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The
Best Online Videos Showing ESL/EFL Teachers In The Classroom
(http://tinyurl.com/ce38jn)
The
Best Online “Chatbots” For Practicing English
(http://tinyurl.com/cplv9t)
The
Best Sites To Learn About The California Wildfires
(http://tinyurl.com/pl7aje)
The
Best “I Spy” (Hidden Object) Games For Vocabulary Development
(http://tinyurl.com/r47jcr)
The
Best Sites For Learning About New York City
(http://tinyurl.com/r6246j)
The
Best Sites To Learn About The Hubble Telescope
( http://tinyurl.com/qmkmdp)
The
Best “Week In Review” Sites For English Language Learners
(http://tinyurl.com/prt29k)
The
Best Ways For Students To Create Their Own Online Art Collections
( http://tinyurl.com/q6uhlc)
My "Verdict" On Twitter
(http://tinyurl.com/o4hx9q)
"The “Most Popular” Blogs That Might Also Useful To
Educators"
http://tinyurl.com/qvpcjn
The Best Ways To Make Awards & Certificates
Online
http://tinyurl.com/r2dur5
LARRY FERLAZZO’S WEBSITE
NEWSLETTER
SPECIAL
JUNE, 2009 EDITION – PART ONE
Since
school is nearing the end of the year for many of us, I thought I’d send a short
June edition out early so you’d have these resources to use (especially “The
Best…” list on the Swine Flu).
Remember,
you can subscribe to receive daily email updates by using this
form:
http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=168021
You
can also see this newsletter and all past newsletters by going
here:
http://larryferlazzo.com/Topten.html
Here
are some recent “The Best…” lists:
The Best Sites Sites For Discussing The Morality of
Torture
(http://tinyurl.com/dyx249)
The Best Resources For Learning About World Malaria Day
(http://tinyurl.com/d84sdh)
The Best Online Examples of My Students’ Work
(http://tinyurl.com/d82b98)
The Best Sites For Learning About
The Swine Flu Outbreak
(http://tinyurl.com/derrsu)
The Best Places To Find New Educational Websites
(http://tinyurl.com/d7322c)
The Best Places To Read & Write “Choose Your Own Adventure”
Stories
(http://tinyurl.com/c4npcb)
The Best Websites For Learning About Memorial Day
(http://tinyurl.com/c3msd9)
Part Thirty-Five Of The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily &
Quickly
(http://tinyurl.com/db3vlo)
What Do You Do To Keep Students (And You!) Focused Near The End Of The
Year?
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2009/04/23/what-do-you-do-to-keep-students-you-focused-near-the-end-of-the-school-year/)
Larry Ferlazzo’s Website
Newsletter
May,
2009 (Part
Two)
As
promised, here are sites I’ve written about in April that I think might be
particularly useful to educators.
Also,
I’ve written a couple of more “The Best…” lists since I emailed “Part One,” and
have included direct links to those lengthy posts.
The
Best Sites For Learning About The Holocaust
(http://tinyurl.com/crnyjb)
Part
Thirty-Four Of The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily &
Quickly
(http://tinyurl.com/ctp6mv)
What
Do You Do When You’re Having A Bad Day At School?
(http://tinyurl.com/d73uow)
I’ve
posted several times about Tikatok (http://www.tikatok.com/) and Tar Heel Reader,( http://tarheelreader.org/) but for some reasons didn’t think until
now of including them in The Best Places Where Students Can Write For An “Authentic
Audience” list. It’s a natural fit, and I’ve just
added them to that list. (By the way, both are on The Best Places Where Students Can Write Online list).
Titatok a
site that is a real find for English Language Learners (and lots of other
students). Users can create online books that they write and illustrate (they
can also use lots of images available on the site). It has a number of features
that really make it stand-out. You can make a book from scratch, or you can use
one of their many story frames that contain “prompts” to help the story-writer
along. In addition, you can invite others to collaborate online with you to
develop the book.
Once the
book is done you can email the link to a friend, teacher, or yourself for
posting on a blog, website, or online journal and the site is available
on Titatok for others to read. You can create the online version for free, but
have to pay if you want them to print a hard-copy
version.
Tar Heel Reader has two great features: 1) It has
1,000 simple books with audio support for the text immediately accessible to
Beginning English Language Learners and 2) It makes it as simple as you can get
for students to create their own “talking” books using images from
Flickr.
Anybody
can read the books on the site. However, in order to have your students
create talking books using their “easy as pie” (and free) process, you need to
register and have to have a code. They’re rightfully concerned about
publishing the code because of spammers. Gary Bishop from the site,
though, is happy to provide it to teachers. Just write him at gb@cs.unc.edu and he’ll send it to
you.
Wallwisher
Is A Winner — Big Time!
Wallwisher (http://www.wallwisher.com/) lets you, with very, very
minimal registration, create a “wall” where you can place virtual sticky-notes.
You can allow others to also place notes on the board, or keep it so that only
you can do so (which is what I would recommend for students). The sticky-notes
can include images you grab off the web, videos, or websites, and you can add
text to them (you can also just include text without adding anything else). Each
sticky has a 160 character limit for text.
Wallwisher
appears to me to be one of the most useful Web 2.0 sites I’ve found in awhile.
It can be a great place for students to use higher-order thinking by creating
categories of images (and descriptions) or short texts they copy and paste (or
write themselves). It can also be used as a site for social bookmarking of
websites if you just right-click the website you put inside the sticky-note and
then click on “open in a new window.”
I’ve
explained in The
Best Social Bookmarking Applications For English Language Learners & Other
Students more details on how a site like Wallwisher can be used by English
Language Learners for categorization and website bookmarking applications, and
I’d encourage you to take a look. The other sites listed there can
be used for similar purposes, but Wallwisher appears to be the easiest and most
user friendly of the bunch.
I
do have to share one caveat — the first couple of times I tried it I couldn’t
get the sticky-notes to appear. However, it worked everytime
afterwards. It’s a new site, so it’s possible there are just a few
glitches they’re still working out.
“Come
On, Our Schools Aren’t That Bad…”
Come
On, Our Schools Aren’t That Bad…(
http://inpractice.edublogs.org/2009/04/12/come-on-our-schools-arent-that-bad/)
is the title of my newest post in
our group blog, “In Practice.” It’s written by several of us who teach in
low-income communities.
The
post is about some public reaction to Education Secretary Duncan’s recent speech
where he said U.S. students should spend more time in
school
I Really Like
“Next Stop” For Student Writing
Next Stop (http://www.nextstop.com/) is a new travel
recommendation site — people write about places they like near where they live
or places they have visited.
I’ve already included other travel sites where people can
write similar reviews in The Best Places Where Students Can Write For An “Authentic
Audience”.
However, Next Stop has — by far — the easiest writing
process among them and, plus, they make it very simple to grab an image off the
Web to include in the review. On top of all that, users can actually
create their own online guides comprised of written reviews. Individual
students, or groups of students, can easily create what could, in effect, be an
online portfolio.
I’ve obviously added Next Stop to that “The Best…”
list.
Note Pub Might Work Great For Publishing Student
Work
I’m going to teach Beginning English Language Learners
during the summer, and I’ve been trying to figure out which of the tools I have
listed on Part Two Of The Best Sites For Students To Easily Create
& Display Online Projects list would be the most simple for them to
display their work — urls or embeds from Part Thirty-Three Of The Best Ways To Create Online Content
Easily & Quickly and its previous editions, copy and pasting images and
writing about them, etc.
I had seen Note Pub (http://notepub.com/) before, but ignored it because it
required downloading an application to upload photos. But a post in Technology Tidbits prompted me to take another
look.
I liked what I found after spending a little more time on
the site.
It’s extremely easy to register and, it’s very easy to
write text. Plus, like Posterous, you can just copy and past images off
the web. But it seems even easier than Posterous. Of course, it won’t look as
pretty and it’s not really in a blog format. But I think if you’re working with
students who have very little technology experience, and you just want them to
have an easy place where they can paste their work (and where other students can
view it, too, after the links to all student sites are posted on a teacher
page), Note Pub might just be the web application to use. Obviously, they won’t
be able to post comments, but that can all happen orally.
I’m going to experiment with it a bit further, and I am
going to add it to The Best list I mentioned at the beginning of this post.
Fifty years ago this week, NASA introduced the first
American astronauts. To recognize the event, NASA has created an unusual
interactive feature.
The 50th Anniversary Of The Mercury 7 Press
Announcement (http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/50th_announcement/)
has two elements.
One just shows video of the press conference, and it also
includes closed-captioning. That obviously helps English Language Learners, but
not nearly as much as the other element.
It also has what it calls an Interactive Press Conference.
It, too, has closed captioning, but instead of just listening to people speak,
users can click on a menu of the questions asked and just listen to those
responses instead of having to listen to the whole thing.
This second feature makes it much more accessible to ELL’s
— both for just listening and for other exercises — like having to answer a
series of questions developed by an instructor or other students.
Both features are accessed by the main link.
I’m adding it to the Planets and Space section of my website.
Mindopia For Career Exploration
Mindopia (http://www.mindopia.com/) is the newest addition to The Best Websites For Students Exploring Jobs and
Careers.
After clicking on a career you might be interested in,
you’re led to a page of simple interviews with people working in that
profession, along with other resources (including salary projections).
I particularly like that the videos are divided into
separate sections answering specific questions, which makes it a lot easier for
English Language Learners to follow. In addition to that, you can see the
transcript of the interview right below the video. Ordinarily, I don’t
think video transcripts are that helpful to ELL’s who also need the visual clues
being shown — it’s hard to look at both (which is why closed captioning is so
much better). However, these interviews are just “talking heads,” so
students really don’t need to watch the videos and, instead, can just listen to
the audio as they follow along on the transcript.
The site is just beginning, so it doesn’t have a huge list
of careers, but they promise to be adding more.
Even though I haven’t gotten a chance to try it yet, PodOmatic (http://www.podomatic.com/) looks like an
extraordinarily easy way to create a podcast. Sign-up and your class has your
own channel — all you need is a computer microphone.
I’m adding it to The Best Sites To Practice Speaking English.
I’m also adding it to The Best Places Where Students Can Create Online
Learning/Teaching Objects For An “Authentic Audience”.
You might also want to check-out the Podcasting Resources section of my website.
I’ve never had my students actually try podcasting, though
it’s in the cards for summer school. If you have more experience with it, and
have a different opinion about PodOmatic, please let me know.
The new LIFE
site (http://www.life.com/) shares
millions of photos from the LIFE Magazine archives and Getty Images.
What’s great about this new site is that, unlike Google’s previous hosting of many of the same
photos (which are just listed by decades), LIFE’s site shows them in
thematic slideshows with accessible captions. Plus, they include daily updates
of slideshows about current events. You can also subscribe to a weekly
email newsletter that gives you updates on new content.
Both the historical and current slideshows are fabulous.
I’m adding the site to The Best Online Slideshows About Current Events, The Best news/current events websites for English Language
Learners , and probably to a bunch of other “The Best..”
lists, too.
Word Ahead (http://www.wordahead.com/) is one of the best
vocabulary-learning sites I’ve seen for advanced English Language Learners and
mainstream students.
It uses SAT words, and shows the word and representative
image, plus provides audio support for text showing the word being used in
context.
I’ll be adding it to the SAT
Preparation section on my website.
I could have sworn I had posted about the extraordinary The Art of Storytelling (http://www.artofstorytelling.org/)
site last year, but I was searching through the blog and couldn’t find it.
So I’m writing about it today — better late than never!
The Art of Storytelling is a site from the Delaware Art
Museum that allows you pick a painting, write a short story about it, record it
with your computer microphone, and email the url address for posting on a
student website or blog. It’s extraordinarily simple, and extraordinarily
accessible to any level of English Language Learner. No registration is
required.
Not only will I be adding it to a future Part Thirty-Three Of The Best Ways To Create Online Content
Easily & Quickly list, but I’m also adding it to The Best Sites To Practice Speaking English.
