Each year Minnesota ABE educators create innovative educational technology curriculum projects through Department of Education funding. The MLC Tech Services Center assists and oversees the development of these mini-grants.
Projects cover a range of educational technologies, such as: audio, video, the Internet and software. Topics are geared toward ABE life skills requirements and are typically aligned with helping learners improve their CASAS skills levels. When projects are completed they are linked to this website.
Several grant winners will give presentations on their projects at the 2008 Summer Institute in August.
SmartBoard Interactive Exercises
As SMART boards enter more and more classrooms, curriculum is needed to keep up with this unique interactive technology. Traci Pederson of Warroad ABE developed exercises allowing students to interact with the digital learning materials. Topics include: employment,emotions,grocery stores, money management, personal care, names, numbers, bathroom objects,and sentences & word match.
For a copy of the exercises on CD contact jbrazier@themlc.org
Download SMART board Interactive Viewer
ELL Level 0 Activities.
Created by Amy and Tim Reisdorf, this website covers 16 topic areas with interactive activities especially geared toward Level 0 leaners. http://ell-level0.themlc.org/
Story by Story Online Reading Activies
Originally developed as print material by Marn Frank of the Learning Disabilites Association, now adpated for the internet by Charles LaRue. These stories provide authentic context that American-born low level readers can use as part of a systematic phonics instruction. The stories demonstrate basic phonic patterns at or below first to second grade level. They are also appropriate for pre-literate ESL students scoring less than 191 on the CASAS.
ABE/ESL Website Search Engine
This online clearing house consists of over 300 websites chosen for their high quaility educational content. Amy and Tim Reisdorf in collaboration with Urban Planet , developed a search engine that allows you to choose which skills, levels and topics best fit your needs.
Pre-literate Curriculum
Pre-literate students have had little or no formal school experience in their native countries. These students are beginning to learn reading and writing at the level of young children but with the ability to reason at a high level and have had adult experiences. Pre-literate learners need to develop an oral understanding of words before they can decipher, or decode, the written words which represent them. This ten unit curriculum was designed especially with these factors in mind.
Pre-literate Teacher Guidelines Curriculum Outline
For a copy of the curriculum on CD contact jbrazier@themlc.org.
Updated Adult Computer and Employment Skills (ACES) Curriculum.
The ACES program strives to provide participants with practical computer skills while continuing to build reading, writing, and oral language skills. These materials have been designed to meet the needs of students with little to no computer experience and at least a low-intermediate English reading ability. Over the last 3 years, Jessica Jones has worked to tailor these original materials to meet the needs of Adult Basic Education participants, especially English Language Learners.
You're Hired: Job Interviews Online
Ric Dwyer from Rochester ABE created an interactive website with videos, online exercises and print handouts. Videos show ESL students acting out good and bad interview scenarios with a Rochester temp agency interviewer.
Authentic Listening Lessons for Beginning-Level Learners
Kristi M. Degenhardt created theme-based lessons would focus on the development of a variety of listening skills that learners need, including listening to confirm predictions, listening for the main idea, and listening for specific information, as well as the development of listening strategies, such as predicting, asking for clarification and using visual cues. For a CD copy, please contact jbrazier@themlc.org.
Online Readings with Word Families
Stephanie Toland and Julie Trupke-Bastidas created materials that help learners improve their decoding skills and learn strategies for recognizing words. The materials include online pre-reading, during reading, and post-reading components that focus on vocabulary, decoding, and comprehension. The interactive readings are followed by comprehension questions and a phonics component that includes attention to word families.
Medical Literacy Exercises
Metro North ABE: Charles LaRue has created online practice for medical vocabulary related to nutrition, diabetes and high blood pressure. Exercises provide learners with practice reading labels and understanding the fat, carbohydrate and protein content of foods.
Online Reading Skills Practice
Marshall ABE: Charles Carrera and Sally Belgum-Blad created online reading practice exercises for students from levels 1-8 or CASAS levels 200-235. Topics include stories related to Civics, Employment, Housing, Health, School, Money, and Government. Reading skills practice includes pre-reading activities, timed and repeat readings, and comprehension questions. Reading graphs to help learners chart their improvement can be printed out from the website.
Online Form Practice Teaching Guidelines pdf
Minneapolis Public Schools: Amy and Tim Reisdorf created online practice forms for pre-literate through advanced ABE learners. Teachers can print out forms for in-class practice, then do follow up online exercises. Forms range from very simple name entry to complex and topic specific forms, such as drivers license and insurance forms. Printable teacher guidelines are included.
Take Home Audio Study Guide
Jessica Schachterle and Heather Cox outlined a process to create a series of audio files and accompanying print materials that could be distributed online and copied onto CDs and cassettes to be used by ESL students who are pre-literate or emergent readers. The lesson modules would focus on prereading skills (letter names and sounds) as well as vocabulary in core content areas (family, health, work, transportation, etc).
Understanding Prescription Medicines
Metro North ABE: Charles LaRue created online PowerPoint exercises teaching how to understand prescription medicine and over-the-counter medicine labels, including instructions and side effects. Exercises include an audio narrative of medical vocabulary. Translations in Somali, Hmong, and Arabic are provided.
Life Skills Exercises
Marshall ABE: Charles Carrera used Hot Potatoes software to create a wide variety of life skills and literacy building exercises related to CASAS competencies, such as employment, health, grammar and computation.
Reading Practice
Lehman Center: Heather Turngren created online reading modules with a software called Hot Potatoes for low-level ABE/ESL learners. Stories have interactive multiple-choice, short-answer, jumbled-sentence, crossword, matching/ordering, and gap-fill exercises.
