Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

Adding Value to the Value-Added Debate is an excellent post by Liam Goldrick on the LA Times story.

I’m adding it to The Best Posts About The LA Times Article On “Value-Added” Teacher Ratings.

Here are the newest additions to The Best Sites For Learning About The Trapped Miners In Chile:

Chile begins drilling mine rescue shaft is an article, video and graphic from the BBC.

Trapped Chilean Miners Forge Refuge is a New York Times article.

A few Tips & Tricks for Student filming in the Classroom is another great post over at the Langwitches blog.

I’m adding it to The Best Sources For Advice On Using Flip Video Cameras.

World War II officially ended 65 years ago today.

You might be interested in the huge number of related resources that can be found at The Best Online Resources For Teaching & Learning About World War II (Part One).

September is Library Card Sign-up Month.

In its honor, I have updated The Best Sites To Teach ELL’s About Libraries.

The Last Days of Summer is a series of photos by The Denver Post.

I’m adding it to The Best Sites For Learning About The Summer.

NASA has begun releasing collections of great photos that can be used with no copyright restrictions, and more are on the way.

You can read more about it at the Los Angeles Times.

I’m adding the link to The Best Online Sources For Images.

Blädderblock lets you create a private virtual room where up to eight people can play pictionary. It’s very easy to use, but its major drawback is that it can only used in the Chrome browser, at least for now.

Even with that shortcoming, I’m adding it to The Best Online Games Students Can Play In Private Virtual “Rooms.”

Shout Reel is a new site that lets you create “social networks” that you can also keep private.

It seems to have fewer of the “bells and whistles” than many of the other sites on my Not “The Best,” But “A List” Of Social Network Sites list have, but I’m still going to add it there.

Ken Wilson has shared some good teaching tips in a two part post.

I’m not enthusiastic about his title, “Motivating the Unmotivated,” because, as I’ve written before:

Anytime I hear or read about “motivating students,” I cringe a bit.

An organizing truism (one that I learned during my twenty-year community organizing career) is that you might be able to bribe, cajole, badger, or threaten somebody to do something over the short-term (I’ve certainly done my share of that, and I’ve written about the negative results). But I don’t think you can really “motivate” anybody to do anything beyond a very, very, very short timeline, after which the initial enthusiasm quickly dissipates.

However, you can help another person find what will motivate themselves.

But that reservation doesn’t take anything away from his excellent content — ten great teaching tips. Though they are geared towards ESL/EFL teachers, most would be applicable to any teaching situation.

With the posting of today’s “The Best…” list on polar bears, there are now five hundred regularly updated and revised “The Best…” lists.

That’s a lot of lists!

You can find them all listed chronologically here and categorized by subject here.

Valerie Strauss has just published my latest Washington Post guest column: “Why paying parents to attend school events is wrong”

It’s a commentary on new programs being started by some Districts to pay parents to attend parent-teacher conferences.

Here are the newest additions to The Best Web Resources On The Iraq War:

Timeline: Major Events in the Iraq War is from The New York Times.

Drawing Down, Moving Ahead is a slideshow from The Times.

Iraq’s Resting Places is another NY Times slideshow.

The next ESL/EFL/ELL Blog Carnival will be published on October 1st at Ms. Flecha’s My Life Untranslated Blog. You can read her announcement, and suggestions, here.

The deadline for submissions is September 27th.

This blog carnival welcomes any blog posts, including examples of student work, that are related to teaching or learning English (though, again, Ms. Flecha does offer some suggestions in her announcement). You can contribute one by using this easy submission form. If the form does not work for some reason, you can send the link to me via my Contact Form. You can also send it directly to Ms. Flecha by using the contact form on her blog.

In addition, Anne Hodgson is organizing a special Blog Carnival on November 1st specifically dedicated to teaching Business English (BE) and English for Specific Purposes (ESP). For more information about that carnival, and to use a form Anne has created for submissions to it, please go to her blog.

You can see all the previous eighteen editions of the ESL/EFL/ELL Blog Carnival here.

This list is a companion to The Best Sites To Learn About Pandas. They’re both endangered, they’re both big, they’re both cute, and I wouldn’t want to get very close to either one of them out in the wild!

You might also be interested in:

The Best Sites For Learning About Animals.

The Best Resources For World Biodiversity Day (& Endangered Species Day)

The Best Sites To Learn About Climate Change

The Best Sites For Learning About Penguins

Here are my choices for The Best Sites For Learning About Polar Bears (and are accessible to English Language Learners):

You can see a short video about the plight of polar bears at The Guardian.

Houghton Mifflin has a science interactive about polar bears.

The BBC has a very accessible interactive giving information about the polar bear.

The BBC also has a much more extensive multimedia site about the animals.

The Polar Bear Plunge is an impressive interactive from the San Diego Zoo. In addition to all of its great resources, though, they also have some games that have no educational value, so you’d want to carefully monitor your students if they go to that site.

