Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day… | …For Teaching ELL, ESL, & EFL
LARRY FERLAZZO’S WEBSITES OF THE DAY
Sorry Again About The Multiple Emails
Sorry again for the multiple emails. This post is a test one being sent out by Edublogs staff to confirm the problem has been fixed. It’s another example of why I recommend Edublogs so highly — their customer service is unmatchable!
Prezi: “Syracuse: A Citywide Education Experiment”
Syracuse: A Citywide Education Experiment is a Prezi presentation (embedded below) by Sarah Sparks from Education Week. It’s on a pretty interesting effort in…Syracuse. It expands on the idea of community schools, and sounds great. I still have the same concern that I have with most community schools, however — that families might be viewed more as clients instead of partners. I’m adding this The
Sorry About Multiple Emails About The Last Post
Some of you who subscribe to this blog might have received four or five emails notifying you of the last post. Sorry about that — something in the email system went kaflooey. I hope that’s the first, and last time, for that problem.
Great Collection: “55 Best Back-to-School Articles for Parents”
Dr. Marilyn Price-Mitchell has posted a great collection of the 55 Best Back-to-School Articles for Parents. I don’t think you’re going to find anything like it anywhere else on the Web!
“Parents Get Testy Over Philadelphia’s New School Report Cards”
Parents Get Testy Over Philadelphia’s New School Report Cards is a new article about parents and the more and more discredited idea of giving grades to schools. Here’s an excerpt: “We’re using consultants to grade schools instead of spending more time fixing them,” said school activist Helen Gym. Several saw the report card as little more than a thinly veiled effort to use consultants to justify
Excellent Article On Teaching Making Home Visits — & It Features Our School!
Home visits help Sacramento families see college path is an extensive article in today’s Sacramento Bee that features the staff and families at our school. It’s a good one, and I’m adding it to The Best Resources For Learning About Teacher Home Visits.
The Guardian: Parents Complain About Not Getting Comments On Report Cards
School reports: could teachers do better? is the headline of a recent article in the British newspaper, The Guardian. Here’s how it begins: The school report is the traditional end to the academic year. But parents are more critical of them than ever: some say computer-generated comments are too bland and general, while teachers grumble about having to produce hundreds of reports in the midst of
“New Orleans Schools Face Complaint About Treatment of ELL Families”
From Education Week, another example of how NOT to encourage parent engagement: A new complaint alleging that some charter schools in New Orleans are discriminating against the non-English-speaking parents of Vietnamese and Latino students has been filed with federal civil rights officials. Announced earlier today, the complaint—brought by two Asian-American civil rights organizations—says that a
“How To Do Student-Led Conferences”
How To Do Student-Led Conferences is a good post by Pernille Ripp sharing how to organize student-led conferences with parents and teachers. I’m adding it to The Best Resources On Parent/Teacher Conferences.
Parent Involvement Advice For Principals
Parent Outreach for Busy Leaders is an article at the Responsive Classroom website that offers basic, but good, advice on eight things principals can do to help promote good relationships with families. It’s worth a look….
“Community Learning Centers” In Cincinnati
Here’s a pretty interesting piece in the Huffington Post about community schools in Cincinnati. Here’s an excerpt: A little more than a decade ago, voters passed a bond levy making possible the rebuilding or renovating of every public school in the district. The promise to taxpayers was that the facilities would be much more than just traditional academic settings during traditional school hours.
Big Benefits From Home Visits In Jamaica
I’ve posted a lot about the importance of making home visits to families, pre-school parent involvement, and parent engagement in countries across the globe (you can find those posts here). Now, here’s a story that combines all of those elements. A report has recently come out on pretty amazing results that came from making home visits to families in Jamaica. You can read an article about it in th
“Do Schools Work Hard Enough to Engage Parents?”
