‘What’s the Story?’ – Galway Adult Basic Education Service by Elaine Clifford at Killarney ABE It all began when I read an article by Alison Jones, Galway ABES, in Literacy Matters – Winter 2015.  My ALO, Mary Concannon, gave me a copy of this article – ‘Making the connection: some ideas for blended learning’. The article was interesting and informative.  I was particularly interested in trying out ‘What’s the Story?’ www.gabes.ie web-based programme in my teaching.  I emailed Alison Jones who provided whatever support I needed to get started on this project. ‘What’s the Story?’ is a web-based programme...

Work together with your learners to make your brainstorms into word clouds Answergarden is a web based app to bring together your learners’ answers into a word cloud – right before your eyes. We are all familiar with the idea of brainstorming, where we pose a question or a topic and jot learners’ answers onto the flipchart, as they come up. AnswerGarden is a new way to do this, online. It puts learners’ answers into a word cloud instantly, as they enter them. If an answer is entered more than once, the text of that answer gets bigger. So...

Teach maths vocabulary Maths has a language – enough to create its own dictionary. Students need this terminology to make progress with maths. Get familiar with maths vocabulary and jargon so that maths words in your topic jump out and beg to be explored with your students. Teach their pronunciation, meaning and spelling. Put them into context and give practice in using them. It may be only one word in the lesson but that’s OK. Many people have a narrow view of what maths language is. Some ideas for putting this into practice. Opposites that we use in everyday...

Mindfulness Mindfulness in Adult Literacy programmes – My Experience, by Elaine Clifford I would like to share my experience of using Mindfulness with some of the groups I work with. I started using Mindfulness after an In-service within Killarney ABE in December 2015 where one of the tutors presented a session about Mindfulness. Her words will always remain with me; ‘We charge our phones but we do not always charge our bodies and minds’. Some of the groups I work with find it challenging to focus and concentrate so I decided to try Mindfulness with them. I discussed with...

Erasmus Plus Trip to Sicily Our recent Erasmus Plus trip to Sicily was certainly well worth the journey. I found the trip to be a very safe place for us all to discuss and share our ideas. As well as expressing our concerns and resolving some of our challenges as a group, this trip gave us all the opportunity to gel more as a group and also to bring back a lot of new and exciting learning materials. We studied many topics including Motivation, Multiculturalism, Leadership and Professional Challenges, and I would like now to share with you some...

National Winners of AONTAS STAR Awards Announced A programme supporting refugees to integrate into Irish society; a horticultural training programme supporting socially disadvantaged adults; and a fashion show supporting women at all stages of addiction recovery were just some of the winners at today’s AONTAS STAR Awards. The STAR Awards are organised by AONTAS, the National Adult Learning Organisation, as part of its annual Adult Learners’ Festival. They recognise outstanding work in adult education and took place today (06.01.2017) in the National Concert Hall, Dublin. Six national winners were announced, including: •SAOL Fashion Show: SAOL Works with women at...

Setting out to create a story or poem can be a daunting task for many adult literacy students. They may not have confidence in their ideas or they may simply find it difficult to find inspiration. Fortunately there is a web application to help. Storybird is a an excellent example of social entrepreneurship offering a unique website aimed at inspiring creative writing.