Latest News and Comment from Education

Saturday, December 7, 2019

This Week With Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... The latest news and resources in education since 2007

Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... | The latest news and resources in education since 2007

This Week With Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... 

 The latest news and resources in education since 2007





This Week’s “Round-Up” Of Useful Posts & Articles On Ed Policy Issues

Here are some recent useful posts and articles on educational policy issues (You might also be interested in THE BEST ARTICLES, VIDEOS & POSTS ON EDUCATION POLICY IN 2019 – PART TWO ): The Gates Foundation has enormous impact. Its CEO leaving could have an enormous impact, too. is from Recode. I’m adding it to The Best Resources For Learning About The Role Of Private Foundations In Education Poli
UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity List Is Impressive – & New To Me!

Many of us are familiar with UNESCO’s list of World Heritage Sites . However, until I read a NY Times article about Italian espresso , I had never heard of UNESCO’s list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. It includes : oral traditions, performing arts, social practices, rituals, festive events, knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe or the knowledge and skills to pro

YESTERDAY

Around The Web In ESL/EFL/ELL

BiljaST / Pixabay Five years ago I began this 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. You might also be interested in THE BEST RESOURCES, ARTICLES & BLOG POSTS FOR TEACHERS OF ELLS IN 2019 – PART ONE and THE BEST RESOURCES, ARTICLES & BLOG POSTS FOR TEACHERS OF ELLS IN 2019 – PART TWO.
2020 Is Just Around The Corner – Here Are Teaching & Learning Resources About The New Year!

DeltaWorks / Pixabay The New Year is approaching fast! You might be interested in The Best Sites For Learning About New Year Celebrations .
A Look Back: New Study Says KIPP Students Are More Likely To Go To College, But…..

I’m beginning to republish posts that made it onto my A LOOK BACK: 2019’S BEST POSTS FROM THIS BLOG – PART TWO list. qimono / Pixabay Today’s education media is awash with stories about a new study saying that students who attend a KIPP charter school are more likely to attend college than those who do not attend their schools: Students who attended a KIPP middle school a decade ago were 13 perce
New Four-Part Video Series On “Teaching Slavery In America”

orythys / Pixabay I’m adding this new four-part video series from Newsy to USEFUL RESOURCES FOR LEARNING ABOUT THE 400TH ANNIVERSARY OF BRINGING ENSLAVED AFRICANS TO AMERICA :
Canva Launches Easy Video-Editing Tool

OpenClipart-Vectors / Pixabay Canva has been working towards becoming an “all-in-one” online tool for just about everybody – for creating posters, attractive quotations, infographics, and more. Today, it expanded to video-editing. You can read more about it at TechCrunch and at Business Insider (both articles talk about a bunch of additional new features, too) and watch a video about it embedded
Goldmine Of Printables For Primary Source Analysis, Including Versions For ELLs

The National Archives has a collection of eighteen different sheets that can be used by students for analyzing primary sources, including versions specifically made for use with ELLs. The worksheets could also be used with non-primary sources, and include ones targeting maps, documents and photos. I’m adding them to The Best Resources For Using Primary Sources .

DEC 05

Last Call: What Is The Best Education-Related Book You Read In 2019?

I’ve received lots of recommendations since I published this post last week. Readers have ten more days to send in their choices! Every year, I ask readers of this blog to share – either in the comments section or on Twitter – the title and author of their favorite education-related book, along with one or two sentences explaining why they chose it. It’s that time again! Please share them with me
New BBC Video: “Theory of Evolution: How did Darwin come up with it?”

aitoff / Pixabay I’m adding this new BBC video to The Best Online Resources To Learn About Charles Darwin :
Pins Of The Week

I’m fairly active on Pinterest and, in fact, have curated 19,000 resources there that I haven’t shared on this blog. I thought readers might find it useful if I began sharing a handful of my most recent “pins” each week (I’m not sure if you can see them through an RSS Reader – you might have to click through to the original post). You might also be interested in MY MOST POPULAR PINS OF 2019 The f
A Look Back: According To New Research, Rita Pierson Was More Right Than Not When She Said, “Kids don’t learn from people they don’t like.”

