Our content-focused professional development (PD) offerings address both the College and Career Readiness Standards (CCRS) for Math and the Standards for Mathematical Practice.
Online PD
The City University of New York (CUNY) has developed free remote learning packets for adult education students on different math topics. This workshop will introduce you to one of the packets, Density: Area and Population Density (Part 1). During the workshop, we will discuss strategies for using the CUNY packets to structure math instruction with both asynchronous and synchronous components and look at how specific activities and concepts from the Density packet can be taught during synchronous instruction to improve student learning. You will also have the opportunity to view video clips of two of the activities in a remote class.
Note: The math content in this packet is appropriate for learners at the intermediate level, approximately GLE 4–8 (CCRSAE Math levels C and D) and are designed to give learners the opportunity to explore the math concepts involved and apply them to real-life situations. Because they contain explanatory text, students should also have an intermediate to advanced level of reading.
Format: facilitated online workshop
BeCALM contains remote-ready units for adult learners who need math instruction at beginning levels (GLE 2-4). Adults who are beginning math learners sometimes find themselves left behind by high school equivalency curricula or stuck trying to memorize their way through calculations they don’t understand. What these learners need is a conceptually-focused, cognitively rigorous curriculum that supports them in developing number sense. Number sense is the ability to break down and recombine numbers in useful ways, based on a conceptual understanding of how numbers work. Developing number sense can help beginning learners improve their mathematical fluency without memorization as well as build a solid foundation for later study.
This online workshop will introduce a curriculum specifically designed to help beginning level math learners develop their number sense with whole numbers. This resource can be used for remote or in-person classes and includes a student packet and teacher’s guide.
Format: facilitated online workshop
BeCALM (Beginning Curriculum for Adults Learning Math) contains remote-ready units for adult learners who need math instruction at beginning levels (GLE 2-4). Adults who are beginning math learners can sometimes find themselves left behind by HSE curriculum or stuck trying to memorize their way through calculations they don’t understand. What these learners need is a conceptually focused, cognitively rigorous curriculum that supports them in developing number and operation sense. This training will introduce the second part of a curriculum developed specifically for beginning level math learners. Part 2 focuses on developing operation sense with addition and subtraction.
This online workshop will introduce a curriculum specifically designed to help beginning level math learners develop their operation sense with addition and subtraction. This resource can be used for remote or in-person classes and includes a student packet and teacher’s guide.
Format: facilitated online workshop
BeCALM Geometry contains remote-ready units for adult learners who need math instruction at beginning levels (GLE 2-4). The materials are also appropriate for students with limited literacy levels (Reading level GLE 2+). This workshop will introduce this curriculum, which can be used remotely or in person. The resource includes a printable student packet and shape set and a teacher’s guide.
During this workshop, you will be introduced to the materials and will hear recommendations for their use from the designer and pilot teacher. You will also be introduced to the van Hiele theory of the development of geometric reasoning in order to better understand the academic goals of the unit. Lastly, you will have an opportunity to sample a few of the activities from the packet.
Format: facilitated online workshop
This online workshop will introduce a curriculum specifically designed to help beginning level math learners develop operation sense with multiplication. This resource can be used for remote or in-person classes and includes a student packet, teacher’s guide, and other downloadable materials. Units include application activities in the context of financial literacy that integrate Teaching Skills That Matter (TSTM)-identified skills.
During the workshop, you will be introduced to the materials and will hear recommendations for their use from the pilot teacher. You will explore some of the math content in the packet, including the use of patterns in multiplication and visual strategies for teaching the Distributive Property.
Format: facilitated online workshop
This online workshop will introduce a curriculum specifically designed to help beginning level math learners develop operation sense with multiplication. This resource can be used for remote or in-person classes and includes a student packet, teacher’s guide, and other downloadable materials. Units include application activities in the context of financial literacy that integrate Teaching Skills That Matter (TSTM)-identified skills.
