CURRICULUM

Beginning Curriculum for Adults Learning Math (BeCALM) Remote-Ready Curriculum for Beginning Math Students (GLE 2–4) series

This collection includes teacher and student materials that can be downloaded as Word documents or PDFs. The math content is aimed at ABE level math students (approximately GLE 2–4). While adult students at this math level may have any level of reading, the text was kept to a minimum in the student materials to increase accessibility for students at an ABE reading level or students who are beginning to intermediate English learners.

Download BeCALM Scope and Sequence

Download BeCALM College and Career Readiness Standards Crosswalk

BeCALM Units:

• BeCALM Part 1 Number Sense
• BeCALM Part 2 Operation Sense
• BeCALM Geometry
• BeCALM Multiplication Concepts
• BeCALM Division Concepts
• BeCALM Measurement and Data
• BeCALM Benchmark Fractions

Curriculum for Adults Learning Math (CALM)

For those of you who have been struggling to create your own program-wide curriculum, we have the answer—CALM! CALM is a complete 22-unit curriculum, for students in ABE through ASE. It is based on the College and Career Readiness Standards for Adult Education (CCRSAE) for Math. Visit the CALM website to download samples.

To learn more about CALM itself and effective lesson planning in general, we offer the self-paced online course CALM Introduction throughout the year. See Module 3 (The Scope & Sequence), Module 5 (Assessment), and Module 6 (Using CALM) in particular to learn more about the essential components of lesson planning.

We also offer the CALM Support Series of online workshops.

Other

• Will This Be on the Test?: Inspiration for Tackling Standardized Test Questions Conceptually and Creatively
• Integrating Math into ESOL Units: Math Packets for ESOL Teachers. Ready-to-use lesson plans and student materials for ESOL teachers to incorporate math into language class. 
  • Employment packet
  • Health packet
  • Shopping packet
• Project-Based Learning Plans. Ready-to-use materials for teachers new to PBL.
• Seeing Math in Art. A lesson plan on exploring probability concepts by analyzing art.
• Be Your Own Boss Unit. This 10-lesson unit prepares students to use math and reasoning to make big decisions. It teaches about small business ownership through real stories using authentic student voices. 
• COVID-19/Pandemic Lessons. This page has lesson plans and materials for teaching about the math of pandemics and vaccination, as well as public health resource links.
• Digital Literacy with Spreadsheets: A Math Packet for Adding Spreadsheets to Your Math Teaching Toolbox.
• How Grand Is Your Total? This 11-lesson unit uses puzzles and questions with multiple solution paths to engage students in learning about properties of numbers and operations, the meaning of equality, and the power of place value.
• Integrating TSTM into CALM Math Classes. This brief document provides ideas for teachers using the Curriculum for Adults Learning Math who wish to incorporate Teaching Skills That Matter lessons.
• Culturally and Historically Responsive Education (CHRE) Curriculum Exemplars. Browse curriculum units that incorporate CHRE principles.
• Geometry Ideas for Adult Ed and Family Math. Packets of activities for both adult students and for families to try together!
• Disproportionate Incarceration. This math unit develops graphing and proportional reasoning skills using social justice contexts. Teacher plan and student handouts are included in this packet. 
• Understanding Risk. This sample lesson provides a lesson that can be used in a math unit on probability, using the context of personal health risks and decisions.
• Heat Wave: A math lesson plan exploring climate change. This sample contextualized lesson focuses on using box-and-whisker charts to compare sets of data in the context of exploring climate change. The lesson includes a lesson plan and teacher materials as well as student materials/handouts. A companion ZIP file containing PowerPoint slides for the lesson is also provided.
• Heat Wave (Level A). This sample contextualized lesson is an adaptation of the original Heat Wave lesson above. The context for this lesson is climate and climate change, and it focuses on comparing sets of data, specifically the number of heat wave days in Massachusetts in the years between 1981 and 2010 (as recorded by the Center for Disease Control). 
• Will It Rain Tomorrow? This sample contextualized lesson was designed as part of a science unit on weather, climate, and climate change, with the recognition that an understanding of basic probability and statistics is required to understand the scientific concepts. This lesson could also be used in a math unit on probability to provide a context for students to apply their math skills.
• Building a Curriculum (video). What exactly is a curriculum, and how do we create one for our program? This brief video defines what a curriculum is and how having one in place helps us as teachers.
• Developing Instructional Units: Applying What Students Learn. This document is based on a presentation at the 2015 Fall Curriculum Conference, where practitioners explored two methods of building more contextualized instructional units.
• Sample Instructional Unit: Fractions-Decimals-Percents Benchmarks. This sample unit is designed to build and deepen students’ understanding of common benchmark fractions, decimals, and percents.
• Sample Instructional Unit: Ratio and Proportion. This sample unit for Level B students focuses on an understanding of ratios in order to correctly mix medication.
• Sample Instructional Unit: Area and Perimeter. This sample unit for Level A students focuses on students' understanding of area and perimeter in order to compare apartments.