Curriculum and Lesson Planning

Theme-based curriculum

Our program uses a theme-based curriculum in which all of the skills and lessons we teach are linked by a topic.  A theme-based classroom helps keep the teaching and learning centered on the life skills that are at the core of our curriculum.  It also gives the teachers flexibility in choosing to shorten or extend a theme based on student interest and motivation.  Most importantly, it’s a great way to teach a multi-level class since different level groups can have a shared theme and work across groups for projects.  This way we can build a sense of community in a class of very diverse ages, interests and levels.  For a sample class taught this way, see this excerpt from Jill Bell’s Teaching Multilevel Classes in ESL.

A theme is typically one or two weeks long, but is really at the discretion of the teacher and students.  In a student-centered classroom, we provide the class with a list of themes and allow them to choose which ones to work on and in what order.  Some teachers may want to choose all the themes for the quarter with their students in the first week, and some may prefer to give the students time to work together on the first theme and decide the rest later. Our core text, Ventures, has themes and topics similar to the content areas of CASAS competencies.   For example syllabi, see the Basic Skills Curriculum Guide 2015.

Life, workplace, and academic skills content

In order to find specific tasks and topics within a theme, the students could choose from the CASAS Competencies,  from Ventures, or they could generate their own topics  through discussion.  For example, maybe they choose to start with Health as a theme, and from Ventures, they choose eating healthy, going to the doctor, and an emergency room visit.  Or from the CASAS competencies, they might choose to Identify information necessary to make or keep medical and dental appointments, fill out medical health history forms, and interpret information on medications and their proper and safe use. You don’t have to use Ventures, but it’s an easy base to build curriculum from, it’s already leveled, and there are tons of great collaborative and online activities to supplement the book.  You also don’t have to stick to the themes in Ventures, CASAS, or the Curriculum Guide, but they do cover just about everything in life skills.

A fantastic source for task ideas based on the College and Career Readiness Standards is brought to us by the wonderful World Education: the Guide to ELA Classroom Activities That Promote Life Skills, College, and Career Readiness.

Using Ventures

Ventures was made for a classroom like ours: a one-room schoolhouse teaching life-skills to adults.  It has six levels, from beginner to advanced.  It is theme-based, aligned to national standards, and based on CASAS life-skills competencies.

Ideally, you would begin the class with a whole-class activity as a warm up.  Then you would break into like-ability groups based on levels, and the teacher, tutors and tech could rotate through the groups as they work on different lessons.  Then the class could be brought back together for a wrap up activity and review.  The Multilevel Lesson Planner is an excellent tool for helping you organize this.  See the Lesson A Multilevel Organizer as an example.

The Teacher’s Guide has excellent ideas and tips for teachers to use the content.  It also has lots of supplemental activities which can be found through the online link above or on the CD-ROM at the back of the book.

Write your own lessons

Writing our own lessons is very rewarding.  We can cater to student needs immediately with authentic materials that are relevant.  Please refer to the Washington State Adult Learning Standards and the College and Career Readiness Standards when designing your own materials.  Also, please consider contributing your lessons to our library by sending them to Sean.  We have them all saved and organized by theme on the Sharepoint site.  Feel free to browse the lessons and use them in your class.

Sample Curricula

Florida Department of Education (ESOL)