During this workshop, you will be introduced to the BeCALM Division Concepts materials and will hear recommendations for their use from the pilot teacher. You will explore some of the math content in the packet, including strategies for teaching partitive (equal sharing) and quotitive (how many ___ in a ___?) forms of division. You will also learn why developing a deep understanding of these two forms of division is important for student success.
Note: The BeCALM Division Concepts curriculum is meant to follow BeCALM: Multiplication Concepts.
Format: facilitated online workshop
This online workshop will introduce a curriculum specifically designed to help beginning-level math learners learn measurement concepts and skills and begin to collect and analyze data. This resource was designed for in-person classes and includes a student packet, teacher’s guide, and other downloadable materials. Units include application activities in the context of consumer literacy.
During the workshop, you will be introduced to the materials and will hear recommendations for their use from the pilot teacher. You will explore some of the math content in the packet, including building the concept of a measurement unit, the use of measurement tools, data collection, and estimation of length using benchmarks.
Format: facilitated online workshop
The City University of New York (CUNY) has developed free remote learning packets for adult education students on different math topics. This webinar will introduce you to a geometry packet, Rigid Transformations: Shapes on a Plane (Part 1). Many Desmos Classroom Activities support the same concepts in the packets and can provide the basis of class time instruction. This workshop will show some of the supporting activities and Desmos Classroom Activities that helped students of slightly lower levels in completing the packet. The materials are designed to give learners the opportunity to explore the math concepts involved and apply them to real-life situations.
Note: The math content in the packet is appropriate for learners at the intermediate level. Because they contain explanatory text, students should also have an intermediate to advanced level of reading.
Format: facilitated online workshop
Research is a big part of making an informed decision. The Be Your Own Boss unit scaffolds digital literacy expectations and experiences for students, all within the Be Your Own Boss context. In early lessons, students find an answer to a specific question. In subsequent lessons, students begin searching for answers to more open-ended questions and evaluating and organizing information. Included with the unit are materials to use in classes in which internet access is unavailable, as well as ideas for different digital literacy experience levels.
In this session, you will experience a sequence of activities from the unit and see how the activities are scaffolded to help students grow toward becoming better researchers and more digitally literate consumers.
Our adult education students represent a multitude of backgrounds and cultures, yet they may not feel these are reflected in the math classroom or in STEM fields. A first step in creating a more equitable and inclusive math classroom is to learn how students can feel marginalized in the classroom, and how important it is to address the feeling of invisibility. In this interactive workshop, you will be introduced to some female and black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) mathematicians whose stories and many contributions were erased from history. We will then conduct our own real-time mini-explorations to find other examples of mathematicians to share with each other during the session.
Format: facilitated online workshop
As teachers, we often notice that students who participate in other subjects shut down when it comes time for math. What is it about their experiences that leads them to believe that math class is not a place for them? Adult education students receive many messages, from both external and internal sources, about their ability to do and learn math. Some students have “learned” that they are not good at math and feel as though their ideas and questions do not belong in math. In this workshop, we will examine how systemic racism has damaged many students’ sense of themselves as math students. We will also share instructional practices to engage students and help them develop positive math identities.
We will engage in a rich math task and dig into the impact of that experience on ourselves as learners in order to explore how the expectations we hold and communicate to our students affect their ideas about themselves as mathematical learners and thinkers. We will reflect on how the cultural lenses we have as teachers can affect our students.
Format: facilitated online workshop
What does one degree of increased average global temperature really mean? In this 2.5-hour facilitated session, explore and discuss tools, strategies, and resources for teaching about global climate change. The session will focus on the units of measurement for temperature, the concept of averages (mean) for finding average temperatures, and the instructional strategy of slow-reveal graphs for understanding graphs of climate data and projections.
You will leave with a set of resources, ready for teaching and making further connections.
Format: facilitated online workshop
In this online workshop, we will connect angles to kite making, build measuring tools, and take a look at geometry questions similar to those students might see on a high school equivalency exam. During the workshop, we’ll briefly touch upon the cultural relevancy of kites and research by Van Hiele on levels of understanding geometric concepts before diving into more concrete paper-folding activities that can help develop formal angle measurement concepts in adult education students. A deeper understanding of these concepts and how to explain them using visuals can help adult students increase their own knowledge while they learn ways to teach young family members, too. Participants will receive PDF copies of two packets that explore angles, one designed for adults and one for families.
