Participatory ABE Curriculum Unit Toolkit
Participatory ABE Curriculum Unit Toolkit
This toolkit is Erin Cary's MA capstone project, shared here for your use. You can also download a PDF of the toolkit here: https://bit.ly/2KDMmA1
“The central problem is this: How can the oppressed...participate in developing the pedagogy of their own liberation?”
-- Paolo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
ABE instruction is all about facilitating learners’ independence and ability to advocate for themselves in the workplace, in higher education and in the community. With recent demands on ABE instructional planning to perform according to accountability measures (two new assessments to prepare learners for! alignment to THREE sets of state and federal ABE content standards!), it can be easy to lose sight of the reason we plan instruction at all--to help learners meet their goals.
This Participatory Curriculum Unit Toolkit is a set of resources prepared for ABE educators to design curriculum units that employ ABE best practices for instruction, meet standards and assessment requirements and, most importantly for adult educational purposes, feature objectives based on learner input that help learners achieve their personal goals. The following tools are devised with the intention of building upon learner-stated goals to further their independence and facility for self-advocacy.
TEACHERS: PLEASE FEEL FREE TO ADAPT ALL TOOLS AS NEEDED TO YOUR CONTEXT.
What’s the purpose of ABE?
Adult Basic Education instructors are accountable to so many powers that be, including state and federal framers and administrators of policy, district and agency leadership, as well as the expectations laid out by content standards and required assessments. However, none of these shaping forces of the field are what originally inspired instructors’ commitment to ABE; the purpose of ABE is to serve our learners. In the daily business of planning instruction, we can sometimes forget that their voices should be driving our choices. But ultimately, we know that hearing their goals of increased independence and then facilitating learning with our knowledge of best teaching practices leads to ABE greatness.
Kellenberg, Schmidt and Werner (2018) wrote that ABE learners should be self-determined, self-regulated and reflexive. A self-determined learner is motivated by inherent interest in instructional content that is challenging and stimulating; a self-regulated learner has opportunities for self-management throughout multiple stages of the lesson; and a reflective learner is able to identify problems and consider how to implement solutions due to achievement of learning goals.
How can ABE instructors plan curriculum units that put learners’ self-identified goals first, and allow them to self-determine, self-regulate and reflect?
Questions to consider before planning curriculum units:
1) What does learner self-advocacy look like in action?
2) How can ABE instructors help facilitate stronger self-advocacy skills in their learners?
3) How do you like to do this through your instruction? What other methods would you like to try?
To be used: once by each teacher at a site within each course before planning curriculum units, far enough in advance of the next unit to provide planning time; repeat periodically to check in with new learners and generate new unit ideas and objectives
Description: This lesson plan is intended for ABE instructors to gather input from learners before planning curriculum units on the language skills/functions, academic knowledge and real-life scenarios they need to practice in class to achieve their goals more independently and to advocate for themselves outside of the classroom. Students will discuss the reasons that adults pursue ABE classes and how teachers design units to help facilitate practice toward their goals; they work together to brainstorm potential unit topics and activity ideas for their class, build consensus around a few ideas and collaborate in groups to make a case for a unit that interests them; at the end of the lesson, the class votes to choose the next unit topic. The lesson plan itself models the importance of learner self-advocacy, and exemplifies how to use the template provided in tool #4 for planning lessons within the units teachers create with this toolkit.
Suggestions:
Text that appears in red throughout the lesson can be changed by the instructor to information relevant to their context.
Instructors will of course build on learner suggestions but should do their best not to influence learners as to the most preferred potential unit during this lesson. It is critical to this participatory process to support and encourage the learners’ independent interests and ideas.
3: PARTICIPATORY CURRICULUM UNIT DESIGN TOOL TEMPLATE
To be used: when planning each new unit of instruction in each course, w/input gathered through lesson plan (#2)
Description: A blank unit-planning template for teacher use, incorporating principles of backwards design for unit-planning, considering desired results and building objectives at least partially around learner input regarding their learning goals and self-advocacy needs, derived from the lesson conducted using tool #2. The template also includes standards alignment and assessment preparation, and a space for a line of inquiry. The template also asks how learners will demonstrate evidence of learning, and from there the scaffolding activities, vocabulary/language content and schema-building which will prepare learners to engage with lesson content needed to meet objectives. Finally, a template is provided to reflect the results of the above planning, as a reference for teachers to use while planning lessons for this unit and to catalogue resources, materials, accommodations needed for this unit along with applicable UDL practices.
Suggestions: Teachers should feel free to expand the spaces provided to write longer responses.
4: BLANK PARTICIPATORY CURRICULUM LESSON PLAN TEMPLATE
To be used: for daily or weekly lesson-planning, based on objectives written in curriculum unit plan (#3) incorporating learner input gathered from the lesson (#2)
Description: A blank lesson-planning template for teacher use, very similar in format to the plan used in the input-gathering lesson (#2). Includes course, unit and lesson information; lesson objectives for teachers (and a way to categorize their purpose in the unit, including as self-advocacy objectives); student-facing “I can” objectives to be shared in class; content standards, key shifts and tiered vocabulary targeted within each lesson; materials/equipment needed; spaces for a sequence of activities and a post-teaching reflection.
Suggestions: Teachers can use the categorization boxes next to the objectives as a reminder of the range of types of objectives being covered for this plan, compared with all plans across the unit. Self-advocacy skills refers to objectives developed with input from learners before writing the unit (tool #2); Language/literacy functions refers to explicit instruction in English language skills/conventions, i.e. grammar, structure, mechanics, etc.; Productive skills (SWP) refers to practice in “speaking, writing and pronunciation”; Interpretive skills (RL) refers to practice in “reading and listening”. Teachers should feel free to adapt these categories as desired.
5: POST-TEACHING UNIT EVALUATION & REFLECTION
To be used: after teaching each unit designed with the Participatory Unit-Planning Template
Description: tool to consider unit successes and areas for improvement, including a grid to enter unit objectives and rate the level of complexity at which learners were asked to engage with them, based on Webb’s Depth of Knowledge chart; space to write out this unit’s biggest victories/strongest evidence of learner gains; strengths to reproduce in or reconsider for future unit(s).
Suggestions: Teachers will want to focus part of their evaluation on successes and ways to follow up on gains on learner independence and self-advocacy, including thoughts on how to prepare accommodations for learners who struggled with these objectives or who would have benefited from more complex tasks.
To be used: for reference while implementing the above resources in the Participatory Curriculum Unit Toolkit
Description: explanations of terms and concepts specific to ABE curriculum-planning domain, sometimes adapted from specific popular curriculum design models, for teachers to refer to while using this toolkit. Terms appearing in tools #1-5 link to their definitions in this document.
Suggestions: Teachers may want to print this glossary and keep it handy while using toolkit to explain or jog their memories on terms and concepts while unit-planning.