I’m beginning to republish posts that made it onto my A LOOK BACK: 2019’S BEST POSTS FROM THIS BLOG – PART TWO list. Many teachers have seen the late Rita Pierson’s great TED Talk and, if you haven’t, it’s embedded at the bottom of this post. Perhaps the most quoted line from the video is “Kids don’t learn from people they don’t like.” Plenty of research shows the importance of teacher/student re
Dec. 18th Is International Migrants Day – Here Are Teaching & Learning Resources

YvonneScholz / Pixabay The United Nations has declared December 18th to be International Migrants Day . You might be interested in: The Best Sites For Learning About World Refugee Day The Best Sites For Learning About Immigration In The United States The Best Places Where Students Can Tell Their – And/Or Their Families – Immigration Story The Best Posts On The Migration Policy Institute Report On
Two Neat Visual Representations Of The Ocean And Of Space

FelixMittermeier / Pixabay Flowing Data just shared these two pretty amazing visual representations: I’m adding The Deep Sea to The Best Sites For Learning About The World’s Oceans . I’m adding The Size Of Space to The Best Web Tools That Show You Objects To Scale .
Wash. Post Publishes My Annual “best and worst education news” Of The Year

mohamed_hassan / Pixabay The Washington Post has just published my annual round-up of the year’s education news. Check out The best and worst education news of 2019 — and one item hard to categorize , which also contains links to many years of my previous “years-in-review.” I’m adding this list to All My 2019 “Best” Lists In One Place!

DEC 04

A Look Back: A Simple Way I Differentiate TPR (Total Physical Response) Lessons – Do You Have Other Suggestions?

I’m beginning to republish posts that made it onto my A LOOK BACK: 2019’S BEST POSTS FROM THIS BLOG – PART TWO list. harishs / Pixabay Most teachers of English Language Learners are familiar with TPR (Total Physical Response) – see The Best Resources For Learning About Total Physical Response (TPR) . TPR can probably be described most simply as a teacher (or a student) modeling an action at the s
Video: “What Will Happen If We Raise the Minimum Wage?”

geralt / Pixabay I’m adding this new public television video for students to The Best Resources On Why Raising The Minimum Wage Is Important :
Three Accessible Ways To Search For & Find My “Best” Lists

(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
New Curriculum For Teaching Online Information Literacy Looks Fantastic!

pixel2013 / Pixabay The Stanford History Education Group is on a bunch of “Best” lists, including The Best Places To Find Free (And Good) Lesson Plans On The Internet . They offer amazing history lessons. Today, the unveiled a new curriculum on information literacy called Civic Online Reasoning , and it looks fantastic. Here’s how they describe it: Students are confused about how to evaluate onli

DEC 03

‘Instructional Coaching Can Be Frustrating at Times’

is the headline of my latest Education Week Teacher column. In it, Lisa Westman, Dr. Debbie Silver, Dr. Carol Chanter, Heather Wolpert-Gawron, Kristin Rouleau, and Keisha Rembert share their commentaries on effective instructional coaching. Here are some excerpts:
Most Popular Posts Of The Week

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 TWELFT
A Look Back: Here’s The Article & Prompt That Students Used For An Essay On Cellphone Use – Plus Some Of Their Responses

I’m beginning to republish posts that made it onto my A LOOK BACK: 2019’S BEST POSTS FROM THIS BLOG – PART TWO list. JESHOOTS-com / Pixabay Student cellphone use in class is definitely a problem. However, I consider it more of an annoyance than one worthy of some of the kind of “nuclear options” some schools are taking by having students put them into pouches (see Ed Week’s recent article, School
Video: “LANDMARKS OF THE WORLD – 100 Famous Landmarks for Kids”