Format: facilitated online workshop
Estimation is more than just ‘rounding numbers’! We use estimation more than we realize when making calculations and decisions in our daily life and at work. Explicitly teaching students to compute mentally and approximate answers develops their number sense and their confidence in using math.
In this online workshop, you will learn about different types of estimation (numerosity, measurement, and computation estimation) and how to integrate them into your instruction to help students develop number sense.
Format: facilitated online workshop
Each lesson in this five-session virtual course begins with a question to pique your interest in the topic. Through exploration, you will investigate the effect that exponents can have on situations. Topics covered include patterns with exponents, powers of 10, interest rates, and graphing with exponents. The emphasis will be on helping you develop your own conceptual understanding of core math topics related to exponents, while modeling instructional strategies for the classroom. You will be encouraged to try out new ideas between each session module.
Format: online facilitated course
In this virtual workshop series, you will explore linear relationships and represent them in different formats such as drawings, tables, graphs, and equations. After building a conceptual foundation with these various representations, you will apply what they’ve learned to linear relationships by connecting the procedure for slope-intercept form to real-life contexts and to conceptual understanding. You will also have a chance to experience an online learning activity on the Desmos platform that can be used remotely with students and will learn how the concepts covered in this workshop are represented in standardized tests.
This course consists of online modules and two live online workshop sessions that will provide opportunities for discussing and exploring concepts. You will receive a packet of materials to print and complete prior to each session.
Format: online facilitated workshop series with independent work
This course provides conceptual understanding of math topics around whole numbers, including cultural differences in procedures and notation. The course offers strategies and lesson ideas for making math accessible to all levels of ESOL students. During the course, you will engage with some math practice activities, watch videos of ESOL students working on math problems, view animations of math concepts, and learn about instructional strategies you might use in your own classroom.
This course takes about 6 hours to complete.
Format: Asynchronous online course
What is a pandemic? Understanding intuitively how a pandemic moves through a community will help students better understand why processes are put in place to ease the pandemic’s growth. This workshop introduces several lessons designed for teaching ALL students about how pandemics spread and about exponential growth. You will participate in demonstrations of several activities from the lessons and explore exponential growth through simulations, drawing pictures, looking at data, and looking at graphs. You will also receive some guidance on how to facilitate these lessons remotely with your students. Note: These lessons can be taught remotely through video conferencing, but also will work with students who have little or no internet access.
Format: facilitated online workshop
This self-paced, moderated online course is one in a series for ESOL teachers who would like to deepen their understanding of math and learn how to integrate math and numeracy skills into their ESOL classrooms.
The course is designed to provide the math knowledge needed to integrate benchmark fractions, percentages, and decimals into a language classroom. You will engage in math activities, reflect on your own knowledge and assumptions about math, and learn strategies for integrating benchmark numbers into your ESOL lessons while continuing to focus on language acquisition and effective communication.
Format: online facilitated course
Recommended prerequisite: Introduction to Integrating Math in the ESOL Classroom
Bringing data into your science or social studies classroom can deepen and enrich your content teaching and provides students with the opportunity to develop data skills in authentic contexts. This workshop will present simple and engaging classroom routines for integrating data into science and social studies classes in a meaningful way. We’ll look at some strategies and resources for making graphs and data more interactive and do some data collection and analysis using data from the workshop participants. We’ll also review the statistical cycle and look at how strategic questions can get students thinking about the process behind understanding and using statistics.
Format: facilitated online workshop
Adults encounter ratios and proportions all the time in news or media statistics, estimates of risk, shopping for the best deal, creating mixtures and recipes, and countless other daily activities. The ability to reason about these numerical relationships develops over a long period of time and through deliberate exploration of the mathematics involved. Language teachers can provide opportunities for students to encounter and expand their ability to reason with ratios in real-life contexts.
