The Best Websites For Developing Academic English Skills & Vocabulary

This is latest in my “The Best….” series of lists. Like the resources on most of the others, the sites on this list can be helpful to both English Language Learners and native-English speakers alike. Certainly, all my mainstream students need assistance in developing a mastery of academic English.

One way this list is different from the others is that I don’t rank them in terms of which ones I like the best. They’re all pretty good, and I’ll leave it for you to decide which one works better in your situation. Most of the online activities are accessible to either high-intermediate or advanced English Language Learners, though teachers can use the information on the sites to develop their own classroom activities accessible to students with a lower English proficiency.

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Building 21st Century Cities using 21st Century Skills

Earlier this week TechYES advisor Dennis Ostrowski from Saratoga Central Catholic school in Saratoga Springs, NY wrote me explaining an exciting project his seventh graders are incorporating into their second TechYES project. It is called the future cities project and is now in its second decade. The National Engineers Week Future City Competition is a program developed for seventh and eighth grade students to help them discover and foster interests in math, science and engineering.

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