The Best
Resources For Teaching & Learning About World Water Day (
(http://tinyurl.com/d85qmn)
The Best Sites To Learn About “Earth Hour”
(http://tinyurl.com/cfqp2h)
The Best
Sites For Learning About Yosemite & Other U.S. National
Parks
(http://tinyurl.com/d7qye4)
The Best
Sites To Learn About North Dakota Flooding
(http://tinyurl.com/chmnpu)
The Best
Places Where Students Can Write For An “Authentic Audience”
(http://tinyurl.com/dlfbzj)
Part
Thirty-Three Of The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily &
Quickly
(http://tinyurl.com/cqv7ba)
The Best Sites For
Learning About Planets & Space
(http://tinyurl.com/caph7a)
The Best
Places Where Students Can Create Online Learning/Teaching Objects For An
“Authentic Audience”
( http://digg.com/u1CL9)
The Best Sites To Learn
About The Earthquake In Italy
( http://tinyurl.com/cuqkeb)
The Best
Sources For Ideas On How To Use Technology With English Language
Learners
(http://tinyurl.com/c754jq)
The Best Sites For
Panoramas
(http://tinyurl.com/cneh34)
The Best Sites For
Learning About Volcanoes & Mount Redoubt
(http://tinyurl.com/d6fn2u)
The Best Sites For Teaching & Learning About Cinco de
Mayo
(http://tinyurl.com/crwe7t )
The Best Websites For
Learning About Modern & Historical Pirates
(http://tinyurl.com/ctumtv)
The Best Sites To Teach
ELL’s About Libraries
(http://tinyurl.com/d36t7b)
The Best Sites For
Learning About Mother’s Day
(http://tinyurl.com/dcjn3v)
The Best Digital
Storytelling Resources
(http://tinyurl.com/d3snb7)
The Best Sites For
Learning About The Afghanistan War
(http://tinyurl.com/cshqdl)
The Best Sites To Learn About Mexico's Drug
War
(http://tinyurl.com/dhhbvk)
The Best
Sites For Learning Which Consumers Electronics To Buy
(http://tinyurl.com/cfuded)
The Best Places To Find
Theatrical Movies On Science, Math & History
(http://tinyurl.com/cca5pq)
The Best Tools To Help
Develop Global Media Literacy
(http://tinyurl.com/df8eyj)
The Best Sites For K-12
Intermediate English Language Learners
(http://tinyurl.com/dkl7jm)
The Best Sites To Learn
About The Hindu Festival of Holi
(http://tinyurl.com/c3bnqr)
The Best “Cause-Related”
Online Learning Games
(http://tinyurl.com/bhfqlg)
The Best Collections Of
Web 2.0 Tools For Education
(http://tinyurl.com/cgv285)
The Best Resources For
Researching & Writing Biographies
(http://tinyurl.com/c5ezky)
The Best Places For
Students To Write Their Resumes
(http://tinyurl.com/c3ps6s)
The Best Resources For
Learning How To Write Response To Literature Essays
(http://tinyurl.com/cfysug)
The Best
Sites To Learn About The Tongan Volcano & Earthquake
(http://tinyurl.com/c3vaom)
LARRY FERLAZZO’S WEBSITE NEWSLETTER
APRIL, 2009
Here are the latest “The Best…” lists, along with a few
other selected links.
Just as a reminder, you can receive posts about the 200 new
sites added to the website each month by subscribing to my blog for free at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=168021
The Best Places To Create (And Find) Internet Scavenger
Hunts & Webquests
(http://tinyurl.com/dkz73v)
The Best Sites For
Free ESL/EFL Hand-Outs & Worksheets
(http://tinyurl.com/chtwyy)
The Best Non-Web Resources, Online Tools, & Websites I
Use Most Often With My Students
(http://tinyurl.com/dljshq)
The Best Sites To
Learn About Mardi Gras & Carnivals
(http://tinyurl.com/cd8pu4)
The Best Tools To Make Online Flashcards
(http://tinyurl.com/daaejq)
The Bests Places To Find Good Education Blogs
(http://tinyurl.com/d7gl3w)
Have You Ever Taught A Class That “Got Out Of
Control”?
(http://tinyurl.com/alc2ql)
Part Thirty-One Of
The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly
(http://tinyurl.com/bf72dc)
The Best Sites For Learning About Women's History
(http://tinyurl.com/cp6se7)
The Best Sites For Learning About Easter & Passover(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2009/03/08/the-best-sites-for-learning-about-easter-and-passover/)
(http://tinyurl.com/ameqll)
The Best Sites For Learning About Cesar Chavez
(http://tinyurl.com/aezvx9)
The Best Online Slideshows About Current Events
(http://tinyurl.com/bw6csp)
The Best Online Science, Nature, & History
Slideshows
(http://tinyurl.com/d892uk)
The Best Sites To Learn About Diego Rivera
(http://tinyurl.com/anrd54)
The Best Articles That I’ve Written
(http://tinyurl.com/ajs36g)
Part Thirty-Two Of The Best Ways To Create Online Content
Easily & Quickly
(http://tinyurl.com/d2a7bh)
The Best Places To Find Theatrical Movies On Science, Math
& History
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2009/03/11/the-best-places-to-find-theatrical-movies-on-science-math-history/)
The Best Tools To Help Develop
Global Media Literacy
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2009/03/12/the-best-tools-to-help-learn-global-media-literacy/)
The Best Sites For K-12 Intermediate English Language
Learners
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2009/03/14/the-best-sites-for-k-12-intermediate-english-language-learners/)
Updated Multilingual Glossary Of Academic English
Vocabulary
In The Best Websites For Developing Academic English Skills
& Vocabulary, I shared a document prepared by Carolyn Zierenberg, a talented teacher at our school.
It was a simple multilingual (English/Spanish/Hmong) glossary of academic
vocabulary. She had given me permission to share it on this blog and
website.
The Glossary of Commonly Used English Academic Vocabulary
took an incredible amount of work to complete, and now it’s been updated.
Here’s the most recent version a Glossary Of Commonly Used English Academic Vocabulary —
English/Spanish/Hmong. (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/files/2009/03/glossary-of-commonly-used-english-academic-vocabulary1.doc)
I’ve also added it to “The Best…” list I mentioned
earlier.
Of course, a list like this is only effective as a
supplement and follow-up to multiple classroom activities where these words are
used in a meaningful way in context.
The New York Times has published the Immigration Explorer (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/03/10/us/20090310-immigration-explorer.html?exampleSessionId=1236775999591&exampleUserLabel=nytimes) It shows — by geography and time period — where immigrants from various countries have settled in the United States over the past 130 years.
I haven’t seen anything that rivals it.
My only disappointment is that, though it includes immigrants from Vietnam, it doesn’t have specific categories for others from different parts of Southeast Asia.
Nevertheless, it will be a very useful resource. I’ll be placing a link to it on my United States History webpage.
MapBuzz (http://www.mapbuzz.com/) is the newest addition to The Best Map-Making Sites On The Web.
As I describe on that list, using an easy mapmaking site like MapBuzz can be an excellent learning activity for English Language Learners and all students. “Markers” or “push-pins” can indicate with text and images places visited and routes taken on a field trip; battles fought in a war; key milestones in the life of a student or a famous figure; highlighting key natural disasters around the world — and these are just a few examples.
MapBuzz lets your draw lines, insert images, write text — all in a very accessible way.
The Birmingham Grid For Learning has a very accessible test (http://www.bgfl.org/bgfl/custom/resources_ftp/client_ftp/ks3/ict/multiple_int/questions/choose_lang.cfm) students can take to get an idea of their multiple intelligence profile — in other words, which learning styles tend to work best for them. It’s simple, audio support is provided for the text, and the results are displayed attractively.
With the posting of today’s “The Best…” list, the total number of the lists published has now reached two hundred!
Just a reminder that you can access all of them in a few ways:
“My Best Of Series” (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/about/my-best-of-series/) has all of them divided by categories (Social Studies, Web 2.0, etc.)
Websites Of The Year has them listed chronologically.
You can also find links to both of these compilations on the sidebar of my blog.
I also about twenty of them on a page on my website, The Best Websites. The version listed there is specifically designed to be a little more accessible to to students.
The Hoover Institution’s “Education Next” debates the question “Should the United States have a national curriculum?” in its most recent issue. (http://www.hoover.org/publications/ednext/E_Pluribus_Unum.html)
Deborah Meier explains the “no” position very articulately.
Regular readers know that I’m a fan of Marvin Marshall and his writings on positive classroom management strategies.
He included this story in a post today. It’s worth visiting his blog to see the entire post, but here’s a story I loved:
There’s an old story of a young lady who was taken to dinner one evening by William Gladstone and then the following evening by Benjamin Disraeli, both eminent British statesmen in the late nineteenth century.
“When I left the dining room after sitting next to Mr. Gladstone, I thought he was the cleverest man in England,” she said. “But after sitting next to Mr. Disraeli, I thought I was the cleverest woman in England.”
BITS Interactive Resources (http://esl-bits.net/main2.htm) has nineteen “sets” of five different excellent reading activities focusing on “signs, details, matching, gist, and gap.” It’s on The Best Websites For Intermediate Readers, but the site either went off-line and/or changed its url address several months ago.
Today — by chance — I located it again. It’s a definite winner.
I’ve placed the link on my website in a few places, including under Favorite Sites.
I’ve included resources from the Enchanted Learning site in many of my “The Best…” lists. Many of their free materials are very accessible to English Language Learners.
Today I discovered that they have quite a collection of simple clozes (fill-in-the-gap) about nonfiction topics (http://www.enchantedlearning.com/cloze/o.shtml) They can’t be completed online at their site, but they can be printed-out or, as I do in my U.S. History class, have students copy and past them onto their blog.
To be honest, I wouldn’t say the clozes are as strategic in their location of “gaps” as I would like, but not many clozes I’ve found on the Web are, either. But they are decent materials that I don’t have to make, provide good vocabulary/reading reinforcement, and offer new expository information.
I don’t know if you can reasonably ask for more than that…
LARRY FERLAZZO’S
WEBSITE NEWSLETTER
March, 2009
Just two quick reminders:
1)
You can receive posts about the 200 new sites added to the
website each month by subscribing to my blog for free at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=168021
2)
If you no longer want to receive this newsletter, just
reply to this email and write “Unsubscribe” either in the subject line or in the
body of the email.
Here are links to the latest “The Best…” lists:
The Best Sites For Learning About St. Patrick’s Day (and
April Fool’s Day)
(http://tinyurl.com/cdxdw6)
The Best Educational Web Resources Worth Paying
For…
(http://tinyurl.com/bof6pr)
The Best Sites To Learn About The Recession
(http://tinyurl.com/c7jnb4)
The Best Online Games Students Can Play In Private Virtual
“Rooms”
(http://tinyurl.com/aqcdhu)
Not “The Best,” But “A List” Of Mindmapping, Flow Chart
Tools, & Graphic Organizers
The Best Places To Buy ESL/EFL Books. Software &
Multimedia
The Best Sites To Learn About The Fires In
Australia
The Best Sites For Learning About The Hudson River Plane
Crash
The Best Sites To
Learn About San Francisco
The Best Places To Find Free (And Good) Lesson Plans On The
Internet
(http://tinyurl.com/ahlapy)
Not “The Best,” But “A List” Of Search Engines For Social
Media
(http://tinyurl.com/debsg2)
The Best Sites For ELL’s To Learn About The Dangers Of
Smoking
(http://tinyurl.com/ah4u4j)
The Best Sites Where ELL’s Can Learn About The Super
Bowl
(http://tinyurl.com/c7ou2p)
Part Thirty Of The Best Ways To Create Online Content
Easily & Quickly
(http://tinyurl.com/b9gvop)
The Best Resources For Chinese New Year
(http://tinyurl.com/b6fls3)
The Best Resources For Groundhog Day
(http://tinyurl.com/de6cv8)
And here are a few new selected websites:
Miniature Earth (http://www.miniature-earth.com/me_english.htm) is a
pretty amazing site. It’s slideshow that uses statistics to reduce the world to
100 inhabitants, and shows how that plays out demographically, who uses what
resources, etc. They periodically update the statistics.
I’ve placed the link on my website under Towards The Twenty-First Century.
Awesome Stories (http://www.awesomestories.com/) has made it on to many of my “The Best…” lists over the past year.
It has an incredibly impressive collection of materials — on just about any topic imaginable — that are very accessible to English Language Learners. Over past few months they’ve even added audio support to much of their text resources, which made them even more accessible.
They just completely revamped the site, and now have hundreds of resources hosted by the site itself, slideshows, a much better internal search engine, and a bunch of other features.
You do have to register to use the site, but it’s free and easy to do so. You can register on behalf of an entire school, or on an individual basis.
It has over 2400 grammar activities, and teachers can create a free account so that they can track student progress.
Favthumbs (http://favthumbs.com/) provides thumbnail images (and links) of bookmarks saved on your del.icio.us account.
Thumbnail images are always useful to English Language Learners, but Favthumbs is unlikely to be used by students because, in order to use it, they have to use del.icio.us, and there are a number of better bookmarking sites for ELL’s that don’t require any download (see The Best Social Bookmarking Applications For English Language Learners & Other Students)
However, Favthumbs might just be the easiest way for a teacher to create an accessible webpage for students doing an Internet “scavenger hunt” or Webquest, or if they just want their students to focus on a few specific webpages for an assignment. All a teacher has to do is create a tag on their del.icio.us account and give students this url address — favthumbs.com/ (your del.icio.us username)/ (the tag you gave the links). Students will see thumbnail images and links to the sites you’ve bookmarked.
Themes (http://lunarr.com/themes/) is a nifty application that has apparently been around for a year, but I just recently learned about it. I’m immediately adding it to The Best Places Where Students Can Write Online, Part Two Of The Best Sites For Students To Easily Create & Display Online Projects and The Best Social Bookmarking Applications For English Language Learners & Other Students.
It allows you to basically create individual webpages (theoretically based on “themes”) and very easily add maps, images, documents, text, and even RSS feeds.
