ABE: Adult Basic Education

Source: TED Ed Overcoming obstacles - Steven Claunch (License: CC0/Public Domain)

TED-Ed is an online library of lessons as extensions of the inspirational TED videos. There are two types of lessons: those already created lessons and lessons you can create from any educational video on YouTube.

For this activity, students watch a video titled Overcoming Obstacles (above). They then write a summary of what they watched and how to apply it in their own lives.

Source: The Free Dictionary (License: CC0/Public Domain)

Using this site, students will practice vocabulary by learning and using the word of the day, playing the spelling bee, and looking up two idioms and one acronym. Students can customize their page to include as many features as they like. Other features included in the side menu include a thesaurus, medical legal and financial dictionaries, acronyms, idioms, and encyclopedias.

This Web site is rich in possibilities. Beyond vocabulary practice the site offers a variety of dictionaries in various languages (Spanish, German, French, Italian, Arabic, Chinese, Polish, Portuguese, Dutch, Norwegian, Greek, Russian and Turkish). There are games to play: Hangman, Spelling Bee, Words Within Words, Matching. There are also great sources of information: Article of the Day; In the News; This Day in History; Today's Holiday; Today's Birthday; and Quotation of the Day.

Protected by Copyright (c) [i.e. screenshot])

The “Psych Files” provides information about human behavior and is of special interest to anyone studying psychology. In this activity, students listen to a podcast by Michael Britt titled “5 Reasons Why You’re Addicted to Your Phone and What To Do About It” in which he gives reasons drawn from psychological theories on how we learn. Students are then asked to share their thoughts about cell phone usage and what rules they would implement to help control their teenager’s use.