This lovely video shows Elana Feder and her GED class doing a social math activity about Positive and Negative Numbers.

In it you can see the advantages of making learning social in the adult education classroom:

• Learners are active, which wakes them up and gets the brain going.
• Learners know they will have to do something, so they can’t be entirely passive.
• However, they don’t have to do the whole problem (in this case, add or subtract positive and negative numbers using a number line). They can hang back until they see what to do, or until someone helps them.
• It’s easy for the teacher to see who is having trouble by watching learners’ activity style and body language.
• The activity produces lots more dialogue about the problem and the solution than happens when everyone works on their own.
• Finally, (my favourite) learners get to socialize a bit, make a few off-topic comments, and grumble a little about the activity and the teacher, which releases stress for many people, and helps them form bonds with other students.

Elana’s video is part of a great site for finding video of teachers teaching in adult basic education, GED, ESOL, or literacy classes: the Media Library of Teaching Skills for adult learning and literacy (MLoTS) http://mlots.org/.