It’s not perfect, since it doesn’t have an embed option, and it doesn’t have a “drag-and-drop” functionality for images and webpages that some of the other sites on the best Bookmarking list have, but its ease of use makes it very attractive. Students could certainly use it to create categories of images or texts, for example, which is something I explain a bit more in the best bookmarking sites list.
The History Channel has a very nicely-designed Citizenship Quiz (http://www.history.com/genericContent.do?id=57117) that lets people try their hand at answering the 96 questions that the Immigration Service draws from for the U.S. Citizenship exam.
Actually, I should say that these are the questions they used draw from, since a new test was recently instituted and only includes some of these old questions.
However, for my purposes the test is still good. I’m using the History channel test site as a small part of the pre-and-post assessments in my two U.S. History classes this year. This is the project I’ve mentioned before where I’m teaching one class primarily using technology and the other the way I would ordinarily teach it (though I would say that was was very engaging). I’m using a variety of assessments to compare results from the two, including projects demonstrating higher-order thinking skills, self-assessments, and recall of facts.
I’ve placed a link to the test on my website under Citizenship.
Here’s another online civics
quiz that’s considerably harder
designed by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.
I had tried out an application called Simply Box (http://www.simplybox.com/) awhile ago, but once I realized that I would have to install a toolbar to use it, I didn’t explore it any further. Any kind of installation makes it problematic for school use.
Today, though, I saw it bookmarked on Langwitches’ links, and decided to take another look. I’m glad I did.
I need to experiment with it a bit more, but Simply Box might be one of the very applications out there that I think is useful to download for at least my personal use. It seems to me that it will be a great tool for research on the web.
It’s basically a bookmarking program. The key difference, however, between Simply Box and everything else out there is that you can very, very easily just draw a line around anything you see on the web and save it in a virtual “box.”
Here’s a link to a very good video explaining how to use it. It’s actually understandable, which is more than I can say about a lot of screencasts that sites have about how to use their applications.
I’d be interested in hearing from other people if they think this tool can be as helpful as I think it can be, or if I’m overlooking something.
By the way, you might also be interested in The Best Social Bookmarking Applications For English Language Learners & Other Students.
I recently learned about the Kid Rex search engine (http://www.kidrex.org/) from the Alt Search Engines blog. It’s supposed to be a “kid-friendly” search engine.
I was actually pretty impressed when I tested it out on a few queries (Abraham Lincoln, Roman Gladiator). The results that it delivered were accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners.
The results are text-only, so it’s not as good as some of the search engines on The Best Search Engines For ESL/EFL Learners — 2008 list that provide thumbnail images, but its selective listing does make it a decent option for students.
I’ve placed the link on my website under Search Engines.
USA Today has a very good collection of interactive graphics on weather and climate topics.( http://www.usatoday.com/weather/graphics/resources/2009-01-28-weather-interactive-graphics-index_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip)
This one on global warming is just one example.
I’ve placed the entire collection on the Science page of my website, but I’m also placing some direct links under Natural Disasters.
Larry Ferlazzo’s Website Newsletter
February, 2009
Here are the latest highlights
from my blog and website:
The Best Sites For
Learning About The Presidential Inauguration
The Best Sites To Learn About U.S. Presidents
(http://tinyurl.com/8gasoz)
The Best Sites To Teach About African-American
History
(http://tinyurl.com/a7u39d)
Not “The Best,” But “A List” Of Music Sites
(http://tinyurl.com/96lemw)
The Best Sites For News & History Videos That Won’t Be
Blocked By Content Filter (At Least, Not By Ours!)
(http://tinyurl.com/8jfrx3)
The Best Collections Of Educational Links
( http://tinyurl.com/8v6uw5)
The Best Sites
That Use Movie Trailers To Teach English
(http://tinyurl.com/a55e3b)
The Best Sites To Learn About Street Gangs
(http://tinyurl.com/9e6jt3)
The Best Resources
About President’s Day
(http://tinyurl.com/83ojh9)
The Best Sites About Valentine's
Day
(http://tinyurl.com/7hnbh5)
All 160 plus "The Best..." lists can be found here
(categorized by topic):
(http://tinyurl.com/9xfnbm)
Screentoaster Is Now Open To The Public
I’ve posted in the past about how the ability to make easy
screencasts — with audio– could be an excellent learning opportunity for
English Language Learners (you might want to take a look at that post). The
online tool that has been available, Screencast-O-Matic, works okay for this purpose, but
seems a little too complicated.
There’s now a similar tool called Screentoaster (http://www.screentoaster.com/) that couldn’t be more
simple to use, and they’ve just added both the ability to record audio and add
subtitles. All you do after you log-in is click on a button, open up the window
on your screen that you want to record, and it starts recording your
screen. After that’s been recorded, you can provide audio or
subtitles. And it’s free.
I’ve posted about Screentoaster in the past, but it just
opened to the public this week.
I’ve placed it on The Best Sites To
Practice Speaking English.
Shahi (http://blachan.com/shahi/) is a dictionary that combines simple definitions with quite a few Flickr photos. The combination of the two makes it pretty accessible to English Language Learners.
I’m placing the link on my website under Dictionaries.
Mel Zoo (http://www.melzoo.com/en_US/search) is the newest addition to The Best Search Engines For ESL/EFL Learners — 2008 and is definitely near the top of the list. It may not have all the features of some of the other search engines I’ve ranked at the top, but its simplicity makes it very attractive for English Language Learners.
After you type in your query at Mel Zoo, you see what appears to be — more or less — the typical kind of text results you’d find in other search engines. The key advantage the engine has — for both ELL’s and others — is that as you move the cursor down the text listing on the left side, the website itself is shown on the right side.
This capability makes it very accessible to English Language Learners.
You can also find this link, and others, on my website under Search Engines.
Thanks, once again, to Alt Search Engines for the tip.
I’ve just learned about Custom Guides . (http://www.customguide.com/quick_references.htm)
These are simple, double-sided “cheat sheets” that can be printed out for many software applications. I really liked the ones I checked-out, though Kelly thought the ones on Macs were a bit outdated. I can’t comment, though, since I’m a PC-guy.
I’m adding Custom Guides to The Best Places To Learn Computer Basics & How To Fix Tech Problems list.
Pixcetra (http://www.pixcetera.com/) has a huge amount of photos and slideshows about current news and other topics. It appears to be connected to AOL, but, to tell you the truth, I’m just not sure who’s started it. But their images are great and the captions are accessible to English Language Learners.
For lack of a better place, I’ve put the link on my website under Multimedia Resources From News Outlets.
Pete’s PowerPoint Station (http://www.pppst.com/index.html) is a treasure trove of freely available PowerPoint presentations on all subjects, and most of them appear very accessible to English Language Learners.
I’m particularly excited about the ones on United States History. Most of the other sites I’ve found that have history PowerPoints are much more advanced, and not very accessible.
I’m adding this site to The Best Websites For Teaching & Learning About U.S. History.
In fact, I’m also
adding it to The Best Websites For
Teaching & Learning About World History.
I just learned about FinAid (http://www.finaid.org/) through an article in the Wall Street Journal. It appears to be one of the most complete, if not the most complete, resource on the web for college financial assistance.
It could be accessible to advanced Intermediate English Language Learners with guided assistance from a teacher, but even then it would be difficult. However, it’s such a great resource that I’m still going to add it to The Best Sites For Encouraging ELL’s To Attend College.
Capitol Words.( http://www.capitolwords.org/) uses the Congressional Record to develop ongoing “word clouds” for each member of Congress, and can show clouds representing each state,too.
For English Language Learners, it would be a great real-world exercise in vocabulary development combined with civics.
I’ve placed the link on my website under Citizenship.
The Best Applications For
Annotating Websites
(http://tinyurl.com/7afu2x)
The Best Ways To Access
Educational YouTube Videos At School
(http://tinyurl.com/7b6kd7)
The Best Websites For
Learning About Martin Luther King
(http://tinyurl.com/9kjytz)
Part Twenty-Eight Of The
Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly
(http://tinyurl.com/8b85xw)
The Best Posts Of 2008
(http://tinyurl.com/a69vlj)
The Best Sites For Learning About The Presidential
Inauguration
(http://tinyurl.com/7fx4zk)
The Best Temporary Email Address Sites For Students (Or
Anyone)
(http://tinyurl.com/7qvyeh)
The Best Year-End Collections Of Images —
2008
(http://tinyurl.com/a8kz7y)
The Best Sources For Advice On Student
Blogging
(http://tinyurl.com/a3a2fo)
The Best Posts From Other Blogs That Made Me “Think” In
2008
(http://tinyurl.com/axye8v)
The “Best” Resources For Learning About The
Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
(http://tinyurl.com/7us25o)
The Best “Year-In-Review” Features That Aren’t Photo
Collections 2008
(http://tinyurl.com/9nldm8)
The Best Education-Related Books Visitors To This Blog Read
In 2008
(http://tinyurl.com/8ax8pd)
Larry
Ferlazzo’s Website Update
Holidays, 2008 Edition
I’m sending out this shortened newsletter so that
subscribers can get some holiday resources I’ve written about in time to use
them before the Winter Break.
Here are links to some recent “The Best…” lists:
The Best Places To Learn About Christmas, Hanukkah, &
Kwanzaa
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/11/19/the-best-places-to-learn-about-christmas-hanukkah-kwanzaa/)
The Best Personal Home Page Creators
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/11/26/the-best-personal-home-page-creators/)
The Best Tools To Make Simple Graphs Online
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/11/28/the-best-tools-to-make-simple-graphs-online/)
The Best Resources To Teach & Learn About The Terrorist
Attacks In India
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/11/28/the-best-resources-to-teach-learn-about-the-terrorist-attacks-in-india/)
The “Best” Articles About Education — 2008
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/12/01/the-best-articles-about-education-2008/)
The Best Sites For Learning About New Year Celebrations
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/12/03/the-best-sites-for-learning-about-new-year-celebrations/)
The Best Map-Making Sites On The Web
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/12/03/the-best-map-making-sites-on-the-web/)
ALSO:
Edublog Award Nominees Announced
The official
nominees for the 2008 Edublog Awards (http://edublogawards.com/2008/) have been
announced, and it’s quite an impressive list. Check them out and vote for which
ones you think are the best. You can only vote once in each category and voting
ends on December 21st.
This blog has been nominated in The Best Resource Sharing Blog.( http://edublogawards.com/2008/best-resource-sharing-blog-2008/)
You can’t go
wrong, though, by voting for any of the blogs that have been listed in that
category or in any of the others.
The “How To” videos on the How Stuff Works (http://www.howstuffworks.com/) site made it onto The Best Online Instructional Video Sites list.
I recently discovered that it also has a very extensive collection of short videos accessible to English Language Learners related to History. I’m quite impressed by them, and am finding it useful for my U.S. History class.
LARRY FERLAZZO’S
WEBSITE UPDATE
December, 2008
Since I published so many new “The Best…” lists recently, I
thought I’d send out this update a bit early.
As a reminder, you can subscribe (for free) by email to
learn, and get more frequent updates, about one hundred or so additional sites
each month by going here: http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=168021
Here are links to “The Best…” lists, followed by news about
a few other new sites:
The Best Science
& Math Sites -- 2008
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/11/08/the-best-science-math-websites-2008/)
The Best Search
Engines For ESL/EFL Learners -- 2008
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/11/10/the-best-search-engines-for-eslefl-learners/)
The Best Websites To Learn About Veterans Day
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/11/11/the-best-websites-to-learn-about-veterans-day/)
The Best Reference
Websites For English Language Learners -- 2008
Part Twenty-Seven Of The Best Ways To Create Online Content
Easily & Quickly — October, 2008
The Best Social
Studies WebSites — 2008
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/11/02/the-best-social-studies-websites-2008/)
The Best Sites To
Teach and Learn About Thanksgiving
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/10/27/the-best-sites-to-learn-teach-about-thanksgiving/)
The Best Online Sources For Images
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/10/11/the-best-online-sources-for-images/)
I’ve finally gotten around to creating a page that has all
my “The Best…” lists separated by topic (Science, Web 2.0, etc). You can
find them at “My Best Of
Series” page (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/about/my-best-of-series/).
The Websites Of The
Year page, on the other hand, has these lists in the chronological
order in which they’ve been written. Please note that I continually update
and revise all of the lists.
The Best
Websites page on my website shows versions of these same lists that
are designed for student self-access.
Voice of America Special English is a wonderful resource for English Language Learners. It broadcasts news using a simple and limited vocabulary, and is very accessible to ELL’s. Not only does it provide reports on current events, but it also has special series on U.S. History, geography, and many other particular areas of interest. You can access both the audio and transcript on the Web.
It’s made several of my “The Best…” lists, including The Best Websites For Teaching & Learning About U.S. History and The Best News/Current Events Websites For English Language Learners — 2007.
However, it has two major problems. One, they only keep a limited number of their programs accessible with audio for a certain period of time before they seem to eliminate the audio portion and, two, their “search” system is terrible so it’s difficult to find all the programs in a series in one place.
