Betsy Parrish Hamline University/ATLAS NCTN November 8, 2012

Participants will…  Learn about the ACES initiative  Identify your own state’s PD needs regarding transitions at all levels of instruction  Experience sample activities from the initiative  Identify ways they can adopt portions of the program in your settings

 A  A cademic  C  C areer  E  E mployability  S  S kills

To ensure that ABE programs are providing effective contextualized instruction integrating post-secondary education and training readiness, employability skills and career readiness at all levels.

Why teach transitions skills from the beginning?

Social language vs. academic language ( Cummins, 2000) 7-15 years with intensive instruction to master academic or specialized language ( Collier, 1989) Prior experience with formal schooling or work Opportunities to use academic language outside of class

7 To be ready for…  Work  Education  Home  Community

Implementation of a plan for job-embedded Professional Development for a cohort of 30 practitioners. How do we get there?

 what strategies, skills and standards are deemed essential.  how to embed them at all levels.

Who.. Advisory group from ABE and community college; workforce development What…  Reviewed standards/frameworks  Identified essential skills  Shared wisdom and expertise

 Provide practitioners with a new curriculum.  Provide them with a set of standards.

Providing a framework and strategies for integrating transitions at all levels…a transitions lens through which teachers can view all lesson plans.

An Overview of the Transitions Integrated Framework

 Career Literacy/Awareness  Critical Thinking  Effective Communication  Language and Learning Strategies  Navigating and Understanding One’s Environment  Numeracy  Self-Management  Technology

 Developing Future Pathways  Critical Thinking  Effective Communication  Language and Learning Strategies  Understanding and Navigating Formal Systems  Numeracy  Self-Management  Digital Literacy

ObjectivesSample Classroom Activities Learning Objective 1: SWBAT... Identify personal skills, values and beliefs  Use mind-mapping to organize personal skill sets.  Create a time line of important events in your life and present the skills and values that have shaped your character.  Take a basic interest, values or skills inventory.  Take on classroom roles and evaluate successes (and challenges) at completing those tasks.  Track successes in lessons and relate those to out-of-class tasks.  Keep a log of successes and skills used outside of class. This example is taken from the Career Literacy /Awareness category. Learning Objectives are stated as, “Students will be able to….” (SWBAT)

 Sample classroom activities are provided for each learning objective.  They are provided to help practitioners generate ideas as to how the objectives can be imbedded into lesson plans.  The sample classroom activities are provided at a variety of ABE / ESL levels to show how the learning objective can be imbedded at all levels.

ObjectivesSample Classroom Activities Learning Objective 1: SWBAT… Organize information and materials effectively  Organize class materials in 3-ring binders per established order.  Analyze and organize electronic files/records (eg. messages, documents, etc.) for easy retrieval.  Analyze types of course materials, propose various organization options, choose one, then organize materials. This example is taken from the Self-Management category.

 less detailed descriptions of tasks.  general recommendations.  possible objectives and activities, and not finite, prescribed examples.

 Applicable across settings: ◦ use at a variety of levels, settings and for all three areas of ACES  Make sure users see these as possible objectives and activities  Beginning of a working document

 Implementation of a plan for job-embedded Professional Development for a cohort of 24 practitioners.  This plan was be informed and guided by the findings and recommendations of the ACES Advisory Group.

 24 ABE teachers (Beginning- Advanced ESL; ABE-Basic skills to high-intermediate; GED;  Large urban programs  Rural “one-room school house” programs  Corrections All selected through an application process.

 TIF self assessments: pre/post checklists  Online Moodle course  Video analysis task  Lesson analysis task  Readings and weekly discussion forums  2 peer observations; lesson plans  Final PowerPoint presentations

View and identify examples of categories and learning objectives  New American Horizons ◦ Reading and listening  MLOTS ◦ Math and Literacy

Topic I Applying strategies from the videos in your classes by Betsy Parrish - Sunday, January 15, 2012, 11:42 AMBetsy Parrish  Choose one of the activities from the reading or math lesson you saw in the videos on Friday, Jan. 13, for example, the T-chart, jigsaw reading, line-ups, survey, grouping by common criteria such as birth order (there were others).  Describe how you could use the same type of activity in a lesson for a class you teach? What level learners is this for? What might be the challenges for them? What modifications would you need to make?

Issue: I have not been helping students work on seeking and offering clarification in spoken and written communications Goal: Implement strategies to promote use of clarification strategies. Key question: What happens when I use direct instruction of specific clarification questions and have students role play using those? Observation process: Have my peer observe of the phrases students use (their uptake of the language) and how successful they are at asking clarifying questions. Outcome: Goal Setting Sheet for Peer Observation

 where to go from here.  what categories/objectives work.  what degree of leveling we need.  what degree of differentiation we need across strands:  Employability  Career Awareness  Post-secondary Readiness and Training  and more….

 In looking at the posters, what appear to be the most significant developments in the teachers’ approach to integrating the ACES framework in their programs?

Review the activities that we used in the ACES initiative. Evaluate which you could adopt in your setting. What modifications would be needed? What would you need for these activities to be successful?