Do Schools Work Hard Enough to Engage Parents? is a new and useful post by Peter DeWitt at Education Week. He shares some practical suggestions. Here’s how the post ends: Parental involvement is about involving parents in all aspects of the educational conversation. Not everyone will take part in it, but those who do may help stretch everyone’s thinking. We want to make sure that when our parents
The Best Education Blogs For Parents
10 Amazing Education Blogs for Parents is a helpful post from Ed Tech Review that I learned about from Starr Sackstein. I think they missed a few important ones, though, so I decided to make my own list. Let me know if you think I’m missing some: Parent Cortical Mass Raising Modern Learners Joe Mazza’s blog, eFace Today Our School: Parents As Partners ParentNet Unplugged from Parent Involvement Ma
Video: “Parent Involvement Matters”
Here’s a new video from PTO Today. There’s probably nothing new in that’s new to readers, but it’s short and to the point:
Around The Web In ESL/EFL/ELL
I’ve started a somewhat regular feature where I share a few posts and resources from around the Web related to ESL/EFL or to language in general that have caught my attention: KQED, the San Franciso public radio and television station, has an ESL Educator Resources site with a number of useful lesson plans. Delta Notes 1: Error Correction is by Lizzie Pinard. I’m adding it to The Best Resources
Two Quotes Of The Day On Storytelling
I’m a big believer in the use of storytelling in teaching (see The Power Of Stories for more details on how I do it). Once Upon A Time At The Office: 10 Storytelling Tips To Help You Be More Persuasive is a good article from Fast Company on the same topic. Here’s an excerpt: The article also mentioned this nice quote from Ira Glass: While I’m at it, here’s a Slideshare presentation that might b
Learn CPR Through A “Choose Your Own Adventure” Game
Lifesaver is an online video game designed to help you learn CPR through the “choose your own adventure” game genre. I’m adding it to The Best Places To Read & Write “Choose Your Own Adventure” Stories.
Guest Post: Commentary On New IB Theory Of Knowledge Guide
Earlier this week, I posted Attention IB Theory Of Knowledge Teachers: How Is The New TOK Guide Going To Affect How You Teach? I’ll be posting a few guest posts from TOK teachers in response to that post. Today’s piece is from Brad Ovenell-Carter. Brad is the director of educational technology and TOK department head at Mulgrave School, an independent, coed K12 IB World School in Vancouver, Canada
AUG 15
Infographic: “Nursing Your Lungs — Don’t Smoke”
I’m adding this infographic to The Best Sites For ELL’s To Learn About The Dangers Of Smoking: Created by: www.OnlineNursingPrograms.com
Video: “Pie Charts for Math Nerds”
I’m adding this video to The Best Multimedia Resources For Introducing Students To The Advantages Of Charts, Graphs & Infographics: Thanks to Flowing Data for the tip.
The Best Resources About The March On Washington
The fiftieth anniversary of The March On Washington is coming up later this month, so I thought readers would appreciated bringing together a collection of resources that I’ll be adding to as the day grows even closer. You might also be interested in: The Best Websites For Learning About Martin Luther King The Best Resources To Remember Dr. Martin Luther King’s Death (& Life) The Best Sites F
Great Short Video: “Dolores Huerta Encourages Educators to Organize”
Legendary organizer and former teacher Dolores Huerta offers some advice to teachers:
All My Ed Week Posts On Classroom Management In One Place!
Q & A Collections: Classroom Management Advice brings all my Education Week Teachers posts on classroom management together in one place. I’m adding it to My Best Posts On Classroom Management.
AUG 14
August’s (2013) Best Tweets — Part Three
Every month I make a few short lists highlighting my choices of the best resources I shared through (and learned from) Twitter, but didn’t necessarily include them in posts here on my blog. I’ve already shared in earlier posts several new resources I found on Twitter — and where I gave credit to those from whom I learned about them. Those are not included again in this post. If you don’t use Twit
Wow, Google Street View “Treks” Site Is Impressive!
Google has just created a special site for the Street Views they’ve done in remote and/or unusual sites, including Burj Khalifa, Iqaluit, Mt. Everest, the Grand Canyon, the Great Barrier Reef, the Amazon Basin and the Kennedy Space Center. More are on the way. I’m adding it to The Best Websites For Learning & Teaching Geography. Thanks to TechCrunch for the tip.