This is a course for English language teachers who want to deepen their own conceptual understanding of ratios and proportions and to learn strategies for helping students build ratio reasoning skills. It is divided into five core lessons on ratios and proportions, each containing math practice activities, discussion forums, and lesson ideas for adult ESOL classes. You will engage in math activities, reflect on your own knowledge and assumptions about math, and learn strategies for integrating ratios and proportions into your ESOL lessons while continuing to focus on language acquisition and effective communication.
Format: online facilitated course
Recommended prerequisite: Introduction to Integrating Math in the ESOL Classroom
Part of learning a new language is learning how to talk about math. Unfortunately, math has not traditionally been a regular part of adult ESOL instruction, and many ESOL teachers are not comfortable teaching it. This self-paced, moderated online course is the first in a series for ESOL teachers who would like to deepen their understanding of math and learn how to integrate math and numeracy skills into their ESOL classrooms.
This course provides conceptual understanding of math topics around whole numbers, including cultural differences in procedures and notation, and offers strategies for making math accessible to all levels of ESOL students. Each lesson contains several math practice activities, discussion questions, video clips, and lesson ideas.
Format: online facilitated course
This online workshop identifies some of the gaps that adult students often have in their foundational number sense around fractions and explores some activities and strategies for helping them develop this number sense so that they can reason and make sense of fractions and fraction procedures.
The workshop is for anyone involved in adult numeracy instruction who wants ideas for helping students develop core number sense with fractions at the early levels (CCRSAE Levels A-C). You will look at research on adult students’ fraction understanding, watch a video of students reasoning with benchmark fractions, and try out some activities yourself to expand your toolkit for teaching fractions conceptually. Lastly, you’ll consider the continuum of fraction skills as they are developed through levels A-C and discuss what foundational skills should be mastered before students are taught operations with fractions.
Format: facilitated online workshop
As a result of the COVID pandemic, many teachers had to make an immediate shift from face-to-face instruction to remote teaching with little or no chance to consider how to do so. This workshop follows one adult education teacher who initially moved away from the conceptually–based EMPower math materials at the start of the pandemic and how she worked her way back to using them again.
In this workshop, we will identify ways in which teaching conceptually is both similar and different when done in person compared to distance learning. We will look at some tools and strategies for teaching math remotely that you can use whether you use EMPower or any other math materials. Video clips of instructional routines that can be used in any remote math class will help you actually see into virtual classrooms where students are gaining conceptual understanding.
Format: facilitated online workshop
This online workshop introduces materials for teaching adult students about vaccines via remote instruction. The materials include four lessons designed for intermediate level (Pre-ASE) learners. These integrated lessons were designed to give students the historical, scientific, and math background knowledge to understand and make informed decisions about vaccines.
You will have the opportunity to sample lesson activities and learn about the mathematical content (probability, including fractions and percents) relevant to teaching lessons about understanding risk and herd immunity. You’ll also receive all of the lesson materials as PDFs.
Format: facilitated online workshop
Are you looking for engaging online math content that allows students to learn independently at an appropriate pace and with the tools and resources most accessible to them? Do you wish you could easily create assignments for multilevel classes from one online source and know that the content and rigor are aligned to the standards? Or that your ESOL students could work on math and have the language support they need to complete the activities and lessons remotely?
This two-part online workshop is for anyone struggling to find appropriate, leveled math content for distance learning. In it, we will explore how CK-12 can do all of the above while working seamlessly with Google Classroom, Canvas, and Schoology. All that is needed is internet access and a computer, tablet, or smart device. Best of all — everything on the CK-12 site is completely FREE!
Format: facilitated online workshop series
The City University of New York (CUNY) has developed free remote learning packets for adult education students on different math topics. This online workshop will introduce you to one of the packets, Tools of Algebra: Expressions, Equations, and Inequalities (Part 1). During the workshop, we will discuss strategies for using the CUNY packets to structure math instruction, both for students with and without computer access. We will also dive more deeply into the Tools of Algebra packet and look at specific activities and concepts that could be taught over video conferencing software to improve student learning.
