Workforce Resources

Teachers are always planning, and I want to make that planning a little easier. Here is another blog entry presenting a few resources that may be useful to the Adult Basic Educator.

First, it is important to begin workforce lesson planning with full awareness that Adult Basic Education is funded through the Workforce Investment Act (link is to the Federal law). WIA is intended to support people with low literacy on to the next step of employment or post-secondary training. Of course, there are many issues surrounding how this has been done since the Act began in 1998 and how it should continue to address the employ-ability and vocational training of people with low-literacy-about 14.5% of the nation's population, but that is a discussion for another entry.

Many good resources for workforce lesson planning are available through the Pennsylvania Department of Education's Bureau of Adult Basic Literacy Education's Workforce Education Recourse Center (WERC). The most basic element of workforce education is development of the soft skills of employment, which can be addressed using WERC's Foundation Skills Framework.

Educators can begin workforce lessons by emphasizing the need for basic employ-ability skills, basic workplace knowledge, and basic workplace skills.

In adult literacy, a lot of time is spent helping people with basic workplace skills like being able to read with understanding, compute and solve problems, and use technology. Teachers may not even realize they are already doing workforce education!

As a teacher, you may spend time implementing project-based learning situations. These can easily help students develop basic employ-ability skills like being able to make decisions, work in teams, and self-manage. However, for some teachers, it may be new to promote basic workplace knowledge like quality consciousness, working within structures, understanding finances, and understanding concepts of health and safety as well as processes and products or services. This is a 'big picture' perspective of how people in different roles function as part of a whole and how we can work independently as well as together to improve quality and maintain a safe and productive work environment. Seeing the big picture can motivate people to perform as well as help them foresee and address issues, which makes them efficient and independent workers.

If an educator wants to implement a strong workforce education lesson, he/she will focus on specific vocational skills or knowledge. Instead of speaking generally about the foundation skills, the teacher can emphasize how a basic literacy skill, basic employ-ability skill, or basic workplace knowledge will fit into a specific job and career path.

For example, information technology. Many jobs require workers to be able to use your standard office suite of programs and moderate typing skills. Teachers may take students into a computer lab and show them the basics of MS Word, so they can type a paragraph to demonstrate their ability to write clearly and concisely. Some teachers may also make use of one of a typing program to help their students gain the skills to complete the task. (There are also free typing instruction games online!)

To make this example even more of a workforce lesson, the teacher could begin with a discussion using information on the tasks of Receptionists gathered from O*NET's Code Connector. O*Net is a resource center describing occupations and careers developed by the U.S. Department of Labor and Industry.

Writing clearly and concisely takes on a more meaning for the adult learner when it is placed in the context of workforce application. Typing and clear written expression are important vocational skills. More information on the development of this career can be found on the O*NET Resource Center link to Career Ladders and Latices.

This is just a sample of how adult basic literacy lessons can become workforce lessons. And, yes, many students will not be interested in job as a receptionist. This is where small groups can break out to explore O*Net to learn more about the tasks and skills required of jobs they may find of interest.

For those who are not sure what job they want, students can explore Career Cruising. Connect with a representative from your local CareerLink (r) to get a password. Students can also explore the Commonwealth Workforce Development System (CWDS) to find out what jobs are out there as well as what training opportunities are available.

Please keep in mind that we can not think of workforce education or the acquirement of information technology skills to be as simple as following a laundry list of skills, like being able to use MS Word and surf the net. Lessons must be linked to express how isolated skills fit together, to learn more about how, try reading, Eisenburg and Johnson 2002. In 1992, Einsenburg and Berkowtiz first wrote their informational literacy curriculum, the Big6, which is a type of triarchic instruction that engages analytic, creative, and practical skills.

Please try these websites for your lesson planning. Feel free to post the results!

Adult Learning Activities | Reading competency and Fluency

Many of the teachers I speak with tell me they want more short reading activities that relate to thematic units. Teachers want to develop reading competency as well as fluency as a part of speaking and listening proficiency. In this blog, I discuss online resources and easily accessible print readings, like the newspaper, as well as activities that can help develop competency and proficiencies in ABE and ESL classrooms. I also located a free online training available to help you develop how you integrate reading lessons in the classroom.

The first two resources were recommended in the Adult Basic Education and Literacy Journal's Spring 2007 volume.

The Adult Learning Activities | California Distance Learning Project offers short stories related an array of thematic topics: money, health and safety, housing, science and technology, working, law and government, family, housing, services, going places, nature, and school. You can play an audio of the story, so students can listen as they read. A few stories also have video.