Free-Photos / Pixabay I’m adding this video to The Best Websites For Learning & Teaching Geography :
The Best News Reports & Commentaries On This Year’s PISA Results

geralt / Pixabay The PISA results were announced today. It’s a test given to countries around the world to measure student progress. I’ve shared posts about it for many years, and you can see them all here . You might also be interested in The Best Sites For Getting Some Perspective On International Test Comparison Demagoguery. ‘It Just Isn’t Working’: PISA Test Scores Cast Doubt on U.S. Educatio
My Latest BAM! Radio Show Is On Exceptional Math Lessons

What Works: My Best Math Lesson Ever and Why It Worked is the topic of my latest ten-minute BAM! Radio Show. Beth Kobett, Avery Zachery and Jill Henry share their suggestions with me in the show, and they all have also contributed written commentaries to my Ed Week Teacher column. I’m adding this show to All My BAM Radio Shows – Linked With Descriptions .

DEC 02

Ed Tech Digest

Six 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 we
Best Year-In-Review Features For 2019

Here’s another end-of-year list. You can see the many previous year’s editions, along with many other Social Studies-related “Best” lists, here. I’ll obviously be adding more links as we get later into December. I’m adding this list to All My 2019 “Best” Lists In One Place! Here’s what I have so far (and, believe me, this list will get a lot longer!): Top 25 News Photos of 2019 is from The Atlant
Two New Resources About Indigenous Languages

990609 / Pixabay Here are new additions to The Best Resources For International Mother Language Day : Canada’s CBC News has begun the Original Voices project . Here’s a video about it: Here’s a new TED Talk on “How To Save A Language From Extinction”:
A Look Back: Learning From Our Students

I’m beginning to republish posts that made it onto my A LOOK BACK: 2019’S BEST POSTS FROM THIS BLOG – PART TWO list. Some people make fun of teachers who say they learn a lot from their students (see The Onion’s Teacher Who Learns More From Her Students Than She Teaches Them Fired ). I believe there is no question that we educators teach a lot more curriculum content than we learn from them. On t
Dec. 12th Is The Day Of The Virgin Of Guadalupe – Here Are Teaching & Learning Resources

OpenClipart-Vectors / Pixabay December 12th is a Mexican National Holiday, and an important day for many Mexican-Americans — The Day Of The Virgin Of Guadalupe. You might be interested in The Best Sites For Learning & Teaching About The Day Of The Virgin Of Guadalupe .
“Instructional Coaching Must Not Lead to an ‘Us vs. Them’ Mentality”

Instructional Coaching Must Not Lead to an ‘Us vs. Them’ Mentality is the headline of my latest Education Week Teacher column. In it, Laura Robb, Rita Platt, Michelle Shory, Ed.S., Irina V. McGrath, Ph.D., Cindi Rigsbee, Tonya Ward Singer, and Margie Kirstein contribute their suggestions about effective instructional coaching. Here are some excerpts:

DEC 01

“Best” Lists Galore!

geralt / Pixabay I’ve already posted twenty end-of-the-year “Best” lists, and you can find them all at All My 2019 “Best” Lists In One Place! Here are the six remaining ones I’ll be publishing this month: THE BEST EDUCATION RESEARCH “YEAR-IN-REVIEWS” – 2019 The Best Parent Engagement Resources – 2019 The Best Classroom Q&A Posts in 2019 The Best Collections Of Infographics, Charts & Maps – 2019 T
A Look Back: My Latest Favorite Tech Tool For ELL Students To Practice Speaking

I’m beginning to republish posts that made it onto my A LOOK BACK: 2019’S BEST POSTS FROM THIS BLOG – PART TWO list. Clker-Free-Vector-Images / Pixabay I’ve used a lot of tech tools over the years to record English Language Learners speaking, whether to record stop action videos of word definitions (see The Best Resources For Learning To Use The Video Apps “Vine” & Instagram ), or, more often, to
It’s That Time Of The Year – Here Are A Ton Of Teaching Resources About Christmas, Hanukkah & Kwanzaa

JillWellington / Pixabay It’s that time! You might be interested in The Best Places To Learn About Christmas, Hanukkah, & Kwanzaa .
Classroom Instruction Resources Of The Week