Different Asian-based websites have tried to rectify these two problems by maintaining their own much-better organized versions of the Special English broadcasts (I don’t know, however, if they’ve done this with permission or not, but I assume VOA doesn’t really care either way). I have had direct links to specific history broadcasts from one Asian site on my U.S. History website for quite awhile, but they seem to go off-line quite a bit.
I just learned about a site that appears much better organized and more technologically advanced called 51 VOA. (http://www.51voa.com/The_Making_of_a_Nation_1.html) It has all the VOA Special English broadcasts organized well, and they all still have audio.
I don’t quite have it in me right now to change the large number of direct links I have on my website to specific broadcasts on the other site, but I will at some point in the future. For now, though, it’s easy enough to direct students to the main page and then to the specific broadcast.
A Good Question For Classroom Management
Marvin
Marshall, who writes on positive classroom management strategies and
who I have quoted often here, just wrote something in his monthly newsletter
that struck me.
I’ve known that when there’s a behavior issue in class
asking the student, “Why?” never is helpful. Now Marvin has a better suggestion.
Instead, ask the student, “”What do you think we should do now?”
Makes sense to me.
Readers might also be interested in a series of posts I
wrote earlier this year about classroom management:
When A “Good” Class Goes “Bad” (And Back To “Good”
Again!) — April, 2008
Maintaining A “Good” Class — April, 2008
More About Maintaining a “Good” Class — May, 2008
“Why Do You Let Others Control You?” — September,
2008
U.S.A Learns (http://usalearns.org/index/welcome.cfm?CFID=158752&CFTOKEN=24742556&jsessionid=2030640e69fadf75fc171a522eb2a70797d5TR) is an incredible website to help users learn English, and it just launched today (November 7th).
It’s free to use. Students can register if they want to save their work and evaluate their progress.
It’s a joint effort of the Sacramento County Office of Education (SCOE), Internet and Media Services Department and the Project IDEAL Support Center at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research.
The Tar Heel Reader (http://tarheelreader.org/) is on The Best Places Where Students Can Write Online list. It’s a great place where Beginning English Language Learners can read “talking books” and write/speak them, too.
Anybody can read the books on the site. However, in order to have your students create talking books using their “easy as pie” (and free) process, you need to register and have to have a code. They’re rightfully concerned about publishing the code because of spammers.
Gary Bishop from the site, though, is happy to provide it to teachers. Just write him at gb@cs.unc.edu and he’ll send it to you.
Shmoop (http://www.shmoop.com/literature/) is sort of a Cliff’s Notes — but a whole lot better.
It has a literature and poetry section, but I’m less interested in those since I’m not convinced that using the “classics” in any kind of class — mainstream or ELL — is the best tool for teaching and learning. However, I like its History section. It’s probably only accessible to advanced English Language Learners, but teachers could certainly easily modify parts to create more usable materials. It also offers links to additional good resources.
I posted about a new online Spelling Bee earlier this week that I thought would have some value for English Language Learners. Now, I’ve just learned about another one that looks very good. Marc Tinkler, one of its developers, alerted me about its existence.
It’s the Visual Thesaurus Spelling Bee( http://www.visualthesaurus.com/bee/).
You don’t have to register to play, and it automatically adapts to your spelling ability. It remembers which words you got right and wrong and quizzes you periodically on words at your spelling level that you spelled incorrectly in the past. A human voice, and not a computerized one, says the words. Plus, it shows you a diagram of similar words.
It doesn’t give you a sentence example using the word, but I guess you can’t have everything…
I’ll be adding the link to my website under Spelling.
I’ve posted in the past about how the ability to make easy screencasts — with audio– could be an excellent learning opportunity for English Language Learners (you might want to take a look at that post). The online tool that has been available, Screencast-O-Matic, works okay for this purpose, but seems a little too complicated.
There’s now a similar tool called Screentoaster (http://www.screentoaster.com/) that couldn’t be more simple to use, and they’ve just added both the ability to record audio and add subtitles. All you do after you log-in is click on a button, open up the window on your screen that you want to record, and it starts recording your screen. After that’s been recorded, you can provide audio or subtitles.
It’s not open yet to the public, but I was able to get an invitation pretty quickly after I requested one. Once it’s open to the public I’ll be adding it to The Best Sites To Practice Speaking English and will probably be adding it to other “The Best…” lists, too.
LARRY FERLAZZO’S WEBSITE UPDATE – NOVEMBER, 2008
Here are my choices for the best additions to my blog and website over the past month. As usual, I’m just including links to new “The Best…” lists. After those, I’ve included more information about specific websites.
As a reminder, you can subscribe (for free) by email to learn about the additional one hundred or so new sites each month by going here: http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=168021
The Best Sites For Encouraging ELL’s To Attend College (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/09/23/the-best-sites-for-encouraging-ells-to-attend-college/) — September, 2008
The Best Online Sites For Creating Music (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/10/01/the-best-online-sites-for-creating-music/) — October, 2008
The Best Multilingual & Bilingual Sites For Math, Social Studies, & Science (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/10/03/the-best-multilingual-bilingual-sites-for-math-social-studies-science/) — October, 2008
The Best Websites For Learning About Halloween (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/10/05/the-best-websites-for-learning-about-halloween/) — October, 2008
The Best
Online Resources About Christopher Columbus (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/10/06/the-best-online-resources-about-christopher-columbus/) — October, 2008
The Best “Unusual” Sites To Create Online
Presentations (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/10/08/the-best-unusual-ways-to-create-online-presentations/) — October, 2008
The Best Sites For Making Crossword Puzzles & Hangman Games (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/10/10/the-best-sites-for-making-crossword-puzzles-hangman-games/) — October, 2008
The Best Online Sources For Images (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/10/11/the-best-online-sources-for-images/) — October, 2008
The Best Web Resources On The Iraq War (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/10/14/the-best-web-resources-on-the-iraq-war/) — October, 2008
The Best Online Karaoke Sites For English Language Learners (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/10/15/the-best-online-karaoke-sites-for-english-language-learners/) — October, 2008
Part Twenty-Four Of The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/10/05/part-twenty-four-of-the-best-ways-to-create-online-content-easily-quickly/) — October, 2008
Part Twenty-Five Of The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/10/15/part-twenty-five-of-the-best-ways-to-create-online-content-easily-quickly/) – October, 2008
Open Road TV
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/10/09/open-road-tv/)
Open Road
TV (http://openroad.tv/index.php) has
a lot of nice and short videos highlighting popular tourist attractions in the
western United States.
They’re pretty accessible to English Language Learners, and
you can choose them from an interactive map. The videos don’t have
closed-captioning, but Intermediate-level students should be able to get their
gist.
I’ve placed the link on my website under The United State and Canada.
Wectar (http://www.wectar.com/) is a new tool that generates website recommendations. You paste in the url address of one site, and it generates both the addresses and screenshots of similar sites. I found some interesting ESL/EFL sites once I typed in my the address of my website.
It seems similar to other tools on The Best Places To Get Blog, Website, Book, Movie & Music Recommendations, and I’ve added Wectar to that list.
I think Your Disease Risk (http://www.yourdiseaserisk.siteman.wustl.edu/) is a great site for both teenage and adult English Language Learners. It’s from the Siteman Cancer Center, and leads you through simple questionnaires on various illnesses to determine…your disease risk.
I think the best way to teach English is to find-out what people want to learn about, and then help them develop their language skills in the process of learning about that topic. This seems to be a pretty high-interest area to me. Even if it’s less personally relevant to teenage students, they can certainly answer the questions playing the role of their older parents.
I’m adding this link to The Best Health Sites For English Language Learners.
This is part four of a series of posts I’ve written over the past several months on my ongoing efforts at using positive classroom management strategies at our inner-city school. The previous three have been:
When A “Good” Class Goes “Bad” (And Back To “Good” Again!) — April, 2008
Maintaining A “Good” Class — April, 2008
More About Maintaining a “Good” Class — May, 2008
This most recent post is prompted by a major struggle I’ve been having with my mainstream ninth-grade English class this year, who are with me for two full-hours each day (the rest of the time I teach Intermediate English Language Learners). My students are very smart, and many come from challenging backgrounds.
I’ve been trying most of the classroom management strategies I’ve shared in those previous three posts but, to be truthful, few of them have been particularly effective in creating better classroom management this year. One thing they have been successful in doing, however, has been in helping me develop strong, trusting relationships with all of my students. This is the foundation that has allowed me to finally begin to create a more orderly classroom through using some new strategies. Of course, the primary reason to create this kind of orderliness is to enhance student learning, not for the sake of orderliness.
Here are some of the actions I’ve taken that have finally begun to work:
“DON’T LET OTHERS CONTROL YOU”: I had been spending a lot of time “putting out lots of little fires” — students reacting to what other students would say or do to them (throw little pieces of paper, say something about their mother, etc.) My reaction had typically been to go over to each student involved and ask them quietly to not repeat the action. Sometimes I would send a student out of the classroom for a few minutes to “cool down.” Punitive measures would typically just escalate the problem, so I seldom, if ever, implemented them (except in extreme cases). I also used many of the positive actions I’ve mentioned in my previous posts, but improvement was minimal.
What I have begun to do now, instead, is when students react to provocations is to just ask them “Why are you letting __________ control you? He/She is doing it just to get your reaction — don’t you want to be in control of you?” I tell them that I’ll deal with the instigator firmly while the reacting student needs to work on his/her self-control.
This strategy has had a profound effect on how students act in the classroom now, and on how I respond to disruptions. When issues arise, I continue to have short, quiet conversations with those involved. But now, I don’t say, “Please be quiet.” I say, “Why are you letting him/her control you?” This stance has clearly resonated with students, particularly boys (who are a large majority in my class). I feel much better about my stance, too. And the number of disruptions has fallen dramatically.
I assume I picked-up this idea from something I read somewhere, so I’m not claiming it as original. I just can’t believe I haven’t used it earlier.
I’m also working students to think about how this strategy relates to the rest of their challenging lives.
This first strategy has been, by far, the most important one I’ve used to get a handle on this class this year. Here are a couple of others that have helped, too:
“YOU MAY GET OUT OF YOUR DESK DURING CLASS — JUST ASK FOR PERMISSION FIRST: Usually, as long as I’m not talking to the class, I let students get-up to sharpen their pencils, get supplies, throw-out garbage, etc., without asking for permission. However, with this class, that ability was often an excuse for unhelpful student-to-student interactions (intentionally bumping into each other). I’ve begun enforcing this rule very strictly, with students having to be very clear with me what they want to do.
Framing it in a positive way –”You may get out of your desk — just ask for permission first” is something I’ve learned from Marvin Marshall, my favorite writer on positive classroom management strategies. It sends a different message than “Don’t get up without permission.”
“YOU’LL HAVE THE SAME PARTNERS FOR SEVERAL WEEKS, AND HAVE A PERMANENT ASSIGNED LOCATION FOR YOUR PARTNER WORK”: I always have a lot of partner work going on in my classes, and, typically, I mix-them-up frequently and let students seat where they want. This also was problematic with this class, and resulted in more classroom disruptions.
After consulting with students about their partner preferences, I assigned groups that will work together for several weeks, and have a classroom map where everyone knows where they will be when we do work in partners. The group locations are strategically placed to minimize problems, with certain students far away from others.
I’ll keep readers posted as the year continues.
One good week does not a semester make, but at least it’s a start…
The San Francisco Chronicle has been running a great weekly feature called the Three Panel Book Review (http://www.sfgate.com/columns/threepanel/archive/) , drawn and written by Lisa Brown.
She develops a book review in three cartoon panels with a short amount of text. They’re very funny and creative.
Using her concept as a model, it’s a great way for English Language Learners to practice the reading strategy of summarizing.
The Chronicle just today began creating an archive of past Three Panel Book Reviews (I really don’t understand why they didn’t make them available earlier), but they have a large number still to add. The link in this post will take you to the archive.
Scribblar (http://www.scribblar.com/) has immediately joined other applications on The Best Online Tools For Real-Time Collaboration list.
It allows you to create a virtual “room” in seconds — without having to register — where you can collaborate for writing or drawing, with the ability to have a text chatboard or audio/webcam communication. It couldn’t be easier to use. If, and when, we can ever coordinate time zones, it would be a neat tool to use for collaborating with others in the International Sister Classes Project.
Heather Voran contacted Scribblar after she read this post, and learned that there is no limit to users in a room, except what is practical in that type of meeting, and the url does last indefinitely, but you have to bookmark it because it is not retrievable from their website. Thanks, Heather!
Larry Ferlazzo’s Website Newsletter
October, 2008
Here are my picks for the best posts from my blog over the
past month.
