Hi All,
I'm starting to think about what math books I'll be ordering after we switch to TABE 11/12 (which is all but inevitable at this point). I trust our staff instructors to be able to adapt our current materials, and I know that (in theory, anyway) a text that is aligned with CCRS should help students improve skills tested on the TABE, but I think that it will be helpful for our volunteers in particular to have access to materials aligned to the new TABE. Have any of you found any materials that are accessible to volunteers and also aligned with the new TABE?
Specifically, many of our tutors like the Achieving TABE Success in Mathematics series from McGraw-Hill because it is comprehensive and includes review. I like that this series does a good job of stepping up the difficulty from level to level without assuming that students have perfect recall of everything in the previous level text. I know the series has flaws, but it's very tutor-friendly--it has a decent amount of practice built in and does at least attempt to build application problems into the lessons. It also works very well in one-to-one situations, which is not true of all the materials out there (EMPower and the CUNY math curriculum are favorites of mine but are difficult for volunteers to adapt to individual instruction).
I'd love to find something similar (or better!) that is aligned to the new TABE. I know there are some products just starting to come out, and I'm curious if any of you have used them or looked at them closely enough to give an opinon.
Comments
Hello -
My boss ordered "Scoreboost for TABE" by New Readers Press. I believe this was all he could really find at the moment aligned to the TABE 11/12. It has MANY errors in the math books, in my opinion. The questions seem good overall, though. However, I was appalled by the mistakes I saw going through the booklets. There are several booklets for each level (M & D - I don't think E is/was available yet?). Hopefully the writers/editors will review their books more closely and fix the mistakes that are spread throughout the texts!
Dear Rachel,
My colleague and I wrote did an initial analysis of the math on the 11/12 - TABE 11/12: Concepts in Math. It is just a draft and we are still working on it - eventually it will look similar to the document we created for the math on the TASC (the HSE exam in New York) - What Every Math Teacher Should Know About TASC Math. But even in its current form, the TABE document might be helpful.
In terms of materials, especially for your volunteers, we have been writing these math packets that are designed to be used by adult education students in the classroom and/or who are working through them on their own. We are still in the process of writing them, but they should all be completed by the end of March. Currently there are packets available to explore area & population density, volume & the density of matter, and rigid transformations/congruence & the coordinate grid. We are writing them for students who are preparing for the TASC, but since students have to be able to work on them on their own, we have tried to develop the foundational conceptual understandings needed within each packet. So even if you're volunteers are working with lower level students, I think they would find lots to work with. You can find the packets, and an overview of the project with information on the packets still to come here - the NYSED/CUNY Fast Track GRASP Math Learning Packets.
yours in productive struggle,
Mark Trushkowsky
Hi Mark,
I really like a lot of the CUNY stuff, but I was only familiar with the curriculum that was written for teachers to use in class. These packets are a great find! Keep up the great work! :)
Replying to Mark's post specifically, 1) because I love the sig "Yours, in productive struggle!" and 2) I think the CUNY materials are great (I've pulled from them more than once!).
CrowdED Learning is in the starting stages of building a platform called SkillBlox, a content aggregation tool that will help instructors find great free and open resources (and publisher) resources to the standard level. Here is a sample I've been sharing at presentations of what we are planning on doing. I stood this up just to show the breadth of resources that are out there. We also have publisher alignments (New Readers Press, Paxen Publishing/SteckVaugh, Essential Education, and McGraw-Hill Education). Essentially, all of these alignments will live in a database that will allow instructors to indicate the resources they have or would like to use, the concept they would like to teach, and see a list of resources that align to that concept/standard. You'll be able to filter both by the CCRS or by TABE domain/subskill.
We've already released alignments of all the Khan Academy practice sets to the CCRS (organized by TABE 11/12); next week I'll be posting listings of all of the cK12 middle-school level content sets (aligned to TABE Levels M and D), and later will release the same for Common Core Sheets, but could definitely use some help!!!!! Some of this alignment work is straightforward because of what's already been provided by the content creators, some require a bit more work. Happy to take suggestions as to how we could work collectively to grow a library of aligned resources as a community!!!
Yours, in learning (ugh...."Yours in productive struggle" is so much better!!!!!)
Jeff