Quote Of The Day: Students “Bring It To Life”
Medicine’s Most Important Teachers is a short post over at The Atlantic that is about the education of doctors and their role with patients. However, if you just change a handful of words, it’s very applicable to teachers and students. Here’s an excerpt:
“The Top Twitter Feeds in Education Policy”
I periodically post places to find resources that are supposedly the “most popular” of something or other. I might or might not agree with the criteria used to determine that popularity, but I nevertheless find some useful pieces of information. You can find a collection of these sites at The Best Places To Find The Most Popular (& Useful) Resources For Educators – 2013 (So Far). The Top Twitt
Several Useful Resources On Implementing Common Core
Here are several additions to The Most Useful Resources For Implementing Common Core: The Core of the Common Core, Part 1: The Anchor Standards for Reading is from Burkins and Yaris. It provides metaphors and analogies in explaining Common Core. The same site has a Periodic Table of Common Core Standards. Thanks to Wendi Pillars for sharing those two resources on Twitter. Achieve The Core shares
Getty Museum Makes Nearly 5,000 Public Domain Images Available Online — Will Increase In Future
The Getty Museum just made an announcement: The initial focus of the Open Content Program is to make available all images of public domain artworks in the Getty’s collections. Today we’ve taken a first step toward this goal by making roughly 4,600 high-resolution images of the Museum’s collection free to use, modify, and publish for any purpose. I’m adding this info to The Best Online Sources Fo
A Collection Of “The Best” Lists On Assessment
I’ve posted several “The Best” lists on assessment-related issues over the years, and thought I’d narrow them down a bit and post a small collection. Here they are: Q & A Collections: Assessment brings together all my Education Weeks post on the topic. The Best Resources For Learning About Performance Assessment The Best Resources For Learning About Formative Assessment The Best Resources On
AUG 13
Video: “Baby Panda Meets Her Mother “
From The Associated Press via GoKicker: Zookeepers in Taipei, Taiwan’s zoo introduced a month-old baby panda cub to her mother. The cub is kept in a separate cage due to concerns that her mother might kill… her. I’m adding it to The Best Sites To Learn About Pandas.
Illustrated J.K. Rowling Quote On Failure
I’m adding this illustrated J.K. Rowling quotation on failure to The Best Posts, Articles & Videos About Learning From Mistakes & Failures:
If You Don’t Have Teacher Access To YouTube At Your School, Then This Search Engine is a “Must”
Richard Byrne has created a nice list of 47 Alternatives to YouTube. Yes, it’s nice and useful. However, the killer part of what he’s done is create a custom search engine for those 47 sites. If you don’t have teacher access to YouTube at your school, you’ll definitely be using this search engine a lot. Richard has also created a helpful guide for anyone to create their own custom search engines.
The Best Posts About The New York Testing Fiasco
You probably have already heard about the big “drop” in scores for New York students on new Common Core assessments. Here’s a quick list of good posts giving their “take” on what happened. Feel free to share more in the comments section: How come officials could predict new test score results? is by Carol Burris. What big drop in new standardized test scores really means is by Carol Burris. Stop a
Have Teenage Students & Interested In Doing A Simple International Project?
Ana Maria Menezes is a longtime teacher of English in Brazil, and a well-known blogger. She’s beginning a project with her students and inviting others to participate. I’ve asked her to write a short guest post about it: PROJECT: Education here, there, everywhere. Do you have teenage students? Do you have teenagers at home who could give us a hand? I teach English to teenagers in Brazil and we’v
Lingua.ly Is A Useful Tool For Second-Language Learners
Lingua.ly is an innovative free Chrome extension to help people learn English, Spanish, English, French, Hebrew and Arabic. After installation and choosing your present language and the one you want to learn, you can click on any unfamiliar word on any website and you’ll be shown it’s definition in your first language, along audio on how it’s pronounced. That works well, but isn’t that innovative
All My Education Week Posts On Assessment In One Place!
Q & A Collections: Assessment is my newest post over at Education Week Teacher. It brings together all my posts there on….assessment.