Note: The math content in this packet is appropriate for learners at the intermediate level, approximately GLE 5-9 (CCRASE Math levels C and D) and are designed to give learners the opportunity to explore the math concepts involved and to apply them to real-life situations. Because they contain explanatory text, students should also have an intermediate to advanced level of reading.
Format: facilitated online workshop
Algebraic reasoning and geometry are intertwined, and exploring one often leads to connections to the other. In this workshop, we will begin with a hands-on geometry activity designed for children and adults to do together, then move to an informal introduction to linear graphs with adult learner activities. You will learn how to create a wheeled toy for a young child out of materials found around the house, which can launch an investigation of circles appropriate for both children and adults. Activities will include discovery of the relationships between the parts of a circle, estimating measurements, and using those relationships to explore graphing data. Activities will begin with concrete measurement and extend to more abstract reasoning. This fulfills adult learners’ needs in their dual role as caregivers of children and learners of mathematics.
Format: facilitated online workshop
Math can be a powerful tool for identifying and disrupting the effects of racism. Developing strong skills in proportional reasoning and statistical literacy and carrying this reasoning into the world, prepares students to recognize the effects of racism and to critically question and respond to real world issues.
In this workshop, we will explore how to teach math that students can use to think critically about the world. We’ll use materials from The Change Agent. It provides examples of how to prepare students to recognize injustice through proportional reasoning and statistical literacy.
Format: facilitated online workshop
The Massachusetts Adult Proficiency Test (MAPT) is used by many state-funded programs to measure student progress. It provides score reports that give specific information about the domains and difficulty levels of questions students got correct and incorrect when they took the test. Teachers who use CALM (Curriculum for Adults Learning Math) can use these score reports to gain insight into how their classes are going, where they may need to alter their instruction, and where they may need to do further assessment.
This 90-minute, online workshop will cover some key details of what is in the MAPT score report and how to read it. We will look at a sample score report and investigate how to glean information from it that will be useful in making instructional decisions. Then we will explore the resources that are available in CALM for targeted assessment and instruction based on what we see in the score report. We will also discuss the larger questions of assessment types (summative and formative) and the role of assessments in the bigger picture.
Format: facilitated online workshop
When students work with visual models that they can see, manipulate, or create, it opens visual pathways in the brain that provide added meaning to the area of the brain that processes abstract numbers. In this workshop, we will work with visual representations of percents and ratios and discuss how this enables students at multiple levels of math and language proficiency to better understand abstract mathematical concepts.
In this interactive, 90-minute workshop, you will construct understanding of percents by deconstructing an image and creating your own visual model and math question. You will participate in a survey, and the data collected from the survey will be used to reason about ratios in a real-world context. You will be sketching, using virtual manipulatives, and sharing problem-solving strategies. You will leave with a toolkit of practical strategies for teaching ratios and percents using visual models and student-generated data. The resources available after the session can be used in a virtual or in-person classroom with both English learners and high school equivalency students.
Format: facilitated online workshop
Data tells a story in the form of a graph. This online workshop is for anyone who teaches ABE math, science, social studies, or ESOL. The instructional strategy of using slow-reveal graphs takes the focus off getting the “right” answer and allows students from a wide variety of math backgrounds and levels (including ELLs) to work together to share their curiosity and interpret graphs. The examples you’ll work with introduce a social justice topic and, if you use the unit plan provided, give your students the opportunity to share their own visuals about a social justice topic they find meaningful.
Format: facilitated online workshop
A challenge we may face when we teach for conceptual understanding is student pushback. Many students expect math class to be about memorizing and repeating procedures. Students can be invested in traditional ways of teaching and learning. They may conflate succeeding in math with succeeding in a traditional classroom even if that model has not worked for them, has led them to hate math, or has convinced them that they are not good at it.
