Strengthen reading and writing skills, and make sense of math!

TV411 is an exciting video series for adult learners that uses real-life topics to teach pre-GED level basic skills. Created with high production values, this indispensable learning tool is packed with expert advice and proven tips to promote active learning.

Content focuses on parenting, money matters, and health. Subjects include reading comprehension, research how-to's, writing to others, filling out forms, calculating percentages, using fractions, test taking, and more.

For more information, see the descriptions below.

Sports Smarts features Olympic medalist Marian Jones running through the concept of rate; a new strand introduces two math-savvy Calculating Women who take charge of an overweight friend's calorie-counting; a Lifelines segment explores smart ways to manage multiple medications; Straight to the Source asks mind mentor Michael Gelb to demonstrate an innovative technique for improving memory; Michael Beech of TV's Third Watch offers tips for handling an emergency.

In the backseat of a stretch limo, Question Man (Joey Kola) gets financial advice from a millionaire; in Lifelines, an entrepreneurial teenage parent gets help starting up a small lollipop business as he pursues his GED; those math-savvy Calculating Women estimate and calculate their way to an affordable cell phone plan; Straight to the Source asks a federal con-buster to reveal the math behind money scams.



A Lifelines segment presents strategies for reading comprehension on the GED; a new strand, Math Behind the Arts, features TV chef Curtis Aikens explaining ratios and cooking; a Milestones portrait traces how one man left prison and low literacy behind; TV411's revamped Book Club finds out what happens when an entire Midwestern town reads the same novel.

Question Man figures out how to decipher legalese; a Milestones portrait shows how an out-of-work Appalachian coal miner succeeded in changing careers; TV411's math-minded Calculating Women explore strategies for building up retirement savings; Math Behind the Arts features a New York City artist who works with clay and the formula for area when she makes tiles for the subway.



Math mavens Calculating Women offer tips on how to avoid credit card debt; Milestones focuses on a New York man who, despite a reading disability, teaches others how to pass motor vehicle exams; Laverne (Liz Torres) dispenses sound advice about reading over-the-counter medicine labels and following prescriptions; on Sports Smarts, three well-traveled Harlem Globetrotters demonstrate how to read a world map.




A Milestones portrait traces an African immigrant's struggles as she learns to read and raise a family in America; Laverne helps a young parent find ways to childproof her home; on Lifelines, an African-American woman shows how she researches her family roots over the Internet and in the field; and for Book Club, hip-hop star Doug E. Fresh teaches parents and children how to rap and rhyme while they read.



Question Man tackles sentence fragments in a grammatically-correct dream; on Write Now, poet Jimmy Baca conducts a dynamic writing workshop with steelworkers; Laverne helps a co-worker create an outline for a GED essay on disciplining children; Straight to the Source takes us behind the scenes at the popular Bernie Mac show for a peek at a professional brainstorming session.





Newly-minted writer Kathi Wellington enlivens a Milestones segment with her vivid stories of being a female steelworker; Math Behind the Arts visits origami artist June Sakamoto for a lesson on basic geometry; a TV411 Special invites parents and children to interpret art and symbolism at a Philadelphia museum; On Words Behind the Poetry, Broadway performers from Russell Simmon's Def Poetry Jam demonstrate how writing poetry can be hot and cool.




Math Behind the Arts asks a professional drummer and dancers from the Broadway hit, "Forty-Second Street," to demonstrate fractions in action; on a TV411 Special, a female carpenter shows how math and measurement are critical to her work; Sports Smarts taps the expertise of Mets pitcher Al Leiter on the perimeter of a baseball diamond; Laverne explains the concept of percentages and multiple mark-downs to bargain-hunting patrons of the Big Store.




Question Man gets the scoop from a former reporter on how to read between the lines; Straight to the Source looks over the shoulder of political cartoonist Don Margolies as he practices the art of satire; a Sports Smarts segment shows how DC United soccer star Nick Rimando uses computers and the Net while he's on the road; Book Club visits a special class in New York where workers learn about the history of the Depression through Dorothea Lange's celebrated photographs.

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