Remember, you can also subscribe and receive free daily email updates
here: http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=168021
As usual, I will just be posting links to recent “The
Best…” lists since they’re so long. They are followed by additional highlights
from my blog:
The Best Sites For Students To Create Budgets (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/08/22/the-best-sites-for-students-to-create-budgets/) — August, 2008
The Best Internet Sites For English Language Learners — 2008 (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/08/28/the-best-internet-sites-for-english-language-learners-2008/)
The Best Websites For Teaching & Learning About New Orleans (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/09/01/the-best-websites-for-teaching-learning-about-new-orleans/) — September, 2008
The Best Resources For Hispanic Heritage Month (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/09/03/the-best-resources-for-hispanic-heritage-month/) — September, 2008
The Best Web 2.0 Applications For Education — 2008 (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/09/11/the-best-web-20-applications-for-education-2008/)
The Best Places To Learn Computer Basics & How To Fix Tech Problems (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/09/19/the-best-places-to-learn-computer-basics-how-to-fix-tech-problems/) — September, 2008
The Best Sites To Learn About The U.S. Financial Crisis (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/09/20/the-best-sites-to-learn-about-the-us-financial-crisis/) — September, 2008
Contrapunctus Variations (what a name!) (http://contrapunctus.thirdangle.org/) lets you create musical compositions with your computer mouse. It’s difficult to explain in a post, but once you go there it will become clear. You can save your composition, describe it, and email the link for posting in a blog or teacher’s website. No registration is required.
Not only can English Language Learners use it to practice descriptive writing, but they can also learn some English names of musical instruments.
I’m very tempted to add this link to The Best Music Websites For Learning English . However, instead, I think I’m going to create another “The Best…” list called The Best Online Sites To Create Music. Look for it in the coming weeks.
Know How 2 Go (http://knowhow2go.org/index.php) is really quite an impressive site designed to encourage middle and high school students to attend college. It’s been created by the American Council on Education and the Ad Council.
It’s quite informative, and accessible to high Intermediate English Language Learners. Part of the site is a very interactive visit to a virtual college campus. While there, the user can collect information for a “notebook” that they can then email to themselves.
I’ve placed it on my website under Careers.
Next 10 (http://www.nextten.org/) is a nonprofit group in our state that has developed some excellent online learning tools that relate to California, particularly related to the environment.
One of them is a Carbon Footprint Calculator (http://www.coolcalifornia.org/calculator.html) and a Home Energy Saver (http://hes.lbl.gov/) that includes California data.
They also have an extraordinary tool that lets you discover the carbon footprint of your community based on your zipcode.
I all three of these tools are accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners, and I’m adding them to The Best Sites To Introduce Environmental Issues Into The Classroom.
They also have a California Budget Challenge activity where users make decisions about our state budget (which is several months late already!). It’s a good exercise, but probably not accessible to any but the most advanced English Language Learners.
I thought people might be interested in seeing this short (fourteen slides) slideshow that includes my commentary. It’s a presentation I’ll be making to some of my colleagues this Wednesday called “Web 2.0 For Dummies” (http://www.jogtheweb.com/reader/index.php?trackId=511 ) (I include myself in that category).
It also
includes some of my skepticism about how technology is often used in schools,
which is reflected in many of my posts in our group blog, In
Practice.
iKnow! (http://www.iknow.co.jp/) appears to have the potential to be one of the best online sites for English language learning out there.
iKnow! is free, and offers various learning strategies with a lot of audio support. Their “learning English with English support” is fairly limited right now — it’s presently focused on English-to-Japanese and Japanese-to-English — but there is some good stuff for advanced English Language Learners. Once they beef-up that section this site is going to be a real winner and probably a student and teacher favorite.
Cambridge University Press has extraordinary online support activities for their ESL/EFL textbooks, and they’re freely available to anyone. Several of their sites are on The Best Listening Sites For English Language Learners.
Now they’ve just come-out with a site for adult learners (which I think would also be fine for high school students). It’s called the Ventures Arcade, (http://www.cambridge.org/us/esl/venturesadulted/venturesarcade/index.html) and it’s really top-notch.
I’ve placed the link on my website under Favorite Sites.
Scholastic has been publishing excellent “Listen and Read” nonfiction stories (with audio support for the text) for several years on their website. They’re accessible to Beginning English Language Learners. It’s not easy to find expository text that’s accessible to Beginning ELL’s.
The problem has been that each story hasn’t had a permanent url address — they’ve kept changing it as they’ve published the stories in their monthly online newsletters. It’s been pretty frustrating.
However, now they’ve compiled permanent links to all of them on one page. Explore all fifty of them now at Listen and Read.( http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/collection.jsp?id=376)
I’ve put
direct links to many of them under various sections of my website.
My first year in teaching was spent with a self-contained class of retained seventh-graders. Right above the whiteboard in our classroom I wrote this question on a poster: “Is what you’re doing, or is what you’re thinking about doing, going to help you get what you want?” I think periodically reflecting on that question in class was mildly effective.
Today, Marvin Marshall, who is my favorite (by far) writer/thinker on positive classroom management, wrote a different (and, I think, better) question that we as teachers might want to consider asking ourselves regularly. He wrote:
Will what I am about to do or say bring me closer or will it push me away farther from the person with whom I am communicating?
Of course, that’s not a bad question for us to consider in all our interpersonal relationships, either…
Pic-Lits (http://piclits.com/compose_dragdrop.aspx) is an intriguing new site that lets users pick an image from selection and then “drag-and-drop” words onto the image. The user’s creation can then be saved with a link posted, or it can be embedded.
It has some elements that might make it particularly useful to English Language Learners.
The words you can choose from are labeled by their parts of speech, and once you drop the word on the image you can see all the different verb conjugations and choose one. You can write a poem or describe the picture.
You also have the option of writing whatever words you want if you don’t want to be limited by the words available to drag-and-drop.
Jake Peters
from Pic-Lits sent me an email letting me know about the site and saying they
are doing a pilot project with a local school using it with their English
Language Learners. Given that interest, one would assume the images available on
the site will be classroom appropriate –
another
advantage of the application
Larry Ferlazzo’s
Website Update
September, 2008
I’m sending this update out a little early so I can get it
“out of the way” before the craziness of preparation for the new school year
begins.
As usual, in addition to highlighting specific sites, I’m
also just listing the links to some new “The Best…” lists I’ve compiled.
Reach The World Geo Games
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/08/07/reach-the-world-geo-games/)
Reach The World has a couple of Geo Games (http://reachtheworld.org/geogames/index.html)
that are a little different from many of the other map games you can find on my
Geography page.
In these timed games, which also have various levels of
difficulty, you drag countries, continents, and cities onto a globe — not a flat
surface. You can also rotate the globe to find the right place. In
addition, you can ask for, and get, clues.
It’s a nice little twist….
The Human Footprint Interactive (http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/human-footprint/consumption-interactive.html) is an engaging activity that helps the user determine how much they consume each year, and how that compares with residents of different countries.
The language is accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners.
I’m adding this site to The Best Sites To Introduce Environmental Issues Into The Classroom.
A.D. New Orleans After The Deluge (http://www.smithmag.net/afterthedeluge/2007/01/01/prologue-1/) is a pretty impressive multi-part, web-based graphic novel about Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.
We teach a unit on New Orleans in our ninth-grade mainstream English classes, including advanced English Language Learners. This comic is certainly accessible to ELL’s and enticing to reluctant readers as well.
You can find a ton of resources about New Orleans on my website under….New Orleans, including a very quick VoiceThread slideshow I made after my family’s visit there four months ago..
If I had learned about Talking Pets (http://www.talkingpets.org/) earlier, I would have included it on my year-end The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly — 2008.
You can choose a pet picture, or upload your own. Then, using the text-to-speech feature, you can have it say a short message, then email the link for posting on a blog or website.
It’s a good activity for English Language Learners to hear what they write.
Thanks to the excellent blog Alt Search Engines, I’ve learned about about a neat new site called Green Planet Search (http://www.greenplanetsearch.com/)
It’s a search engine for environmental websites, plus the site and its host is solar-powered. It’s very attractively designed, and, even though they’re just starting, I’ve been able to find a number of sites that are new to me on it and that are accessible to English Language Learners.
I’m so impressed with it that I’m adding it to my surprisingly (at least to me) popular The Best Sites To Introduce Environmental Issues Into The Classroom.
Planet Science (http://www.planet-science.com/home.html) has a ton of resources about teaching, learning, and using science in the classroom.
I’ve put the main link to the site on my Teacher’s Page under Science Ideas. However, it had one interactive activity that I thought was particularly good for English Language Learners called Get Clobbered, and I put that link on my Science page.
In the game, players have to “dress” the scientist with the appropriate safety equipment he/she needs for the experiment they’re about to conduct. It’s an excellent opportunity for vocabulary development, and designed so it’s accessible to Early Intermediate English Language Learners.
LARRY
FERLAZZO’S WEBSITE UPDATE – AUGUST, 2008
Here
are the latest highlights from my blog and website (many of them are just links
to new “The Best…” lists I’ve compiled – the lists are too lengthy to reprint in
their entirety here):
For Google Reader
& Bloglines Subscribers –Please Re-Subscribe Using
Feedburner
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/07/17/for-google-reader-bloglines-subscribers-please-re-subscribe-using-feedburner/)
Some of the people
who receive this newsletter also subscribe to daily updates from my blog through
an RSS feedreader.
If you are one of those, you might have stopped receiving posts if you
use Google Reader or Bloglines and subscribed prior to January. If you are
experiencing this problem, please re-subscribe using the newer
Feedburner feed (http://feeds.feedburner.com/LarryFerlazzosWebsitesOfTheDayForTeachingEllEslEfl) This issue only relates to people who have
subscribed prior to January — anyone who has subscribed since then is already
using the Feedburner feed and shouldn’t be having any problems. Other RSS
Readers don’t appear to be having any issues, so I
think this only relates to “older” Google and Bloglines subscribers. Sorry
for the inconvenience, but the problem appears to be out of my control.
The Best Ways To
Create Simple Screenshots
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/06/24/the-best-ways-to-create-simple-screenshots/)
The Best Teacher
Resource Sites For Social Justice Issues
The Best Websites To Learn About Various Religions &
English
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/07/07/the-best-websites-to-learn-about-various-religions-english/)
The Best Online
Learning Games — 2008
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/07/09/the-best-online-learning-games-2008/)
The Best Websites
For Learning About Natural Disasters
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/07/15/the-best-websites-for-learning-about-natural-disasters/)
The Best Sites To
Teach & Learn About The Olympics
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/07/16/the-best-sites-to-teach-learn-about-the-olympics/)
Part
Twenty Of The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily &
Quickly
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/06/26/part-twenty-of-the-best-ways-to-create-online-content-easily-quickly/)
The Broth Is A Great Find!
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/07/12/the-broth-is-a-great-find/)
During the past
several months I’ve been on the “look-out” for a “community” art-making
application on the web. I thought it would be neat if students in our international
Sister Classes Project could
easily share their artwork.
Unfortunately,
even though there are quite a few web tools out there that let people cooperate
on creating art, I couldn’t find one that had safeguards that would allow allow
them to be used in the classroom.
Now, though, I’ve
found The
Broth.( http://www.thebroth.com/home.html) .
It lets you create
password-protected private “rooms” where people can cooperate on creating a
piece of art. In addition, it has a chat component that lets you talk with
people who are in the room at the same time. With our Sister Classes project,
it’s unlikely because of time zone differences that we can make that happen.
However, the chat messages remain, so students can leave messages about what and
why they’ve contributed to the community art work.
Larry Ferlazzo’s Website Update
July, 2008
I’m sending this update out a little early, and it might be
the last one for the summer. The next update might not be sent out until
late August.
You might want to consider subscribing to my blog if you’d
like to get more frequent updates over the next two months:
http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/about/how-to-subscribe-to-this-blog/
Here are the top posts from this past month:
The Best Online
Video Sites For Learning English
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/06/03/the-best-online-video-sites-for-learning-english/)
The Best Ways To
Make Comic Strips Online
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/06/04/the-best-ways-to-make-comic-strips-online/)
The Best Websites
For Teaching & Learning About U.S. History
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/06/08/the-best-websites-for-teaching-learning-about-us-history/)
The Best “Today In
History” Sites
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/06/11/the-best-today-in-history-sites/)
The Best Websites
To Learn About California
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/06/13/the-best-websites-to-learn-about-california/)
Part Eighteen Of
The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/06/01/part-eighteen-of-the-best-ways-to-create-online-content-easily-quickly/)
Part Nineteen Of
The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/06/16/part-nineteen-of-the-best-ways-to-create-online-content-easily-quickly/)
I’ve posted in the past
about iCue (http://www.icue.com/) , the new site recently
launched by NBC.
They launched an extraordinary new section to the site
focused on U.S. History. It’s so good that I’ve added it to The Best Websites
For Teaching And Learning About U.S. History that I posted
earlier this month.
The enormous number, and quality, of video clips (with
transcripts), plus interactive games and exercises, make this a great site for
English Language Learners and other students.
I’ve written before about the excellent free bi-weekly
email newsletter from Middle
Web called “Of Particular Interest.” You can subscribe to it
by sending a note to norton@middleweb.com with SUBSCRIBE in the subject
line.