After entering a thematic topic, you are provided with a list of story titles. These stories are like brief news articles written at about a 4-6th grade level. You can give students the basic story or the full story. You are also given a link to activities to build vocabulary. The activities are all online, but they will give you ideas to develop into a lesson for the whole class if you do not want to/or can not use the website with each student.

You may also want to try the AwsomeStories site. This site is very colorful and has links to different story channels such as Click2Flicks, Click2Disasters, and LawBuzz, which has won a Golden Web award.

The stories can help integrate information on civics and American history as well as health and other subjects into your curriculum. I like the way they graphically present options for selecting stories and the chapter divisions. Although this format also makes it more convenient for students to use the site online than for you the teacher to print the stories and distribute. Unfortunately, not every story as a feature for listening to the story, and there are few graphics. However, words are underlined and link to photos of people or sites with more information on the person, place, or thing.


Keep in mind that the newspaper is a great resource that is often overlooked and can be applied to lessons for English as a Second Language Learners. A great place to access news stories at level for your students is at NewsForYou! This site stays current, so students can read and listen level versions of the current top news stories. You can also subscribe to get paper versions sent to your school. Using these readings should help you launch into W questions (Who, What, Where, When) or Yes/No questions that can develop a sense of grammar structure as well as help launch into critical discussions of current events.

If you want to develop how you include newspapers in your ABE, GED, or ESL classroom, then you may want to take this professional development course offered by Verizon's education network, Thinktivity.

News articles and topic related stories, like those on CDPL, may be a good way to build content familiarity and vocabulary before transitioning into role playing activities. Role playing may be particularly useful for the ESL learner. At this site for ESL speaking activities, you will find various role playing activities and assessment ideas. They also offer an oral test and rubric. You will also find some role playing activities and other resources at the ESL-galaxy site.

One neat site is the English Express: A Website for adult learners. Here, students can select the level of their content. You can print stories as well as listen as you read along. they also have word games, readers stories, and a link to things for teachers and tutors.

My favorite site so far is the Reading Skills for Today's Adults on the Marshall Education website. This site offers a short, printer-friendly reading that students can listen to. The print out has the lines number with the word count to help students keep track of their correct words per minute score (WCPM). You can also access dictation exercises, which are often a shortening version of the reading. The dictation is also leveled, so students can work at the level most appropriate it to their listening and speaking skills.

I think timed oral reading samples are a good way of developing and measuring fluency. If you have students do timed readings, be sure you are also helping them to gauge how well they are reading the words accurately.

I helped a teacher with this type of activity when I substituted for her. I noticed that students were able to easily recognize some words they were mispronouncing, like forecaster and throughout. Other words, they were not really aware they were saying incorrectly, such as saying means instead of meant or say instead of says.

You can ask some students who are more fluent listen to others, which may help develop mentoring skills and a sense of class community. You could also utilize tutors to help monitor student speaking if you can not make time to listen to each student at least once during the time set aside for the activity.

According to the National Institute for Literacy's Applying Research in Reading Instruction for Adults, the timed oral reading samples are a good option for measuring fluency. I am not sure how you are having students chart progress. I noticed Jackie's students like to make a note on their reading to indicate how much further into the text they can read with each attempt.

The NIFL suggests having them read three passages for one minute as rapidly as possible, having them count the words, and then computer the average words per minute for each of the three passages. Next, they count the number of errors in each and computer the average number of words read correctly per minute. For each reading, you have the words read per minute score (WPM) and the words read correctly per minute score (WCPM).

There are a lot of resources available for readings. More things are online. I prefer items we can print as well as those that offer the word count as well as the option to listen to the reading. If you can try some of these sites, please let others know what you think. If you know of other sites that can be used to develop reading competency as well as language fluency, then please post them.

IAE- Teaching Speaking, Listening, and Writing

Please check out the International Academy's publication on IAE- Teaching Speaking, Listening, and Writing for a discussion on the principles guiding instruction.

How Adults Learn :: Ageless Learner

The website How Adults Learn :: Ageless Learner offers a basic discussion as well as a list of books and links to other resources.

PRINCIPLES OF ADULT LEARNING

Were you looking for a concise discussion on the PRINCIPLES OF ADULT LEARNING ?

Mainly, we should keep in mind that adult learners are self-directed, have a foundation of life experiences, are goal-oriented, prefer if things are relevant, are typically practical, and should be shown respect!