Quote Of The Day: “Your Thoughts Can Release Abilities Beyond Normal Limits”
Your Thoughts Can Release Abilities Beyond Normal Limits is a new article in Scientific American that ties in to a lot of what Carol Dweck writes about (see The Best Resources On Helping Our Students Develop A “Growth Mindset”). The piece shares some nice examples, though, as I’ve said before, we need to remember that Our Students Are Not Supermen & Superwomen. Here’s an excerpt:
“Rewordify” Is One Of The Most Unique Sites Out There For English Language Learners & Others
Rewordify is a new free site developed by Neil Goldman, a high school special education teacher in Illinois. He’s used his prior computer programming experience to build — from scratch — a tool that lets you copy and paste any text (or any type in any website), automatically identifies more challenging words, and then provides simplified words to replace them. Depending upon the settings you choo
AUG 12
This Week’s “Round-Up” Of Good Posts & Articles On Education Policy
photo credit: Milosh Kosanovich precisiondigitalpics.com via photopin cc Here are several relatively recent good posts and articles on educational policy issues: California Districts Get NCLB Waiver Despite Union Objections is a great post by my colleague Alice Mercer. I’m adding it to The Best Posts & Articles On The NCLB Waiver Given To Eight California School Districts (Including Ours). Te
This May Be The Best Geography Site Of The Year: “40 maps that explain the world”
40 maps that explain the world is a great collection from the Washington Post that may be the best geography site of the year. It links to another site called 40 Maps They Didn’t Teach You In School that has a number of other good maps. However, that second site also includes a few maps with topics and language that wouldn’t be appropriate for the classroom. I’m adding the link to The Best Websit
Attention IB Theory Of Knowledge Teachers: How Is The New TOK Guide Going To Affect How You Teach?
As most IB Theory of Knowledge teachers know, and as regular readers of this blog know, the International Baccalaureate program has published a new TOK Guide. After having a conversation with Chris Coey, a colleague who attended a summer TOK training, and carefully reviewing the new guide, I thought I’d share some of preliminary thoughts and an invitation to other TOK teachers to respond in a num
“Viscomsoft” Is Yet Another Online Photo-Editing Tool
Viscomsoft is yet another free online photo-editing tool. It’s actually a “suite” of tools, with twenty different options. I’m adding it to The Best Sites For Online Photo-Editing & Photo Effects which, inexplicably, has become extraordinarily popular.
“Mighty Meeting” Lets You Easily Create Free Online Meetings For An Unlimited Number Of Participants
Mighty Meeting is a free site that lets you create free online meetings where a slide presentation or documents can be shared. It seems to work quite simply, which is always a plus. I’m adding it to The Best Online Tools For Real-Time Collaboration. Thanks to Joyce Valenza for the tip.
AUG 11
Fun Video: “Boston As A Second Language”
Tom Whitford was kind enough to share this fun video on Twitter. It’s the first in a series (you can see the rest by going directly to YouTube). Everybody will enjoy, but especially ESL teachers:
“BrainRush” Lets You Create Online Learning Activities & Monitor Student Progress
I learned about BrainRush from Eric Sheninger. Right now, it only lets you create flash card activities, but it has plans in the near future for several other learning activities. What’s really nice about the site is that you can create virtual classrooms and monitor student progress. You can assign students activities you or other users create. I personally prefer to also have students make thei
Video: “The true story of Sacajawea”
I’ve embedded a new video from TED-Ed on Sacajawea below. You can see the entire lesson here. And you can find all of my collected resources on the Lewis and Clark Expedition here at my United States History class blog.
Updated “Best and Worst Education News of 2013 — So Far”
I updated Best and Worst Education News of 2013 — So Far and it was published by the Huffington Post. You might want to check it out….
“A Good Beginning is More Than Half of the Whole”
“A Good Beginning is More Than Half of the Whole” is title of part two of my Education Week Teacher series on starting the new year strong. Author/educators Joanne Rooney, Harry and Rosemary Wong, and Peggy Campbell-Rush provide their suggestions. I’ve also included ideas sent-in by readers.
“Why we can’t all get along over school reform”
My previous post about the importance of tension was just reprinted in The Washington Post as Why we can’t all get along over school reform I’m adding it to The Best Posts & Articles On Building Influence & Creating Change.