nastya_gepp / Pixabay PBS’ “Above The Noise” videos are great – they always have accompanying lesson plans and transcripts, and they cover timely topics of interest to young people. In addition, they have a direct connection to Google Classroom and offer their videos in versions on and off YouTube in case you’re in districts that make poor decisions (like ours) to have extraordinarily strict limi
geralt / Pixabay I’ve just mailed out the May issue of my very simple free monthly email newsletter . I sent out two special coronavirus-related editions of the newsletter earlier in March. This is the “regular” monthly version. It has over 3,000 subscribers, and you can subscribe here . Of course, you can also join the eighteen thousand others who subscribe to this blog daily. Here Are 8 Ways Yo
As regular readers know, at the end of each week I share the five most popular posts from the previous seven days. I thought people might find it interesting to see a list of the ten most popular posts from the previous thirty
Six Weeks Into Remote Teaching & Still Learning … is the headline of my latest Education Week Teacher column. Four teachers–from 2nd grade to high school–discuss what they’ve learned over the past six weeks of remote teaching, including the need to provide less work and more support to their students. Here are some excerpts:
(Note: I am going to publish this same post once each month to remind regular readers and inform newer ones about how to access my “Best” lists) As regular readers know, I have about 2,100 categorized and regularly updated “Best” lists. You can find all of them in broad categories here . The link to that page can also be found at the top right of my blog: My Best Of Series I also have them all on
May 4th-8th is Teacher Appreciation Week in the United States. You can find a ton of related resources at The Best Resources To Learn About World Teachers Day .
jonye123 / Pixabay Though May Day is an ancient celebration , since the late nineteenth century it has primarily been recognized as a time to celebrate workers’ rights. Though it’s unlikely that there will be the usual demonstrations today, you still might be interested in The Best Resources For Learning About May Day .
I’ve recently begun this weekly post where I’ll be sharing resources I’m adding to The Best Social Emotional Learning (SEL) Resources or other related “Best” lists. You might also be interested in THE BEST SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING RESOURCES OF 2019 – PART TWO Finally, check out “Best” Lists Of The Week: Social Emotional Learning Resources . Here are this week’s picks: High Anxiety: Imagining the
Assessing the Needs of Black Students During the Coronavirus Crisis is the headline of my latest Education Week Teacher column. Jamila Lyiscott, Ph.D., writes about the challenges facing Black students before and during the Coronavirus crisis and how schools must invite them to help identify their own needs. Here are some excerpts:
Soldier in the Secret War recalls experience 45 years after resettling in U.S. is a long and interesting story from NBC News. Thousands of Hmong live in the Sacramento area and make up one-third of our school’s population. I’m adding it to The Best Websites To Learn About The Hmong .
DarkWorkX / Pixabay I helped do a webinar with the American Federations of Teacher’s Share My Lesson platform, and you can access it for free here . Here is how they described it: Join Diane Staehr Fenner from SupportEd; teacher and author, Larry Ferlazzo, and Lydia Breiseth with ColorÃn Colorado for a webinar on the challenges of distance learning during the Coronavirus Pandemic.
Yesterday, I posted Statistic Of The Day: Upcoming Budget Cuts Will Devastate Schools. For even more depressing news, check out the Learning Policy Institute’s new report, The Impact of the COVID-19 Recession on Teaching Positions.
ElisaRiva / Pixabay In talking with colleagues and seeing comments on social media from educators and parents alike, I’ve begun to wonder if we might be going about this whole “distance learning” thing all wrong. I’m going to preface what I want to say in this blog post with reprinting what something I’ve written previously : Seventy percent of the school year had already been completed by the ti
qimono / Pixabay I’ve shared a few of my ideas of what I’m doing during my daily Newcomer English Language Learners class (see VIDEO: HERE’S AN EXAMPLE OF MY DAILY ONLINE LESSON FOR ELL NEWCOMERS ). I know there are a lot of other great ideas out there. There have been four Google slides presentations of different ideas that I’ve seen shared regularly on social media that are filled with some coo
It’s unfortunately no surprise, but schools are going to get creamed by upcoming budget cuts. The San Francisco Chronicle outlined what it might look like in its article, From bad to worse: California schools face devastating budget cuts due to the coronavirus crisis (which you might not be able to access because of a paywall). And, it’s not going to help that, as of now, additional federal aid t
Google has just announced that it’s making Google Meet, its video conferencing platform, free for everybody (see Google Meet premium video conferencing—free for everyone ). Of course, it had made it free for teachers to use previously (though our district, in a ridiculous decision, still has not made it available for students to use). I’m adding this info to The Best Online Tools For Real-Time Co
‘We Do the Best We Can’ – Lessons From Six Weeks of Remote Teaching is the headline of my latest Education Week Teacher column. Four educators share lessons from six weeks of remote teaching, including the importance of communication and community and what they’ve changed in that time. Here are some excerpts:
KlausHausmann / Pixabay TED-Ed’s latest lesson and video is on Sojourner Truth. I’m adding it to The Best Sites To Teach About African-American History .
Make Learning Stick: Activating Background Knowledge When Teaching Remotely is the topic of my latest ten-minute BAM! Radio show. I’m joined in the conversation by Cheryl Abla, Elizabeth Villanueva, Adam Fachler and Jeffrey Wilhelm, who have also all contributed written commentaries to my Ed Week Teacher column. I’m adding this show to All My BAM Radio Shows – Linked With Descriptions .
