Frameworks
March 2, 2008 
I know that the constant concern of all OB teachers is, “How can I use the Frameworks to inform my teaching?” We are told to make weekly lesson plans and tie them in with the Frameworks. So, what I do is plan my lessons to comply with the current OB theme (e.g. Health, Culture, etc.) and the language needs of my students at their level, and then go through the Frameworks to try to pick out the ones that are covered in my plan. Then, I save a copy of the plan in the Lab folder for lesson plans, and print out a hard copy for my use. Some teachers keep hand-written plan books; others print them and place them in a binder. Over a period of time, many different lesson plans are written and stored in one format or the other, and they are very hard for anyone, say another teacher looking for ideas, to access and use them for their own lessons, if appropriate. Individually, I may review my past lesson plans and find some that are appropriate for recycling for this week’s lessons. But, I almost never look through other teachers’ lesson plans to find something I can use because they are not indexed in any way!
I propose the setting up of a lesson plan data base, indexed by the Frameworks Strands, Standards, and Benchmarks for each of the DOE curriculum areas. It should be online and available to all ABE teacher across the Commonwealth. It should be interactive, allowing teachers to access existing lesson plans as well as contribute some of their own. I’m not sure at this point if it should be a web site, or a wiki, or a blog, or something else. I think DOE ACLS should undertake to put together this project.
Maybe something already exists and I’m not aware of it. If so, please let me know. I know there are tons of websites for ESOL teachers and learners, including thousands of lessons, exercises, quizzes, flash games, etc., etc. But, they are not indexed to the MASS DOE Frameworks. In case you might be interested, I’ll add some links to the sidebar of this blog.
Please click on the word ‘comments’ under the heading of this post and give us some feedback, if you are so inclined. It’s easy!
There is a problem having tools to search for particular lessons or activities. I think an index by topic area with frameworks noted might be helpful.
Richard,
I think your template is a good start. I appreciate your work on this.
Dulany suggested that within Bootstrap there is a way to improve accessiblity through short cuts. As a start, I would love to have some help in setting this so that we can access lesson plans and exercises by topic as well as by teacher. We might begin with this month’s ESOL unit since it is not Stand Out based and teachers need to be doing more creative planning.
Nancy
I was thinking that such a major project should be undertaken by ACLS. I envision a website where teachers could access sample lessons for specific Benchmarks, plus submit some of their own for inclusion in the database. I mentioned it to Janet Piracha, the new head of Northeast SABES. She thought it was a good idea and promised to pass it along. I hope it will get serious consideration.