If you go to National Grid Floe, and then click on “Befriend A Bear,” you’ll be prompted to register (it will take seconds) and you can begin interacting with a polar bear cub. You can play different games with it — but only after you answer questions related to living more environmentally responsible. The questions are fairly simple, and should be accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners. And that cub is just so darn cute!

The BBC has another very, very simple site on polar bears.

Polar Bear Protection Program is the headline of an article from Scholastic News.

Studying Polar Bears is a slideshow from The New York Times.

Face To Face With Polar Bears is a CNN video.

Polar Bears and Climate Change is another CNN video.

ABC News has several videos on polar bears.

Here’s a multimedia exercise on polar bears for English Language Learners.

National Geographic has a ton of related resources.

Here’s a great lesson from The English Club on polar bears.

Suggestions are welcome.

If you found this post useful, you might want to look at the 475 other “The Best…” lists and consider subscribing to this blog for free.

Formula to Grade Teachers’ Skill Gains in Use, and Critics is an article in The New York Times.

It seems to me to be one of the better short accessible pieces out there about the “valued-added” approach.

I’m adding it to The Best Resources For Learning About The “Value-Added” Approach Towards Teacher Evaluation.

A recent series of studies have found that saying “thank you” can have a very positive and measurable impact. Bob Sutton summarizes it:

… a simple expression of thanks by someone in authority led people to be more likely to volunteer to do extra work. Their research shows that this happens because the simple act of being thanked makes be feel more valued — and in some of these studies — it also increased peoples’ feelings of self-efficacy (essentially, the perception that they were making a bigger impact on the world around them).

In the classroom, I say “thank you” when an individual student does something that I have specifically asked him/her to do — even if it’s something they should be doing anyway. I will also say “thank you” if a student has specifically helped me in some way. There is no question in my mind that not only is it the right thing to do, but it gets the kind of positive results found in the study.

When the class as a whole does something that I ask them to do, I will often say that I “appreciate” their cooperation, but won’t say “thank you.” When I see individual students doing good work — either academically or if they might have been courteous to someone — I offer praise for their effort, but don’t say “thank you.” When I see the class as a whole doing something exceptionally well — academically or behavior-wise — I generally will tell them that, again, I “appreciate” what they are doing, but I won’t say “thank you.”

I don’t know exactly how to explain how these last three situations are not “deserving” of a “thank you” and the first two situation are and, in fact, never really thought before how or why I handled them differently. Can anybody help me explain the difference? And do you have your own “rules” or habits about saying “thank you” in the classroom?

With Hurricane Earl approaching the United States and this past weekend being the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, I thought it would be a good time to start creating another “The Best…” list.

In addition to the resources on this list, many more can be found at A Compilation Of “The Best…” Lists About Natural Disasters, especially many Katrina resources in The Best Websites For Teaching & Learning About New Orleans.

Here are my choices for The Best Sites For Learning About Hurricanes (and are accessible to English Language Learners):

Earl Approaches is a slideshow from The Wall Street Journal.

CNN has a number of multimedia resources about Earl.

Hurricane Earl lashes Carribbean, heads toward East Coast is a Washington Post slideshow.

Hurricane Earl batters the Caribbean is a BBC slideshow.

Hurricanes and Cyclones is an interactive from the Guardian newspaper in the UK.

Extreme Weather is a site created by middle-school students and highlights tornadoes, hurricanes, etc. It’s accessible to Early Intermediate English Language Learners.

The Deadliest Hurricanes In U.S. History is a slideshow from TIME Magazine.

Understanding Hurricanes is an accessible animated movie.

Hurricanes By The Numbers is a useful infographic.

The Associated Press has several good interactives:

Hurricane Season: Path of Destruction

Hurricanes: Deadly Forces of Nature

Warm Currents Strengthen Storms

Forces of Nature comes from National Geographic

How Hurricanes Work comes from How Stuff Works.

Teaching and Learning About Hurricanes is from The New York Times Learning Network.

Additional suggestions are welcome.

If you found this post useful, you might want to look at the 495 other “The Best…” lists and consider subscribing to this blog for free.

Ed Week has just published an article that is a very important one that all school “reformers” (and anybody else in education) should read. San Diego Schools Set a New Agenda After Backlash tells the story of what happens in a District when a Superintendent tries to shove through his own plan without working with teachers, planners and administrators.

Frederick Hess calls it “…an enormous cautionary note when we hear [U.S. Secretary of Education Arne] Duncan talk about how we’re going to drive reform.”

The final comment in the article comes from a San Diego deputy superintendent:

“We’ve definitely recognized that trust is a component that triggers academic success.”

Especially after Arne Duncan’s continued support for efforts like the LA Times making teacher rankings public (see Why I Think Arne Duncan Has Just Made His Biggest Mistake), I’m not sure how much trust is left for him among a lot of educators.

My Sacramento colleague Alice Mercer has just written an excellent post titled The Business of Education.

Here’s a short excerpt:

While I think there are some things that can be learned from best practices in other fields, trying to adopt reform models from business on a “wholesale” basis ignores some basic differences between the function and ecology of public education, and a for-profit business.

It’s definitely worth a visit!