Each week, I publish a post or two containing three or four particularly useful resources on classroom instruction, and you can see them all here. You might also be interested in THE BEST RESOURCES ON CLASSROOM INSTRUCTION IN 2019 – PART TWO. Here are this week’s picks: 10 Simple Steps for Reducing Toxic Stress in the Classroom is from Ed Week. Deeper Class Discussions with the TQE Method is from
New PBS NewsHour Video Segment: “On World AIDS Day, a look at treatment advances and health inequalities”

I’m adding this new video segment to The Best Web Resources For Learning About HIV & AIDS :
‘Effective Instructional Coaching Keeps Kids at the Center of the Work’

is the headline of my latest Education Week Teacher column. In it, Sydney Chaffee, Cindy Garcia, Carrie Johnson, Roxanna Elden, Tatiana Esteban, Heather Register, Ashley Blackwelder, and Dawn Mitchell “kick off” a five-part series on instructional coaching. Here are some excerpts:
Rosa Parks Was Arrested On This Day – Here Are Teaching & Learning Resources

Rosa Parks was arrested on this day in 1955. You might be interested in Best Resources For Teaching About Rosa Parks & 60th Anniversary Of The Montgomery Bus Boycott . Rosa Parks wasn’t tired. She was fed up. #OTD in 1955, Parks refused to surrender her bus seat to a white passenger, sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Her work to end segregation belongs in a larger conversation about her lifelo

NOV 30

My Most Popular Tweets Of The Month

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. I don’t w
Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day Is On December 7th – Here Are Teaching & Learning Resources

WikiImages / Pixabay Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day is on December 7th here in the United States. You might be interested in The Best Sites For Learning About Pearl Harbor .
A Look Back: We Shouldn’t “Empower” Students – Instead We Should Create The Conditions Where They Can Take It

I’m beginning to republish posts that made it onto my A LOOK BACK: 2019’S BEST POSTS FROM THIS BLOG – PART TWO list. OpenClipart-Vectors / Pixabay I saw this tweet about a workshop being led by Tricia Ebarvia and Christie Nold: Wow. An important wake up call and reframing of how we talk and think about student voice. #HSEquity #istelib https://t.co/9sS51LRrKT — JoyAnn Boudreau (@MrsBoudreau) Octo
New Resources On Race & Racism

I’m adding these new resources to various “Best” lists. You can find links to all of those many lists that relate to race and racism at “Best” Lists Of The Week: Resources For Teaching & Learning About Race & Racism: How Our Language Feeds Inequity is from ASCD. I’m adding it to The Best Resources About “Culturally Responsive Teaching” & “Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy” – Please Share More! I’m a
New PBS NewsHour Video Segment: “New York’s Mohawk tribe works to restore their culture”

sandeshhr / Pixabay I’m adding today’s PBS NewsHour segment to The Best Sites For International Day Of The World’s Indigenous People :
SEL Weekly Update

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: ‘Performance-enhancing subs
This Week’s “Round-Up” Of Useful Posts & Articles On Ed Policy Issues

Here are some recent useful posts and articles on educational policy issues (You might also be interested in THE BEST ARTICLES, VIDEOS & POSTS ON EDUCATION POLICY IN 2019 – PART TWO ): How to overcome the education hype cycle is by David Yeager. I’m adding it to The Best Resources For Understanding How To Interpret Education Research . I’m adding this tweet to the same list: Charter Schools Neith
Around The Web In ESL/EFL/ELL

BiljaST / Pixabay Five years ago I began this 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. You might also be interested in THE BEST RESOURCES, ARTICLES & BLOG POSTS FOR TEACHERS OF ELLS IN 2019 – PART ONE and THE BEST RESOURCES, ARTICLES & BLOG POSTS FOR TEACHERS OF ELLS IN 2019 – PART TWO.


Infographic: “HIV/AIDS Deaths Continue To Decline”

GDJ / Pixabay Tomorrow is World AIDS Day. Here’s a new infographic I’m adding to The Best Web Resources For Learning About HIV & AIDS: You will find more infographics at Statista



Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... | The latest news and resources in education since 2007