral communication and math using health-related examples" in three areas: Health Care Access and Navigation, Chronic Disease Management, Disease Prevention and Screening, Making your Healthcare Facility Literacy Friendly, Public Health Forums and Health Literacy Study Circle + Facilitators Training(2007).
- Understanding What Reading Is All About: Teaching Materials and Lessons for Adult Basic Education Students - 13 lesson plans for low-level readers including goal-setting guides. You can integrate these lessons into your existing curriculum or use them as a mini-course for students.
- Focus on Basics - First Level Learners - Innovative ideas for teaching reading to low level learners, including a lesson plan incorporating the 5 basic components of reading.
- The ABE Reading Classroom - Tons of resources for teaching reading including: on-line lessons, tutorials, worksheets, online reading books and assessment tools. The web links are excellent - be sure to click on Literacy Cyberspace Reading Lessons and Phonics Sound Essentials.
- Reading - Just the Basics - this web-based mini-course is for your own learning. Throughout the course there are learning activities for you and your students, web links, teaching techniques and other resources for teaching reading. Use the arrows in the upper right corner to move through the pages.
- Assessment Strategies and Reading Profiles - The site provides a mini-course on assessment and instruction of reading components, as well as tests and word lists that practitioners can download and links to research. Instructors can match their own learners' reading profiles with learner profiles developed using Adult Reading Component Study (ARCS) data and make instructional choices based on the information.
- GED 2002 Teachers' Lesson Bank: Mathematics - 53 math lessons including learning activities, debriefing/evaluation activities, handouts, and ESE/ESOL Accommodations. Each lesson identifies the cognitive skill level of the activities and their correlation to the GED framework.
- Focus on Basics: Special Math Edition - Cutting edge ideas for the teaching of adults from research practitioners.
- TV 411_Math - Tons of math activities, including: How to use a calculator, multiple percents, place value, polygons and perimeter, keeping up with exponential growth, and much more. You can also order a free "Think Math" DVD, a multimedia teaching tool.
- Numeracy Special Collection - This Special Collection from NIFL provides annotated links to internet sites that are useful for teaching and learning numeracy.
- The Problem Solver: A Math Newsletter for Adult Educators - This newsletter is full of teacher observations and classroom lessons. Six issues, all in PDF.