Although this can be discouraging, student resistance is important to building trust and can be an opportunity to build community. In this workshop, we will discuss how to respond to resistance from a place of empathy and look at how math can be a tool for identifying and disrupting the effects of racism. We will discuss what we often hear from students. We will then dig in to what is going on for students when they resist and how that understanding can inform our response. We will introduce and practice using a frame for receiving and responding to resistance. We will also look at research on implicit bias and consider its implication on our classroom practice.
Format: facilitated online workshop
Blended PD
Statistical reasoning helps students build on and develop various mathematical concepts, but its application has relevance beyond the study of mathematics. Adults encounter statistics in the news, in health care, when making consumer decisions, and in many other contexts. Traditionally, data and statistics instruction in math classes has focused on data analysis. This course expands the focus to the entire cycle and process of doing statistics to answer questions about the world around us. The course content is also relevant for adult students preparing for high school equivalency exams in math, science, and social studies.
In this course, you will deepen your understanding of the statistical cycle and learn how to help students develop and apply basic concepts in statistical reasoning. Through hands-on activities and experiments, videos, readings, and examples of student work, you’ll explore the four stages of the statistical cycle: formulating questions, collecting data, analyzing data, and interpreting results. The course includes examples of applications of statistics to scientific inquiry and contemporary social issues.
This is a blended course composed of two face-to-face sessions and two week-long online modules.
Format: facilitated blended course
Both teachers and students often report that the hardest thing to teach and learn is fractions. There are so many rules to remember and none of them seems to make sense! But fractions don’t have to be a source of frustration and anxiety! By building a solid conceptual understanding of fractions, teachers and students can understand those rules instead of memorizing them.
In this course, you will deepen your understanding of the meaning of fractions through a series of hands-on activities and visual explorations. You will learn to develop your own non-routine fraction questions to guide your students to a deep and full understanding that will serve them well throughout their math education. You will also learn the reasoning behind the fraction procedures students memorize in school and alternate ways to teach them that allow students to develop conceptual understanding and procedural fluency at the same time.
Making Sense of Fractions is a blended course composed of two full-day face-to-face sessions and two week-long online modules.
Format: facilitated blended course
Adult students, even at the lowest levels, have some experience with and intuition about proportional reasoning—the ability to compare two things using multiplicative thinking and then apply the comparison to a new situation. By integrating proportional reasoning throughout the curriculum, you can help your students develop important life and career skills and prepare them to tackle algebra with understanding and confidence.
This course will introduce you, through hands-on exploration, to both the concepts of proportional reasoning and to concrete strategies to help students reason through ratios. You will analyze videos of adult students engaged in proportional reasoning activities, deepen your own knowledge of this critical concept through a series of activities, and develop activities and questions for your own classroom that will push your students toward conceptual understanding. The concepts addressed in this course can be found in the College and Career Readiness Standards for Adult Education (CCRSAE) domain Ratios and Proportional Relationships, as well as some of the algebra standards, at levels C and D.
Making Sense of Proportional Reasoning is a blended course made up of two half-day, face-to-face sessions and two week-long online modules.
Format: facilitated blended course
In this course, you will experience activities from the five-lesson unit packet, Integrating Math into ESOL Units: Health. (Participants will receive access to the full packet as well.) The lessons in this packet provide ready-to-use math activities that can be incorporated into an ESOL unit on the topic of health. You will deepen your own conceptual understanding of reasoning about ratios and rates, represent your reasoning using words, expressions, tables, and graphs, and use multiple tech tools that enhance both in-person and virtual classes.
This is a seven-part, blended course composed of three synchronous online facilitated workshops (1.5 hours each) and four online course modules. Participation in the online modules involves reading assigned materials and participating in online discussions and activities.