The Sacramento Bee reports our governor is suggesting that school begin a lot earlier than usual: California schools might reopen as early as July, Gov. Newsom says. Our district ordinarily begins in late August, so this could be a full four weeks earlier than when we are scheduled to begin. I have to say I have very mixed feelings about this. I feel like I’ve been working incredibly hard since s
Wokandapix / Pixabay I have a number of regular weekly features (see HERE IS A LIST (WITH LINKS) OF ALL MY REGULAR WEEKLY FEATURES ). This is a relatively new addition to that list. Some of these resources will be added to The Best Advice On Teaching K-12 Online (If We Have To Because Of The Coronavirus) – Please Make More Suggestions ! and the best will go to The “Best Of The Best” Resources To
janeb13 / Pixabay “Becoming” is a Netflix film coming on May 6th: Becoming is an intimate look into the life of former First Lady Michelle Obama during a moment of profound change, not only for her personally but for the country she and her husband served over eight impactful years in the White House. The film offers a rare and up-close look at her life, taking viewers behind the scenes as she em
Four Ways to Support African American Students Through the COVID-19 Emergency is the headline of my latest Education Week Teacher column. Educator Adeyemi Stembridge, Ph.D., shares strategies to bolster African American students during our present emergency, such as inviting them to share their stories and their art. Here’s an excerpt:
The Webby Awards just announced their nominees for this year. It always takes awhile to look through them to distinguish the wheat from chaff, and it’s not helped by its cumbersome navigation process, but here are some online learning games that I discovered there: Passport To Mars is from Scholastic, and puts you in the position of being an astronaut traveling to….Mars. Stax is a game designed t
Alexas_Fotos / Pixabay FRANCE 24 English has just unveiled a series of excellent and very accessible short videos about famous pandemics in history. You can see the entire playlist here . I’ve embedded an example below. I’m adding it to A BEGINNING LIST OF THE BEST RESOURCES FOR LEARNING ABOUT THE CORONAVIRUS.
A new study, which actually describes three separate ones reinforcing the same conclusion, finds that students become more motivated to learn science if they are told about famous scientists who supposedly succeeded more from their effort than from their natural talents. You can read about it at Not All Scientists Are Equal: Role Aspirants Influence Role Modeling Outcomes in STEM , and it is NOT
Eight years ago, in another somewhat futile attempt to reduce the backlog of resources I want to share, I began this occasional “” post where I share three or four links I think are particularly useful and related to…ed tech, including some Web 2.0 apps. You might also be interested in THE BEST ED TECH RESOURCES OF 2019 – PART TWO , as well as checking out all my edtech resources . Here are this
Visualization of ‘Tips for Remote Teaching With ELL Students’ is the headline of my latest Education Week Teacher column. Teacher Wendi Pillars shares a visual illustration of the points I made in my video, “Tips for Remote Teaching With ELL Students.”
Every two months, I reprint this post so that new subscribers learn about these resources. I have many free resources, including excerpts and student hand-outs, available from all my books. Clicking on the covers will lead you to them. Look for a fourth book in my student motivation series (out in 2022) and a second edition of The ESL/ELL Teachers Survival Guide (out in 2021), along with three bo
Editor’s Note: I’ve been publishing a series of posts – both here and at Education Week – sharing teacher’s experiences dealing with the school closure crisis. The first post appearing here was headlined Guest Post: My School Was Closed Because Of COVID-19 & Here Is A Report About Our Online Teaching. Eva Buyuksimkesyan shares her experience in the second, Guest Post: Teaching An Istanbul English
mohamed_hassan / Pixabay Jeffrey Garrett and Manuel Rustin host a great series called All Of The Above . I was honored to appear on their latest episode:
PhotoMIX-Company / Pixabay I used to post weekly collections of my best tweets, and used Storify to bring them together. Unfortunately, Storify went under. Fortunately, however, Wakelet was a new tool that was able to import all of a person’s Storifys. So you can see all those previous Twitter “Best” lists here . You might also be interested in MY MOST POPULAR TWEETS IN 2019 – PART TWO and NEW &
May is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month in the United States. You might be interested in The Best Sites For Asian Pacific American Heritage Month.
Here’s my regular round-up of new “The Best…” lists I posted this month (you can see all 2,150 of them categorized here ): THE BEST VIDEOS FOR TEACHING & LEARNING ABOUT – YES – “POOP” THE BEST RESOURCES FOR LEARNING HOW BLACK GIRLS ARE TREATED UNFAIRLY & WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. GAVE HIS “MOUNTAINTOP” SPEECH 52 YEARS AGO TODAY – HERE ARE TEACHING & LEARNING RESOURCES THE BEST S
I regularly highlight my picks for the most useful posts for each month — not including “The Best…” lists. I also use some of them in a more extensive monthly newsletter I send-out. You can see older Best Posts of the Month at Websites Of The Month (more recent lists can be found here ). You can also see my all-time favorites here . I’ve also been doing “A Look Back” series reviewing old favorite
I’m making a change in the content of the regular feature. In addition to sharing the top five posts that have received the most “hits” in the preceding seven days (though they may have originally been published on an earlier date), I will also include the top five posts that have actually appeared in the past week. Often, these are different posts. You might also be interested in IT’S THE THIRTE
