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.

Read the rest of this entry »

Part Ten Of The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly

Here are several more sites to add to my lengthy list of The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly. These all meet the usual criteria, which you can read about in previous parts of this series.

Here they are:

DESIGN A (I DON’T REALLY KNOW HOW TO DESCRIBE IT):LiteBrite is its name, and students can create a multi-colored design, describe it, and then get its url address for posting on an online journal or blog.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Best Websites For Learning English Pronunciation

I had to make a lot of difficult choices to come up with this latest “The Best…” list.

One decision I made was to focus this list more on Beginning and Early Intermediate English Language Learners, or for more advanced ELL’s who primarily would use these sites more to “brush-up” or review some basic pronunciation skills. I am developing another list that I’ll call The Best Sites For Developing English Conversational Skills. That one will probably be geared more towards Intermediate and Advanced English Language Learners, and will include more of the sites I received from readers in my call for recommendations.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Best Ten Websites For Students To Learn About Computers

I’ve gotten into one of my “list-making” moods this week. I was inspired by a request from Karisa Tashjian (a staffperson at the Rhode Island Family Literacy Initiative) for sites to help English Language Learners with computers, so came up with this one.

This list is categorized a little differently from the majority of my other “The Best…” lists. Instead of ranking them from the best to the very best, I’ve picked a couple of sites that each fit into specific sub-categories of knowledge that students would need to have about computers.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Best Laid Plans

Some weeks ago, I shared exciting news that my students were collaborating with a girls’ school in Israel on a joint wiki writing project. Just as we got our wikis off the ground, a teachers’ strike in Israel put our plans on hold. The strike has now lasted more than a month. If it is not resolved before the winter break in about three weeks, the project will be on hold indefinitely as my students will be writing a research paper from January to March.

Read the rest of this entry »

Blogging policy at its best

In my workshop last week I had referred to the AHS blogging policy. It is an excellent example. One feature of it that I really liked was the section on “Successful bloggers”. This approach is so much more uplifting than a list of “do not’s.” Approaching blogging from the angle of what bloggers should aspire to achieve. It doesn’t get better than that. An example of what appropriate blogging for schools looks like is provided. This tangible example really helps. It is actual work taken from an AHS classroom blog, with typos corrected. This policy is a model for us to aspire to achieve. You may want to adapt parts to fit your school’s needs and reshape it to meet your objectives.

Read the rest of this entry »

PKM - my best tool

Technology is the application of organized and scientific knowledge to solve practical problems.

I dug up this quote from my personal knowledge management (PKM) system, or outboard brain, or whatever you want to call it. The quote is from Harold Stolovitch, and it’s stored on this blog from a post I made over three years ago. My PKM system is a technology in this sense.

I know people who get hundreds of e-mail each day. I don’t. I also meet people who work in companies and have to make decisions or set direction but who do not have time to read. I can understand how time constraints force you to reduce “discretionary” activities such as reading, but how are you able to learn if you don’t take the time to read, listen, reflect and then make your own understanding explicit for others to understand?

Read the rest of this entry »

The Best “Fun” Sites You Can Use For Learning, Too

I decided to bring together, in one “The Best…” list, my picks for The Best “Fun” Sites You Can Use For Learning, Too. These are websites that were not designed with education in mind, but which can easily be used for learning purposes — particularly, though not exclusively, for English language development. I only hope that creators of “educational” content can learn from the qualities that make these sites so engaging.

Read the rest of this entry »

Another best practice

I got a call from Patrick McCloskey, a reporter for Teacher Magazine who is writing an article about Will. He was asking me questions about the Georgia-NJ Collaboration. It’s really funny how things work out sometimes because last evening I had been going through some boxes from my recent move. I came across files I had saved from that collaboration. The conversations between those students were exceptional. Even though this is from the 2002-2003 school year I thought it would be great to post as a best practice. Kristine was a high school students from Will’s journalism class who was mentoring Lucy (my fifth grader). She took a “Free Speech” article from Time for Kids and used the article to show the different elements and parts of the story. Not only did she explain what each part does but also what it should include. It was color coded and Kristine’s thoughts were put in “bold”. It was outstanding. It is worthy of being reposted:

Read the rest of this entry »

Blog Best Practices Award

I’m happy to report that my old school won a New Jersey Best Practices award for an ESL Literature Circle Weblog that we started last year with the ESL classes and the library. From the press release:

The ESL Literature Circle includes the selection and discussion of reading material in a Literature Circle format and is designed to increase students’ English language skills through reading, listening and writing activities. Students also write and post summaries of their reading on a Weblog, which includes online discussions.

Read the rest of this entry »