Developing Teacher Confidence in Transitions Instruction for all Levels

Betsy Parrish Hamline University/ATLAS

NCTN November 8, 2012

Objectives for Today

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

AcademicCareerEmployabilitySkills

What is ACES?

The Goal of ACES:

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?

 

Think-Pair-Share

• 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

It takes a long time!

7

To be ready for…

Work Education Home Community

Backwards Design

Implementation of a plan for job-embedded Professional Development for a cohort of 30 practitioners.

How do we get there?

We asked…

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

ACES Activity One: Develop a Transitions Integration Framework

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

What we did NOT set out to do…

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

What we ARE doing…

An Overview of the

Transitions Integrated Framework

ACES Professional Development

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

Eight Original Categories

Developing Future Pathways Critical Thinking Effective Communication Language and Learning Strategies Understanding and Navigating Formal

Systems Numeracy Self-Management Digital Literacy

Current Proposed Categories

Objectives Sample 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.

Example of Learning ObjectiveThis 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.

Sample Classroom Activities

Objectives Sample 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. e-mail messages, documents, etc.) for easy retrieval.

Analyze types of course materials, propose various organization options, choose one, then organize materials.

Example of “Sample Classroom Activities”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.

We went with…

Because…. 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

Activity Two: ACES Professional Development

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.

Who participated..

PD Components 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

Pre-Post Reflection Tasks

View and identify examples of categories andlearning objectives

New American Horizons◦ Reading and listening

MLOTS◦ Math and Literacy

Video Observations

Lesson Plans

Moodle Discussion Prompts

Topic I Applying strategies from the videos in your classes by Betsy Parrish - Sunday, January 15, 2012, 11:42 AM

  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….

We are now deciding…

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?

Look at ACES teacher participant “Take-aways” posters.

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?

Create an Action Plan

Questions??