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
 Academic
 Career
 Employability
 Skills
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?
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Social language vs. academic language (Cummins,
2000)
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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
To be ready for…
 Work
 Education
 Home
 Community
7
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
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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
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Career Literacy/Awareness
Critical Thinking
Effective Communication
Language and Learning Strategies
Navigating and Understanding One’s Environment
Numeracy
Self-Management
Technology
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Developing Future Pathways
Critical Thinking
Effective Communication
Language and Learning Strategies
Understanding and Navigating Formal
Systems
Numeracy
Self-Management
Digital Literacy
This example is taken from the Career Literacy /Awareness category.
Learning Objectives are stated as, “Students will be able to….” (SWBAT)
Objectives
Learning Objective 1:
SWBAT...
Identify personal skills, values
and beliefs
Sample Classroom Activities
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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.
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.
This example is taken from the Self-Management category.
Objectives
Sample Classroom Activities
Learning Objective 1:

SWBAT…
Organize information and
materials effectively
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Organize class materials in 3-ring binders
per established order.
Analyze and organize electronic
files/records (eg. e-mail messages,
documents, etc.) for easy retrieval.
Analyze types of course materials,
propose various organization options,
choose one, then organize materials.
less detailed descriptions of tasks.
 general recommendations.
 possible objectives and activities, and
not finite, prescribed examples.
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Applicable across settings:
◦ use at a variety of levels, settings and for all three
areas of ACES
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Make sure users see these as possible
objectives and activities
Beginning of a working document
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Implementation of a plan for job-embedded
Professional Development for a cohort of 24
practitioners.
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This plan was be informed and guided by the findings
and recommendations of the ACES Advisory Group.
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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.
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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
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New American Horizons
◦ Reading and listening
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MLOTS
◦ Math and Literacy
Topic I Applying strategies from the videos in your classes
by Betsy Parrish - Sunday, January 15, 2012, 11:42 AM
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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?
Goal Setting Sheet for Peer Observation
Issue:
Goal:
Key question:
Observation
process:
Outcome:
I have not been helping students work on seeking and
offering clarification in spoken and written
communications
Implement strategies to promote use of clarification
strategies.
What happens when I use direct instruction of specific
clarification questions and have students role play using
those?
Have my peer observe of the phrases students use
(their uptake of the language) and how successful they
are at asking clarifying questions.
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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
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and more….
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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?