That was a preface to an interesting piece in the most
recent edition. Quoting John Norton, Middleweb’s editor: “A recent “practice guide” from the federal National Center for
Education Research (http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/pdf/20072004.pdf)
distills what its panel of scholarly authors believe are
seven of the best research-based instructional strategies teachers can use to
improve student learning…Don’t be put off by the lengthy scholarly introduction
— skim and skip to
page 4.”
I followed John’s advice and thought that page was
interesting. I’ll be sharing it with colleagues.
Wordle (http://wordle.net/) lets you either copy
and paste or upload text. It then produces a word cloud that give greater
prominence to words that appear more frequently. You choose from different
formats about how you want your word cloud displayed, and then have them
displayed on the website with its own url address.
This could be a fascinating exercise for English Language
Learners and other students. Beginning ELL’s could use it to see the importance
of learning sight words. Social Studies students could upload speeches by Barack
Obama and John McCain and compare the two.
I know there have been other ways to identify
high-frequency words from text, but I think Wordle is the easiest and has the
most elegant presentation.
The Alt Search Engines
blog just posted about a different kind of “search” than they
usually do. This one is called Tox
Mystery (http://toxmystery.nlm.nih.gov/) , is from the
National Library of Medicine, and has the user search for hazardous chemicals
within a house.
It’s animated, with audio support for all the text, and is
an interactive game. It’s very accessible to English Language Learners.
I’ve placed the link under Health on my website.
280 Slides (http://280slides.com/) looks like it
might be the newest addition to my The Best Ways To
Create Online Slideshows.
I need to explore it further, but I especially like its
feature that lets you search for images and videos off the web right inside the
slide-show creation process. Except for the wonderful Bookr tool, which is still by far the
easiest way to make an online slideshow, all the other sites on my list require
that you open up a separate window to search for images in order to get their
url address first before you “plug” it in. This feature just makes it easier for
English Language Learners and everybody else to create their shows. And 280
Slides has far more “bells and whistles” than Bookr.
You have to register if you want 280 Slides to save your
presentation, but the process is simple and quick.
Mingoville (http://www.de.mingoville.com/content/view/13/29/)
is an
exceptional site from Denmark designed to teach Beginning English Language
Learners. There are many interactive exercises and games, it’s very colorful,
and there are both listening and speaking activities. I haven’t explored the
site fully, but it has an easy voice recording feature.
You can experiment with it as a guest for a few minutes,
but then you have to register. It’s completely free, and registration took about
twenty seconds.
It’s so good I’ve placed in on my website under Favorite
Sites. In fact, if your students are a little intimidated by
having 8,000 categorized sites to choose from on my site, going to Favorite
Sites is a good place to start.
Larry
Ferlazzo’s Website Update
June
2008 (Part Two)
I’m not including any of my "The Best..." lists (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/about/websites-of-the-year/) in this update, but you might want to check-out the latest ones.
Here are my choices
for May (they're not in any order of preference):
Tutpup Math & Spelling
Games
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/05/31/tutpup-math-and-spelling-games/)
Tutpup (http://tutpup.com/) is a new site where students can compete in math or spelling games against other students from around the world anonymously — either with a made-up name or no name at all.
There are a number of sites where users can compete in learning games like these. The problem I’ve had with them is that there is no way to “level the playing the field.” In other words, an English Language Learner might be playing against a native-English speaker. A situation like that does not create much encouragement for an ELLer if they are going to lose all the time.
However, the key difference between Tutpup and these other sites is that Tutpup has multiple levels of play to choose from going from extremely easy to extremely hard. This ability to choose your level helps a lot.
Plus, there’s some sort of teacher’s option that allows students to sign-up in a class. It’s not clearly explained on the website what this means exactly — can students choose to play online with their classmates? If that were the case, my opinion of Tutpup would increase even more. I’ve emailed them for clarification, and will post their response (assuming I receive one).
Users can register a nickname or they can play without registering. Their spelling game is a good listening exercise, since audio for the word is voiced and the player has to then type the word correctly.
For now, I’ve just placed the link on my Math page.
More About Maintaining A "Good"
Class
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/05/30/more-about-maintaining-a-good-class/)
This is the third in a series of posts on various positive classroom management strategies and tactics. You can see the rest of the series by clicking here. Though this series is a little different from the rest of my “The Best…” series, they have enough in common for me to include these classroom management posts withing that category.
These are just a few more ways I try to keep my classroom as a close to being a “community of learners” as possible. As I’ve stated in the other two posts on this same topic, I really don’t have to devote much effort to classroom management in my high school ESL classes. However, my mainstream ninth grade English classes are a different story.
Teaching ninth-grade mainstream students in an inner-city high school provides different kinds of challenges than teaching English Language Learners — no better, no worse, just different. And class management can be one of them.
Of course, even with my list of over twenty-five different tools I use, sometimes none of them work. I might just not be using them effectively enough, or maybe there are issues beyond my control that are contributing to the problem (for example, my gender). In my five years of teaching, I’ve had to move two students out to another class because nothing seemed to work. I’ve also had more than two moved into my classroom because of behavior issues elsewhere, and those have worked out fine.
Here are a few more ideas from my classroom management “toolkit”:
HAVING STUDENTS PUT POST-IT NOTES ON THEIR DESKS: For students who have particular challenges, like difficulty focusing or not having much self-control when it comes to speaking without thinking first, I offer the suggestion (which they are free to reject) of their putting a reminder post-it on their desk at the beginning of each class. I have multi-colored post-its that they can choose each day, and they can spend the first two minutes of class (which is usually a time for silent reading) writing and decorating it. Depending on their issue, they might write “FOCUS!” or “THINK!”.
Other times, after a discussion, they might decide on another optional use of post-its. One strategy I’ve used at times is having students write a hash mark on a post-it for every ten or fifteen minutes they feel they’ve been “on-task” and carrying their weight in class. On occasion, I’ve felt like I’ve had to offer a reward of some kind as an incentive, but the vast majority of time this has worked because the student has just wanted to develop more self-control.
SAYING I”M SORRY: It’s not unusual for me to show impatience, make a mistake, accuse a student of doing something when he/she did not, or just have a bad day. My sense is that many of my students have not experienced many adults apologizing to them. Not only does my apology depolarize tension, but I think it’s good modeling behavior as well.
TRYING TO INVOLVE STUDENTS IN DECISIONS TO CHANGE SEATS: I’m often tempted to arbitrarily change a student’s seat because of behavior issues. Sometimes I succumb to that temptation. However, what I try to do instead is engage the student in a conversation about how he or she is doing in class, where he/she wants to be at the end of the school year, and wonder if changing seats might be a tool to help them reach their goal. Generally, after that conversation, they agree, and then I ask them for their suggestions about what they think would be a good place for them to be and why. Usually it works out pretty well.
RECOGNIZING STUDENTS: I don’t know if this activity can be correctly defined as part of a class management strategy, but it does help maintain a positive classroom atmosphere. I can’t remember where I first read about this idea, but every Friday I have a “What I See In You” time. I pick a student, ask him/her to stand, and spend a few minutes sharing what I see in them, examples of their actions, etc. Every student is recognized during the course of the school year, and they seem to like it a lot.
DEVELOPING STUDENT CONTRACTS: Sometimes, particularly when a student’s behavior is worsening, I’ll sit down with him/her to discuss what would make the class work better for him/her and, in turn, what he/she could do to make it work better for me. We’ll then write out a contract which we both sign.
I hope you’ve found these ideas useful. Feel free to contribute classroom management suggestions based on your experience, too.
Beat The Clock
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/05/28/beat-the-clock/)
Beat The Clock (http://www.go4english.com/qg/archive.php?cid=10031001) is a British Council game where the player has to complete a sentence by choosing the right word before the timer runs out.
The games are categorized by theme, and there are tons of them. They are also labeled by the appropriate English level (beginner, early intermediate, etc.).
I’ve placed the link on my Intermediate English page under Word and Video Games.
Listen And Write
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/05/26/listen-and-write/)
Listen and Write (http://www.listen-and-write.com/audio) is a new web tool that I think has a lot of potential for English Language Learners.
A user first chooses a text he/she wants to hear read to him/her. Many of the choices are from the Voice of America, and are both high-interest and accessible. Their levels of difficulty are also indicated.
Then the story is dictated to you, and you have to type it correctly. You can choose the speed of the reading and how often it’s repeated. When you type only the correct letters actually show-up on the screen, and you can ask for hints.
I’ve placed the link on my website under Listening.
Webon
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/05/20/webon/)
Webon (http://www.webon.com/) appears to be, next to Jottit, the easiest website-builder I’ve come across. I’ve emailed some questions to the company about their features, and until I get those answers I’m not ready to say its better then Jottit, but it is certainly easier to make it look attractive. It’s unclear to me, though, if you can embed presentations into it. I’ll let you know what I learn.
(I just heard from Webon, and you can indeed easily used embed codes!)
It’s very easy to grab images off the web and write captions. One of its features that I like a lot is that your images automatically become a slideshow. It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles that other slideshow creators have, but it seems to work well enough.
Middlespot
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/05/18/middlespot-again/)
I wrote a post a few days ago about Middlespot (http://www.middlespot.com/) , a neat new combination bookmarking and search engine application. I like it a lot, and included a few questions in my post (which I also sent to them) about additional features that would make it great for English Language Learners (and others).
They are planning to add the ability to search and save images, and they hope to do so in the next thirty days. They also are planning on adding an embedding option, so you won’t just have to link to the url of your saved screenshots.
They also graciously pointed out that they already had the biggest option I was concerned about — the ability to write comments on each saved screenshot. Scott Brownlee from Middlespot wrote:
..you can also make a personal comment (annotation) on each screenshot in theworkpad. If you place your mouse cursor over a screenshot in a workpad, a small m will appear that provides you with the ability to comment and delete that result.
Assuming their plans to allow images happen, it’s a safe bet that Middlespot will be ending up on one of my “The Best…” lists soon.
Mapdango
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/05/14/mapdango/)
Mapdango (http://www.mapdango.com/) is called a “mash-up” — a combination of a variety of web applications. It’s a neat geographical and map search engine that, after you enter the location you’re interested in, will show you the area’s weather, areas of interest from Wikipedia, Flickr photos, and other items.
One particularly useful feature is that it shows all of the above connected to its geographical location on a map, too.
It’s a easy way to get a sense of a community. My students will be using it tomorrow to learn a little more about the places where our international sister classes are located.
I’ve placed the link on my website under Sites That Cover Many Areas.
Splashcast & Qlipboard
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/05/14/splashcast-qlipboard/)
Ronaldo Lima, Jr., a very talented EFL teacher in Brazil, and my colleague in our growing international Sister Classes Project, wrote a great post in February comparing VoiceThread, Splashcast (http://splashcastmedia.com/) , and Qlipboard (http://www.qlipmedia.com/) . These are three web applications that, as Ronaldo wrote, “unite pictures and voice in slideshows.”
I’d strongly encourage you to read his comparison of the three sites. I, for one, clearly did not read it very closely.
I say that because I just saw a Splashcast by Sudanese students taught by Hala Fawzi, another participant in the Sister Classes project. It’s a great presentation, and I was surprised to find that you could easily leave audio comments on it. Of course, if I had carefully read Ronaldo’s post from a few months ago, I wouldn’t have been surprised.
I agree with Ronaldo that Splashcast doesn’t seem quite as easy to use as VoiceThread, but it’s nevertheless another viable alternative. One advantage it does have is that you don’t have to be registered with Splashcast in order to leave an audio comment (like you do with VoiceThread). So it’s easier to leave comments. However, it also doesn’t have comment moderation. You can easily delete comments that are left, but you can’t review them before they’re posted.
Ronaldo also wrote about Qlipboard. The last time I had looked at the site, it required a download to use. However, as Ronaldo pointed out, and which I missed, they have since added an online version.
In the online version, you can only use one photo. A major advantage, however, is that you don’t have to register for the site at all. You can just grab the url of an image off the Web, leave a voice commentary (it has a few other features, too), and you get an embed code and a url. Others can leave comments, too, though it doesn’t appear to me to be quite as obvious how to do that as with VoiceThread or Splashcast.
I’ll be posting links to both Splashcast and Qlipboard on Examples of Student Work page. Of course, VoiceThread has been there for quite awhile.
Interested In Joining Our Sister Classes
Project In The Fall?
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/05/10/interested-in-joining-our-sister-classes-project-in-the-fall/)
I’ve posted before about our Sister Classes Project (http://www.sacbee.com/220/story/846880.html) , where classes of Intermediate English Language Learners ranging from the early teens to the early twenties have exchanged presentations (VoiceThreads, slideshows, etc.) and comments at our Student Showcase blog. We have teachers from seven countries who participated this semester.
It’s been fairly low-key, hasn’t taken up an enormous amount of time and been a great experience for students and teachers alike.
It looks like we’ll be starting-up again in the fall, and we’ll be open to additional classes joining us. Let me know if you might be interested.
