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I found the hand out on Developing Phonological Awareness that I got from the Iowa Culture and Language Conference (ICLC) 2015 to be very useful in teaching the ELL pre-literacy class we are now offering in Muscatine.  Most of the students who are attending this class are illiterate not only in English but also in their own language.  Phonological awareness is the awareness of sounds and speech that a person makes or hears.  Here are the different types of phonological awareness in English: Word Awareness is the knowledge that words have meaning.  Example : a student needs to know that the spoken word   dog   represents a creature that has four legs and barks before he or she can understand the meaning of the printed word   dog . Rhyme Awareness is the understanding that certain word endings sound alike, and therefore contain the same sounds. Syllable Awareness is the awareness that words are divided into parts, each part containing a separate vowe...

I presented my master’s thesis at the MIDTESOL 2015 conference in October. The foci of my presentation were on Second Language Acquisition (SLA) theories, curriculum design, and instructional strategies for teaching adult English learners. SLA theories provide insights into how adult English learners acquire a new language. The foremost goal of any ELL course curriculum and instructional strategies is to assist English learners in acquiring the ability to communicate in English. Therefore, the available SLA theories should be examined when exploring second language development and learning outcomes of adult English learners. Here are some of the insights that I keep in mind when I teach my ELL students: Collaborative learning encourages learners to use prior knowledge and experiences to construct new knowledge  Adult learners accumulated a growing reservoir of experience which is rich in resources for the purpose of learning  They acquire the grammatical features naturally,...

While many of you may know how to divide a fraction, how many of you understand why you use the steps that you do?  At the Adult Numeracy Institute they gave me an excellent explanation, so I turned that into a video that you can watch below.

Growing up I was taught math in the traditional way.  The teacher gave me some symbolic notation such as 1/2 * 1/4 and then gave me a step-by-step process to follow to the solve the problem, and then we moved on to the next thing with more notation and procedure.  At ANI they present how that should be just one of three approaches.  We need to add in visual models and real world situations and experiment with starting in one of those modes instead. Attached is a worksheet "Operations with Fractions" that asks the student to make pictures out of fraction problems.  Take a look, give it a try and reflect on how it goes.

Not having enough materials/resources is a common complaint among teachers.  I love following how a young teacher in rural Oklahoma, Sarah Hagan, is finding a way to thrive without using textbooks. Back in March NPR did a feature story about Sarah titled "  The Teacher Who Believes Math = Love. " Since hearing that story, I have been a regular follower of her blog Math = Love .  If you ever need tips on how to make the classroom interactive or how to help students create their own textbooks, then look no further.  She updates her blog almost daily (where she finds the time, I have no idea) and she is truly passionate about her students and how she can help them learn.

By Cheryl Reidenouer, Career Navigator Holly Hunter was one of the student speakers at the HSE May 2015 Graduation Ceremony.   Holly told her fellow graduates that “we got here . . . finally”.  She said her fear of succeeding, fear of failing, fear of what if I can’t do this and fear of what if it never goes anywhere kept her from getting her High School Equivalency Diploma in the past.  In September, Holly’s father-in-law passed away.  He was a very important person in Holly’s life, and she promised him she would do it this time.  She said this is for him, her four children, her husband, and her grandmother.  Holly said hope for a better future is what brought us here.  She ended her inspirational speech by telling the other graduates, “Let’s do this, let’s graduate! Holly said she ran away from home in January of her junior year of high school. She said she was basically staying in a park and living out of her car.  She became ill because o...

I was lucky enough to spend two days doing math as if I were a student.  All of the teachers at the workshop were given some data that we care about -- HiSET testing data for all the states that use the HiSET test. Our task was to tell a story.  Think about that.  We had pages and pages of numbers to look at and it all looked official and concrete and factual.  We had two stories to tell, actually.  The first was to use the data to say how Iowa was doing really well and deserved continued monetary support.  The other story we had to tell was how Iowa is actually struggling and needs money to help bring it up to par.  Below are a few examples of what we created and presented. My group's effort.  On the left side we left out all the other states in-between to make it look like we were doing way better than everyone else.  On the right-side notice how we manipulated the size of the bars to make it seem like Iowa had a really tiny percent.. Infog...

This week I'm spending two days in Des Moines for the Adult Numeracy Institute.  The focus is on number sense (fractions, decimals and percents) and Data, Statistics, and graphs.  I enjoyed the first warm-up activity that was a match up.  This activity could be tailored to any level of math learner.   The directions are as follows: Beforehand, the facilitator creates pairs of cards with equivalent values (for example 1/4 and .25 would be paired cards or 1/8 on one card and a picture of 8 connected bars with one bar shaded in on its match).  You can make the task more difficult by using pairs of more complicated numbers or concepts such as having the golden ratio on one card and  1.61803398875 on another. When you get to class, hand out one card to each student Students then find the person in the room that has the equivalent card Once they find their partner, they go to the board and place their cards on a number line Facilitate a discussion about how they ...

Muscatine's Franklin Elementary teams with MCC to offer GED classes While the article should state HiSET instead of GED, the Muscatine Journal does a good job of covering our new partnership with Franklin Elementary School.  We are hoping to grow this partnership and recruit volunteers for instruction.