Career Posts: This section of the site highlights selected activities from the CUNY CareerKits, provides supplementary materials for use with CareerKit activities and lends support to adult educators incorporating career pathways into literacy and numeracy instruction.
Framework Posts: This rapidly growing collection of teaching materials was created to get lessons, problems, readings, and activities, all aligned to the TASC, into the hands of HSE teachers. It is also a great place for teachers to learn more about the content of the TASC test. Sign up for email updates.
Teachers should check out the newly updated Detailed Descriptions and Sample Questions for the math and science standards assessed on the TASC and the Overviews of TASC Content for SS, Reading, Writing, Science and Math.
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 years, Sara has collected photographs of math mistakes taken from everyday life, both from the world around her and from the internet. The mistakes come from stores, signs, newspapers, TV, advertisements, etc.). Continue reading Examine Math Mistakes from Our Everyday Lives
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, and the editors of the magazine align the writing with great college and career readiness activities and lessons. Continue reading The Change Agent Career Pathways Issue Does the Job Right!
Now more than ever, students need an education in civics. Civics is central to the TASC Social Studies, but there are more urgent reasons to teach students about this American democracy. Students need help in voting for their own interests and navigating the confusing new fact of political reporting. As adult education teachers, we may feel that we have to choose between dry, simplistic textbook excerpts and newspaper articles that assume readers have extensive knowledge of U.S. politics. Textbook excerpts often tell only a small part of the story—the part that glorifies U.S. history and the workings of its governments. We all know the reality is less straightforward and positive. How can we convey the basics while also inviting students to enter into the complex political life of our country, which includes the good, the bad and the ugly? Continue reading Word Generation Social Studies Units
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 Skills, available here for free. In the ESL Story Bank, there are both pre-beginning and beginning stories in the story bank. The stories are all relevant and appropriate for adult English Language Learners. The activities are well-scaffolded, and designed to help low level students each step of the way. The materials can be used as a full curriculum in which you introduce a new story with a theme that builds over the course of a week. Alternatively, teachers can pick and choose stories that support the adult learner themes they are working on. Continue reading Low Level Stories You Can “Bank” On!
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 vast collection of primary sources that will bring U.S. history alive for your students. Continue reading Bring the Past Alive with HERB