Gut Instinct
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/05/03/gut-instinct/)
I recently learned, through the blog Primary Teacher UK, about a wonderful new learning game called Gut Instinct (http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks2bitesize/games/gut_instinct/pop.shtml) . It’s from the BBC.
It has questions divided into three categories — English, Math and Science, and is accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners, and maybe even Early Intermediates.
But the exciting feature of the game is that students can super-easily create their own virtual “rooms” for between two-and-thirty people where they can compete with their peers. Players also can compete with everyone who’s playing at the same time. However, it’s probably going to be less energizing for English Language Learners to compete with native English-speakers, so getting to choose to play with their friends is a a great option.
All they have to do is all type in the name of their room (or “league”), choose their avatar and nickname, and the game begins.
I’m placing the link under Word and Video Games on my website.
Explore A Pyramid
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/04/28/explore-a-pyramid/)
National Geographic has an interactive exercise where the “player” operates a robot to remotely Explore A Pyramid (http://www.mywonderfulworld.org/toolsforadventure/games/pyramid.html) .
I’ve placed the link on my World History page under The First Civilized People.
Larry
Ferlazzo’s Website Update
June,
2008
The craziness of the end of the school year is
rapidly approaching, and I thought I’d get this newsletter out early.
I’ve compiled quite a few new “The Best…” lists
since the last update went-out, all of which are too lengthy to include in an
email.
Instead, below you’ll find links to fifteen of the newest “The Best…”
lists.
I’ll try to get out another update later in June that’s a
more typical update with ten specific new websites I’ve posted about.
The Best
Websites For Creating Online Learning Games
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/04/21/the-best-websites-for-creating-online-learning-games/)
The Best
Sites For Students To Easily Create & Display Online Projects
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/04/23/the-best-sites-for-students-to-easily-create-display-online-projects/)
The Best
Popular Movies/TV Shows For ESL/EFL
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/04/26/the-best-popular-moviestv-shows-for-eslefl/)
The Best
Sites To Learn About U.S. Presidential Elections
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/04/27/the-best-sites-to-learn-about-us-presidential-elections/)
The Best
Resource Sites For ESL/EFL Teachers
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/04/29/the-best-resource-sites-for-eslefl-teachers/)
The Best
Ways To Keep-Up With Current Education Issues
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/05/01/the-best-ways-to-keep-up-with-current-education-issues/)
The Best
Ways To Keep-Up With Current ELL/ESL/EFL News & Research
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/05/01/the-best-ways-to-keep-up-with-current-elleslefl-news-research/)
The Best
Sites For Learning Economics & Practical Money Skills
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/05/04/the-best-sites-for-learning-economics-practical-money-skills/)
The Best
Websites To Teach & Learn Life Skills
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/05/04/the-best-websites-to-teach-learn-life-skills/)
The Best
Ways To Create Online Slideshows
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/05/06/the-best-ways-to-create-online-slideshows/)
The Best
Ways For Students To Create Online Animations
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/05/11/the-best-ways-for-students-to-create-online-animations/)
Part
Fifteen Of The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily &
Quickly
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/05/07/part-fifteen-of-the-best-ways-to-create-online-content-easily-quickly/)
Part
Sixteen Of The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/05/14/part-sixteen-of-the-best-ways-to-create-online-content-easily-quickly/)
The Best
Ways For Students To Create Online Videos (Using Someone Else’s
Content)
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/05/14/the-best-ways-for-students-to-create-online-videos-using-someone-else%e2%80%99s-content/)
The Best
Websites For Teaching & Learning About World History
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/05/17/the-best-websites-for-teaching-learning-about-world-history/)
LARRY FERLAZZO’S WEBSITE UPDATE
May, 2008
Here’s the latest update sharing what I think are my best blog posts from the past month. I wrote quite a few “The Best…” lists, and since they are too lengthy to include in an email I’ve just included the url links to them.
I’ve also included more information about five additional new sites that I think you’ll find useful.
You can also receive daily updates by email for free if you go here: http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=168021
If you would like to stop receiving this monthly email newsletter, just email me back with “Stop Newsletter” in the subject line.
The Best
Websites For Learning English Pronunciation
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/03/31/the-best-websites-for-learning-english-pronunciation/)
The Best
Sites For Developing English Conversational Skills
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/04/05/the-best-sites-for-developing-english-conversational-skills/)
The Best Websites For Developing Academic English Skills & Vocabulary (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/04/06/the-best-websites-for-developing-academic-english-skills-vocabulary/)
The Best
Eleven Websites For Students To Learn About Computers
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/04/07/the-best-ten-websites-for-students-to-learn-about-computers/)
The Best
Online Tools For Collaboration — NOT In Real Time
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/04/10/the-best-online-tools-for-collaboration-not-in-real-time/)
The Best “Fun” Sites You Can Use For Learning, Too (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/04/13/the-best-fun-sites-you-can-use-for-learning-too/)
The Best
Social Bookmarking Applications For English Language Learners & Other
Students
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/04/16/the-best-social-bookmarking-applications-for-english-language-learners-other-students/)
The Best Books For Teaching & Learning ESL/EFL (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/04/19/the-best-books-for-teaching-learning-eslefl/)
Part Eleven
Of The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/04/01/part-eleven-of-the-best-ways-to-create-online-content-easily-quickly/)
Part Twelve
Of The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/04/08/part-twelve-of-the-best-ways-to-create-online-content-easily-quickly/)
Part
Thirteen Of The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily &
Quickly
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/04/19/part-thirteen-of-the-best-ways-to-create-online-content-easily-quickly/)
The Best
Websites For Creating Online Learning Games
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/04/21/the-best-websites-for-creating-online-learning-games/)
These next two are a little different from the previous
“The Best…” lists. They include my favorite 21 positive actions I take for
effective classroom management:
When A
“Good” Class Goes “Bad” (And Back To “Good” Again!)
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/04/10/when-a-good-class-goes-bad-and-back-to-good-again/)
Maintaining
A “Good” Class
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/04/18/maintaining-a-good-class/)
YAKIToME (http://www.yakitome.com/) seems almost to good to be true for English Language Learners. It lets you copy and paste pretty much anything you want and the convert the text to speech.
You can choose the type of voice (it uses ATT technology, which I’ve had a link on my website to for a longtime because it’s so good), the rate of speed (there are numerous settings), and even customize pronunciation for certain words. You choose to see the text when you’re listening to it being spoken. And you can create private groups if you want.
Most importantly, unlike some other well-intentioned similar applications I’ve posted about it, it seems to work without any technical difficulties. Plus, it’s free.
Tikatok (http://beta.tikatok.net/) is a new site that is a real find for English Language Learners (and lots of other students). Users can create online books that they write and illustrate (they can also use lots of images available on the site).
It has a number of features that really make it stand-out. You can make a book from scratch, or you can use one of their many story frames that contain “prompts” to help the story-writer along. In addition, you can invite others to collaborate online with you to develop the book.
Once the book is done you can email the link to a friend, teacher, or yourself for posting on a blog, website, or online journal. You can create the online version for free, but have to pay if you want them to print a hard-copy version.
The Zip Code Census Dashboard (http://www.cynergysystems.com/blogs/blogs/andrew.trice/strikeiron/Dashboard.html) is a very simple and informative site that shows you demographic data for any zip code you enter.
It’s very accessible to English Language Learners, and would be helpful to my students when they develop their annual project analyzing different neighborhoods. I’ve placed the link under Student Neighborhood Maps, along with other useful data collection sites.
Play The News (http://www.playthenewsgame.com) is a new, and continually updated, series of role-playing games about current events. Each game highlights a different news event — the Olympics, elections, etc. A short accessible video is shown with background information. Players then decide, of the different key roles involved in the event, which one do they want to be. After you pick it, you choose from various options about which action you think should be taken. You then see how many other players chose that and the other options.
Then you choose which action you think will actually take place, and see the overall results there, too.
In order to play, you have to register (for free), and an overall leaderboard keeps track of what percentage of the time your predictions were correct.
It’s intriguing. I might have my Intermediate English students try it out as a way for them to become familiar with current news. They could also use the game as a model to create their own version with pen-and-paper.
(At the time I’m mailing
out this newsletter the Play The News site appears to be down. I’m sure it will be
back up soon)
Burbank Students Use Blog To Learn English (http://www.sacbee.com/220/story/846880.html) is the title of a nice article in The Sacramento Bee today.
It tells about our ESL/EFL Sister Classes Project (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/03/26/eslefl-sister-classes-project/) , where teachers from seven countries are having our students communicate with one another.
Larry Ferlazzo’s
Website Update
April, 2008
Here are the latest “Top Ten” posts from my blog over the
past month.
Please remember these are only about one-tenth of the sites I highlight
in the blog every month. You can subscribe (quickly and easily) for
free to receive all of them by email if you go to the Feedblitz site (http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=168021) . On the other hand,
if you no longer want to receive this email newsletter just click reply and
write “Unsubscribe” in the subject line. I promise I won’t feel offended!
All the sites highlighted here can also be found, along
with 8,000 other categorized links, on my website (http://larryferlazzo.com/english.html).
Here are the Top Ten picks (there’s actually more than ten
this month) for the month (please note that I’ve written several of my “The
Best…” lists this past month. Because they are too lengthy to fit in this
email, I’ve just included the links here):
·
The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily &
Quickly (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/?s=best+ways+to+create+online+content+easily%2C+quickly)
I’ve actually created several new parts in this series over
the past few weeks.
By going to the above link, you can find over one hundred sites where
even Beginning English Language Learner can create engaging online content in a
matter of minutes – with no registration, computer knowledge, or even typing
ability needed.
·
The Best Websites For Students Exploring Jobs &
Careers (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/02/28/the-best-websites-for-students-exploring-jobs-careers/)
·
The Best Online Tools For Real-Time
Collaboration (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/03/02/the-best-online-tools-for-real-time-collaboration/)
·
The Best Websites For Learning & Teaching
Geography (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/03/07/the-best-websites-for-learning-teaching-geography/)
·
The Best Sites To Practice Speaking English
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/03/17/the-best-sites-to-practice-speaking-english/)
·
ESL/EFL Sister Classes Project (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/03/26/eslefl-sister-classes-project/)
ESL/EFL teachers from seven countries (Kuwait, Brazil,
Argentina, the United States, Sudan, Hungary, and Romania) have brought our
classes together online to correspond and to develop joint projects. You can see
some of the first efforts by our students in their introductory slideshows,
VoiceThreads, animated movies and videos at our Student Showcase (http://esleflstudents.edublogs.org/) . Feel free to leave audio or written comments on the
VoiceThreads, and written comments on the blog itself.
We’re also open to other teachers of Intermediate English
classes comprised of 15-20 year-olds joining us. You can leave a comment or
contact me (or any of the other teachers who are now participating) directly if
you’re interested.
We’re exploring a variety of future projects, including
creating a Ning-like network (but we can’t use Ning since my School District
blocks it) and possibly studying and sharing presentations on topics like how
our governments work, the effects of globalization on each of our countries, and
our countries’ histories.
The teachers participating now are Dot MacKenzie, Hala Fawzi, Ronaldo,
Ana Maria, Tibor Prievara, Rita Zeinstejer, Mona Bran and me.
·
Hospital Connection (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/03/20/hospital-connection/)
The Packard Children’s Hospital has a wonderful site for
kids which I’ve entitled Hospital Connection.(
http://www.lpch.org/kids/english/index.html)
It’s animated with text and audio support (be sure to click
on the closed-captioning “on”), and helps children understand how to get ready
to go to the hospital and what happens once they’re there.
There are lots of games and opportunities for vocabulary
development. It’s very accessible to English Language Learners at all
levels.
I’ve placed the link on my English For Beginners page under Health.
·
Visual Geography (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/03/13/visual-geography/)
Visual Geography (http://www.visualgeography.com/) is a nice site with images, information, and
quizzes about 85 countries around the world. .
The text is accessible to Intermediate English Language
Learners, and the images are obviously good for students of all levels. I like
the quizzes it has about each country, and I also really like a neat feature
called “Compare.” You can pick any two countries and easily compare their
demographic data with a click of the mouse.
I’ve placed the link on my Geography page under Sites That Cover Many Areas.
·
Article About Our School Getting Out Of Program
Improvement (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/03/10/article-about-our-school-getting-out-of-program-improvement/)
The Sacramento Bee today has
a short, but nice, article
(http://www.sacbee.com/education/story/773070.html) about our school, Luther Burbank High School,
getting out of the fourth year of Program Improvement.
You might want to check it out.
·
New “Best Search Engine” For English Language
Learners (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/03/09/new-best-engine-for-english-language-learners/)
Pagebull was number one in my The Best
Search Engines For ESL/EFL Learners — 2007. However, it looks like Pagebull is the first web
application that has appeared on any of my
“The
Best…” lists to go out of
business.
Charles Knight from the excellent blog Alt Search Engines quickly and graciously responded to my request
for suggestions of other similar search engines. Page Bull was great because it
displayed screenshots of the search results and not just text, which works so
much better for English Language Learners.