Format: facilitated blended course
Face-to-face PD
Adult learners often have large gaps in their conceptual understanding of math that prevent them from being college ready. CALM is a math curriculum designed to address those gaps and give adults a strong conceptual foundation that will prepare them to not only earn a high school credential, but to also be truly ready for higher education. CALM teaches math concepts using real-world contexts whenever possible and is appropriate for all adult learners. It is designed for students at adult basic education (ABE) through adult secondary education (ASE)- levels and based on developmental continua for content needed to succeed in life and in college and careers. Lessons focus on explorations so students can build conceptual understanding in a spiral approach that helps connect many math concepts often seen as unable to be taught at the same time or until students have achieved a certain level in math. CALM is aligned to the CCRS for Math and draws upon carefully selected, quality resources, including the EMPower series. Each CALM unit includes individual lessons (or references to resources), formative assessments for each lesson, and an end-of-unit, performance-based assessment.
The CALM Orientation is a full-day opportunity for both directors and teachers to begin to understand how CALM is different from traditional math teaching.
Format: face-to-face workshop
Provided materials: CALM files (22 units of lesson plans, handouts, test questions
After the CALM Orientation, teachers/programs can receive PD support through facilitated meetings where their challenges can be addressed and where they can learn new math strategies that can be immediately applied in CALM. In it, they can share challenges and strategies and support each other as well as communicate with the CALM development team.
Format: face-to-face OR facilitated online workshop
Prerequisite: CALM Orientation (recommended)
This workshop provides you with an introduction to using the CCRSAE-aligned EMPower Plus materials, which provide activities and practice materials specifically designed to help adult learners deepen their conceptual understanding of math concepts in real-life contexts. The workshop provides an overview of the methodology and content of the EMPower Plus materials, tips for using the materials in the classroom, and guidance for developing unit plans using EMPower Plus. You will also try out sample activities in the workshop.
Format: face-to-face workshop
Adult ESOL learners need math skills to be effective employees. This half-day workshop focuses on math concepts and ready-to-use activities that could be woven into a language unit on employment. These concepts and activities, developed by a team of math and ESOL teachers, are included in a packet that will be given to participants. You will have the opportunity to deepen your own conceptual understanding of math concepts behind the activities, try out visual and tactile manipulatives that can enhance students’ understanding, and experience and reflect on some of the activities offered in the packet. Cultural, life, and work skills contexts addressed in the packet include data collection and analysis, estimation, reading and analyzing pay stubs, and using measurement.
Format: face-to-face workshop
Adult ESOL learners need math skills to take care of their own and their family’s health. This half-day workshop focuses on math concepts and ready-to-use activities that could be woven into a language unit on health. These concepts and activities, developed by a team of math and ESOL teachers, are included in a packet that will be given to participants. You will have the opportunity to deepen your own conceptual understanding of math concepts behind the activities, while also experiencing and reflecting on some of the activities offered in the packet. The packet includes lessons on illnesses and symptoms, going to the doctor, medication, nutrition, and maintaining a healthy lifestyle. These lessons include math activities that develop students’ skills with measurement and proportional reasoning.
Format: face-to-face workshop
Adult ESOL learners need math skills to be smart consumers.
This half-day workshop focuses on math concepts and ready-to-use activities that could be woven into an ESOL unit on shopping or consumer awareness. These concepts and activities, developed by a team of math and ESOL teachers, are included in a packet that will be given to participants. Participants will have the opportunity to deepen their own conceptual understanding of some of the math concepts behind the activities, try out some visual and tactile manipulatives that can help students deepen their understanding of the math, and experience and reflect on some of the activities offered in the packet. Cultural and life skills contexts addressed in the packet include U.S. currency, estimating costs and making change, understanding basic sales and markdowns, and finding the best deal.
Format: face-to-face workshop
There are situations when we must be precise in our measurements, especially in careers like nursing, engineering, and public health that require knowledge of trade tools that use intervals and symbols.
In this 3-hour workshop, you will engage in hands-on station activities that focus on measurement using various instruments, all of which can be replicated for multiple workforce contexts. We’ll unpack ways these activities could be modified for different populations, settings, or workforce interests. We’ll also examine the prior math knowledge that may be needed to support learners, as well as ways to differentiate the tasks to make the station activity experience accessible to everyone. We’ll end by reviewing the resources, materials, and lesson plans provided with the workshop to support contexts that work with measurement.
Format: face-to-face workshop