Talk with Me Toolkits: Digital Resources for Parents in Adult Education Programs
Part 1: Friday, March 14, 2025
1:00 – 2:30 PM (online only via Zoom)
Part 2: Friday, March 21, 2025
1:00 – 2:30 PM (online only via Zoom)
Learn how the Smithsonian Institution’s free, online Talk with Me Toolkits can be used in family literacy and adult education programs. The Toolkits allow access to world-renowned artifacts from the Smithsonian’s digital collection and provide adults with ideas and questions to start conversations and interact with their children. They can also be used to support ELL students’ vocabulary, conversation and listening skills development. This will be a two-part workshop with opportunities for peer interaction and lesson plan development related to the Toolkits.
Workshop Learning Objectives - Participants will learn how to:
- Identify uses for the Smithsonian’s free, online Talk with Me Toolkits (TMTs) in family literacy and adult education programs to foster children’s language growth, parent-child interactions, and adults’ language and literacy skills
- Be able to apply appropriate strategies for implementing the TMTs and building skills
- Develop a lesson plan related to the TMTs.
Presenter:
Dr. Carol Clymer, Co-Director at the Institute for the Study of Adult Literacy/Goodling Institute for Research in Family Literacy at Penn State University. Dr. Clymer has 40+ years of experience implementing and evaluating programs related to workforce development, college access, adult education, and family literacy. She has made numerous presentations and published extensively.
Dr. Beth McLean is Assistant Teaching Professor at Goodling Institute. Dr. McLean has 30 years of experience in the fields of early childhood education, early literacy development, parent engagement, and family literacy. Her work focuses on implementing, evaluating, and providing professional development to early childhood and family literacy programs.
This workshop is free to staff of all Massachusetts non-profit ABE and ESOL Programs.
First Literacy does not receive any state or federal funding and we work very hard to raise 100% of our budget from private sources. Please consider making a donation to First Literacy so we can continue to offer FREE high quality professional development workshops.