Charles recommended viewfour
(http://viewfour.com/) , which does as good of a job as Pagebull did, if not
better.
·
Home Computer Project Update (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/03/03/home-computer-project-update-2/)
TechLearning has just published an update on our Family
Literacy Project, where we provide home computers and Internet service to recent
immigrants. Check out the article, entitled Even More
Success With English Language Learning.( http://techlearning.com/story/showArticle.php?articleID=196605051)
·
The “Digital Vaults” Are An Incredible Find!
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/02/29/the-digital-vaults-are-an-incredible-find/)
I
just discovered an unbelievable resource from the National Archives called
“The Digital Vaults.” (http://www.digitalvaults.org/#) I know the year is young, but, so far at least, this is
the Find Of The Year!
It’s an entry into the vast resources of the National
Archives, and allows you to use those resources to create your own movies,
posters, and what it calls “Pathway Challenges” to… challenge others to find
connections between a series of images, documents, and other resources you put
together.
It’s such a huge resource I haven’t quite yet figured out
where I’ll put it on my website — probably in multiple pages and sections. You
just have to check it out!
Larry Ferlazzo’s Website
Update
March, 2008
Here’s the latest update
highlighting what I think are the best posts from my blog (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/) in the past month. Remember, if you want to receive daily
updates, since these “Top Ten” are just a small fraction of the new content I
add to my website (http://www.larryferlazzo.com/english.html) each month, you can subscribe for free to
receive all of them at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=168021 .
Several of the Top Ten
posts for this month are more of my “The Best….” Lists (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/about/websites-of-the-year/) . In those cases,
I’ve just included the link in this newsletter since including the list would
make this email much too long.
Here they are:
1)
The Best Art Websites For Learning English
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/02/01/the-best-art-websites-for-learning-english/)
2)
The Best Music Websites For Learning English
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/01/30/the-best-music-websites-for-learning-english/)
3)
The Best Websites For Intermediate Readers
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/01/26/the-best-websites-for-intermediate-readers/)
4) The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily and Quickly (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/?s=best+ways+to+create+online+content+easily%2C+quickly)
This is actually a four-part series. The link will take you to all four parts.
5) “What Are You Doing In The Computer
Lab?” is the
title of an article (http://techlearning.com/story/showArticle.php?articleID=196604984)
I wrote for TechLearning. In it, I discuss guidelines that I use and that I recommend
to other teachers for how to effectively work with students in computer
labs.
I thought readers might find it helpful for me to quickly
summarize them here:
* Use computers more to reinforce key concepts,
and less to teach them.
* Students can be producers of content and not just
consumers.
* Computers can be used to help student develop and deepen
relationships with each other, not just with the computer screen.
* Use time in the computer lab to help develop leadership
among students, and not just have them be your followers.
* Spend less time being the controller and more time
helping students develop self control.
I elaborate more on these points in the article.
They seem to have a very pro-active policy
about keeping inappropriate materials off
the site, too.
7)
Plagiarism. I’ve placed two links about plagiarism on my
English Themes For
Intermediate/Advanced page.
The first one, called
Plagiarism
(http://library.acadiau.ca/tutorials/plagiarism/) , is from Acadia
University, and should be accessible to Intermediate English Language
Learners. It’s an animated slideshow reviewing the problem.
The second one, called
Academic
Integrity (http://www.ryerson.ca/academicintegrity/tutorial.html) , is from Ryerson
University. It’s very well put together, and is basically a series of
animated stories with text and audio support. The language, though, might
only be accessible to advanced English Language Learners.
I typed in the keyword “immigration” and was able to find
quite a few that I know my students would consider “high-interest”
ones. I certainly got a better selection that I did when I
typed the same word at Amazon’s site. I think this might end up being
quite useful to teachers of English Language Learners.
9)
The Breathing Earth. Breathing Earth (http://www.breathingearth.net/) is an
intriguing visual representation of the effect each country has on climate
change. You move the cursor to a nation on a world map, and then see the
number of CO2 emissions that country makes each minute. It also shows
total population, and the birth and death rate of each country.
With guidance, English Language Learners could certainly
use this website to make some comparisons between countries and draw conclusions
from the data.
I’ve placed the link both
on my World
History page and my Geography and United States page. It’s
with a group of other links related to global warming near the bottom of each
page.
10) Create An Online
Scavenger Hunt With Zunal. Zunal (http://www.zunal.com/) is an easy way for
teachers (and students) to create webquests. I know there are
some specific parameters involved in using the term “webquest,” so
you can also use Zunal to create much simpler “online scavenger
hunts.”
At their most basic, it can be a series
of questions students have to
answer,
along with links to websites where the information can be found.
Zunal also acts as the host for the webquest or scavenger
hunt after its been created.
Larry Ferlazzo’s
Website Update
February,
2008
I hope the New Year has begun well for everyone. Here
is my usual “Top Ten” list of the best links I’ve written about this past month
in my blog. This month is a little different though. I’m going to be
listing my “Top Ten,” but five of them will be links to some additional lists of
“Websites of The Year” I’ve created since I sent out the last “Website
Update.” If I shared the links to each of the individual sites I wrote
about in these lists now this email would be far too long.
NEW WEBSITES OF THE
YEAR:
The Best
Websites For K-12 Writing Instruction/Reinforcment
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/01/11/the-best-websites-for-k-12-writing-instructionreinforcment/)
The Best
Websites For Learning About Civic Participation &
Citizenship
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/01/16/the-best-websites-for-learning-about-civic-participation-citizenship/)
The Best Health Sites For English Language Learners
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/01/03/the-best-health-sites-for-english-language-learners/)
The Best
Places To Learn Web 2.0 Basics — 2007
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2007/12/27/the-best-places-to-learn-web-20-basics-2007/)
Make a Face (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/01/08/make-a-face/)
(http://larryferlazzo.com/Student%20Work.html).
You can find lots of geography-related games on my
Geography (http://larryferlazzo.com/geography.html) page. You sort of figure that there are only so
many ways you can design a map-related game, right?
Scribble States
(http://jmtb02.com/flash/scribblestates.htm) you first are shown
numbered dots that you have to connect. Then, after you’ve connected them
all, you have to choose which U.S. state your drawing shows. You’re timed,
and after you finish one it shows another.
TechLearning Article on
ESL & Video Games
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/01/02/techlearning-article-on-esl-video-games/)
(http://www.techlearning.com/story/showArticle.php?articleID=196604915)
Geography
(http://larryferlazzo.com/geography.html) page
under Sites That Cover Many Areas .
Obviously, this edition is being sent out a little
early. I thought it would be helpful to people before everyone left for
Winter Break. Have a great vacation!
Wordmaster
( http://english.enorth.com.cn/bbcenglish/wordmaster/) is a wonderful site from the BBC. You’re
shown a sentence with a word missing (indicated by a blank). Then you have
to click on an on-screen keyboard to type the correct word “hangman”
style. You can ask for clues, and you’re competing against the
clock. You can also choose various levels of difficulty, and the game has
thousands of words.
Physics Life &
Instructify (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2007/12/14/physics-life-instructify/)
Physics
Life (http://www.physics.org/interact/physics-life/web/physics_life/) is a surprisingly accessible site
about….physics. It’s a series of interactive cartoons where students can
learn about the role of physics in their everyday lives. The basic
language is accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners. If users
want, they can click on areas to find out more detailed information, but that
info is probably beyond all but the most advanced English Language Learners.
Daft Doggy Does It
Again! (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2007/12/12/daft-doggy-does-it-again/)
Animated
Idioms (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2007/12/05/animated-idioms/)
Animated
Idioms (http://www.in2english.com.cn/working/archive.php?cid=10021028)
exercises. They include an animated cartoon with text and audio
explanations of each idiom.
Show Beyond Audio
Slideshows Again
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2007/12/03/show-beyond-audio-slideshows-again/)
Flashback History
Movies (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2007/12/01/flashback-history-movies/)
Neat Music
Sites (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2007/11/28/neat-music-sites/)
To Filter, Or Not
To Filter? Is That The Question?
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2007/11/26/to-filter-or-not-to-filter-is-that-the-question/)
Larry Ferlazzo’s Website
Update
Here are the “Top Ten” posts from my blog over the past
month. Remember, if you want to subscribe to a daily update by email, just
go to http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=168021 and
subscribe. It only takes a few seconds. I add well over one hundred
new links each month, and only highlight ten of them in each monthly
newsletter.
Browser Books Again
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2007/11/20/translating-and-listening/)
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2007/11/19/kid-friendly-simon-sez-santa/)
Newspaper
Article On Our Home Computer Project
.
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2007/11/03/maps-of-the-world/)
Launchball (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2007/10/25/launchball/)
Larry Ferlazzo’s Website Newsletter
Here’s the latest list of
“Top Ten” posts from my blog over the
past month. Again, though, I was only
able to keep it down to twelve. There
are a lot of good sites out there for English Language Learners.
The message
(http://groups.google.com/group/googleforeducators_educationresources/browse_thread/thread/90407dbf87dbc4b9?hl=en)
in the discussion group explains it
better and has a link to an example.
Joe Thompson
Free Rice Game
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2007/10/17/free-rice-game/)
I just learned about an intriguing
vocabulary game called Free
Rice (http://www.freerice.com/index.php) .
(http://www.bayworld.net/ferlazzo/englishint.html#word)
.
Problem/Solution
Essays (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2007/10/16/problemsolution-essays/)
Kindersay (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2007/10/11/kindersay/)
Kindersay(http://www.kindersay.com/words/?s=470de8685eaedf7a&gclid=) is a new free site that offers an
excellent multimedia experience where Beginning English Language Learners can
learn about 500 basic words.
(http://www.bayworld.net/ferlazzo/englishthemes.html#fav) .
“In
Practice” Post (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2007/10/10/in-practice-post/)
News For English Language
Learners
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2007/10/09/news-for-english-language-learners/)
Another
Ecological Footprint Calculator
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2007/10/08/another-ecological-footprint-calculator/)
Everyday
Life
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2007/10/04/everyday-life/)
( http://www.bayworld.net/ferlazzo/englishthemes.html#life)
Create A
Talking Picture
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2007/10/03/create-a-talking-picture/)
Wonderful
Panoramas
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2007/09/27/wonderful-panoramas/)
Sketchcast (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2007/09/24/sketchcast/)
Excellent
Online Language Program
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2007/09/24/excellent-online-language-program/)
Early Intermediates can check out these exercises (http://www.livemocha.com/subscriptions/view/3)
and
these samples (http://www.livemocha.com/subscriptions/view/4) .
Favorite Sites
(http://www.bayworld.net/ferlazzo/englishthemes.html#fav) on my English Themes For
Beginners, at least until and if they start charging for it.
Larry Ferlazzo’s Website
Newsletter
This month I couldn’t narrow
it down to the “Top Ten” posts. Instead,
I’ve got the “Top Twelve” posts. I hope
you find them helpful.
(http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2007/09/21/home-computers-english-language-learning/
Home Computers and English Language Learning (http://www.bayworld.net/ferlazzo/homecomputerupdate.html) is another short article I’ve written at TechLearning’s (http://techlearning.com/) request. It expands on some blog posts I wrote last week about the latest news about our home computer project.
ZIPskinny
(http://zipskinny.com/) is an amazing research site. All you have to
do is type in a zip code for anywhere in the United States, and you immediately
get information from the 2000 Census, along with a map of the area.Not only
that, but you can also compare the data with neighboring zip codes.My English
Language Learner classes usually do demographic studies, and Intermediate level
students should be able to access this site. I’ve placed the link on my
Examples of
Student Work (http://www.bayworld.net/ferlazzo/Student%20Work.html) page under Student
Neighborhood Maps. It may
seem like a strange place to put it, but that’s where I’ve put another site they
use to create neighborhood demographic maps. So, I figure, for now that’s
a good place for this link, too.
Big Huge
Labs (http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/) has an incredible number of web tools to use
with images from the web.One of my favorites is the ability to quickly and
easily create virtual Trading Cards. Students can find the url of any
image on the web (preferably, of course, one with a Creative Commons license)
and, along with a text description, turn it into a baseball-like trading
card. Here’s an example of one I created in 30 seconds of Abraham
Lincoln (http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/viewpostcard.php?id=30811-93961) .Students can create the card, email it to a
teacher, and then post the url on a blog or website.There’s a fair amount of
space to write text, so students can use the cards to make mini-reports — about
English, Science, or Social Studies subjects. I’ve placed the link on my
Examples of
Student Work page under Student
Trading Cards.
I thought readers of this blog might find it useful to hear about the free online ESL journals I read regularly. I also have them listed on my Teacher’s Page (http://www.bayworld.net/ferlazzo/englishdetails.html) under the Online Journals section.These include Humanising Language Teaching (my personal favorite)( http://www.hltmag.co.uk/) ; The Internet ESL Journal (http://iteslj.org/) , sponsors of the most extensive list of ESL resources on the Web; The International Journal of