Our toolbox is for adult literacy tutors, teachers, or anyone looking for new instructional ideas. Suggested resources come from a variety of sources: tutors, staff, adult educators, books, conferences, and, of course, the Internet.
The Web is a wonderful place to look for instructional material, but how many times have you started a search only to end up �surfing� for hours- overcome by information? We hope to ease some of this search work for you by recommending sites and e-tools that are especially useful for adult literacy practitioners. Add these to your own teaching toolbox and let us know how it goes.
The Literacy Assistance Center (http://lacnyc.org/resources/) is a comprehensive site that includes BE/ESOL curriculum, training materials, and web-based lessons for teachers, tutors, and program staff. LAC also runs ongoing workshops for literacy practitioners in NYC if you are willing to cross the river.
The Literacy List (http://alri.org/literacylist.html) is a large collection of free Adult Basic Education and ESL/ESOL Web sites, electronic lists ("listservs"), and other Internet resources for adult basic skills learners and teachers. The resources have been suggested by adult literacy and ESOL practitioners.
Dave's ESL Caf� (www.eslcafe.com) is a great resource for ESL students and teachers that is full of teaching ideas, sample lesson plans, games, grammar resources, online conversation groups, etc. Also a good place for tutors to post questions for other educators.
Financial Literacy (http://caliteracy.org/freecurriculum.html) The F.R.E.E. (Financial Resources and Economic Education) curriculum is designed to help meet the needs of immigrants who have limited English language proficiency. F.R.E.E. is designed to help immigrants gain control over their own finances, while improving their English language comprehension skills.
Free Clip Art Collection for Second Language Instruction (http://tell.fll.purdue.edu/JapanProj/FLClipart/) is a series of hand-drawn pictures illustrating verbs, adjectives, and common nouns that tutors can print out and use in session to generate understanding, conversation, stories, writing activities, grammar lessons and much more. This free collection of black and white drawings is easy to download onto your computer and print out.
Make Your Own Crossword Puzzles (http://www.edhelper.com/crossword.htm) Reinforce sight words, new vocabulary, and spelling by creating your own customized crossword puzzles for your student. It is fun and and easy to do.
Surfing for Substance - Lessons for Introducing the Internet to Students (http://hub1.worlded.org/docs/surfing/ is a professional development guide and lesson plans for introducing the Web into adult literacy instruction. Tutors with an interest in helping their students "log on" and learn using web-based educational resources can get started with this great resource.
FirstFind (http://www.firstfind.info) is a website designed by adult educators and librarians especially for low-literate adults. This site provides an access point for governmental, community, educational and reference information that is written in Plain English and accessible to new readers.
Read Your Road: Every Highway User's Guide to Driving Safely (http://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/media/ryr.htm) The U.S. Department of Transportation's guide to driving safety, it is written for the adult new reader. It is easy to navigate and visually appealing.
TV 411 Online (http://www.tv411.org) is an interactive site that includes about 70 free lessons (with more always on the way!) that guide the learner with frequent and instructive feedback. Subjects range from context clues and complaint letters to understanding compound interest. For educator's, there's curriculum support, including sample lesson plans, guidelines for correlating TV411 with educational standards and an interactive index. The website covers an array of topic areas in reading, writing, math, and workplace skills as well as provides functions such as an on-line calculator, dictionary and interactive tools.
The Key (http://www.keynews.org/) is a monthly newspaper written for new readers. The site includes articles on current events for low-literate adults, an archive of past articles, and downloadable lesson plans for instructors.
Randall's ESL Cyber-Listening Lab (http://www.esl-lab.com/index.htm) This multi-media site includes dozens of audio and video stories that offer students vocabulary development and reading comprehension quizzes as well as key vocabulary word definitions and quiz assessment.
Volunteermatch.com - On-line Volunteer Recruitment Tool (www.volunteermatch.com) As the largest online network of participating nonprofits, Volunteermatch.com helps thousands of organizations recruit volunteers every day. Registration on their website is free, and once you sign up, you can post your volunteer opportunities, track your interested volunteers, and increase the visibility of your organization on the web and in your local community. When volunteers see your LV listing, they simply click on it to connect with your organization and get involved. This is a great recruitment tool that many potential NJ volunteers are using.
Focus On Basics - Practical Newsletter for Adult Educators (http://www.ncsall.net/index.php?id=31) Focus on Basics is the quarterly publication of the National Center for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy. It presents best practices, current research on adult learning and literacy, and how research is used by adult basic education teachers, counselors, program administrators, and policy makers. Focus on Basics is dedicated to connecting research with practice, to connecting teachers with research and researchers with the reality of the classroom, and by doing so, making adult basic education research more relevant to the field. This is a great resource with lots a practical instructional advice for program manager and tutros. You can sign up online and download issues from their website as well.
Surfing for Substance - Lessons for Introducing the Internet to Students (http://hub1.worlded.org/docs/surfing/) is a professional development guide and lesson plans for introducing the Web into adult literacy instruction. Some of your tutors may have expressed interest in helping their students �log on� and learn using web-based educational resources. This is a great resource to help them get started.
Create Your Own Surveys Online (www.zoomerang.com) How often do you survey your volunteers? Zoomerang.com allows you to easily create your own online surveys and provides instant analysis of the responses. The service is free as long as you have less than 30 questions on your survey and are sending to no more than 100 recipients. There is also a customization option to create your survey in over 40 languages. The site is fairly easy to use. Be aware that you will have to sign up to be a survey recipient for consumer products, but you may only have to do this for the short time your survey is running.