|  | | | | | Curriculum Development Mini Grants | | |
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. Grant winners give presentations on how to use their materials every year at the annual MLC Technology in Adult Education conference in June.
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.
Hot Potatoes 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.
Video Field Trips
West ABE Consortium: This project includes video lessons about going to the bank and other locations to help educators teach learners to navigate community services such as the local workforce center, banks and the Department of Motor Vehicles. |
Life Skills Vocabulary Practice
Lehman Center: Heather Turngren, other educators and students helped plan, set-up, and install a website dedicated to real-life vocabulary, images and audio learning modules for low-level learners. |
Video Storytelling
CSD (Communication Services for the Deaf) created Video Story Telling: video clips in sign language using personal stories as the context for developing language skills in adult learners. |
Teaching with Video Clips
Hmong American Partnership: Marya Abraham used student input to develop video lessons that represented real life challenges faced by English learners and new Americans. Video clips and lesson handouts can be downloaded. |
Preposition Practice
Metro North ABE: Charles LaRue created web-based preposition practice with audio prompts to help students understand how, when and where prepositions are used and to practice using them appropriately. |
Marshall ABE Books
Marshall ABE: Charles Carrerra used a multi-media authoring software program called Hyperstudio to create 18 mini-lessons that educators can use online or download to their a CD or lab computers. |
| | | | | | | 2005 Grant Recipients | | To see copies of the grant proposals for the 2005 grant recipients, click here. |
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