Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

If you actually go to my blog to read it, and don’t see it via RSS feed, you might have noticed a new section on the right side of your screen called “Favorite Posts.” 

You might remember that I do a Top Ten list each month,  and list those websites under “Pages” at the top of the screen.  It’s called “Websites of the Month.”

Now, under “Favorite Posts,” I’ve culled a few of those Websites of the Month and put direct links to them on the screen.

Literactive is a new addition to the Favorite Sites section on my English Themes For Beginners page.

It has some great phonics activities and talking stories, and is particularly suitable for early beginner English Language Learners.  You have to register to be able to use the activities, but it just takes a few seconds to do so.

The only problem with the site is that it’s a little difficult to initially navigate for English Language Learners (even I was a little confused at first).  Once you show your students the section for stories, or the section for phonics, then they can easily access many of the activities on their own.  However, it might be difficult for some students to find where they should begin.

MapStats For Kids comes from a U.S. Federal Government agency that brings together statistics compiled by one hundred different public agencies.   This site has several excellent activities, including ones where students use simple data to “paint” a thematic map.

I have it listed as “Math Concepts” under the Introduction to Maps section of my Geography page.

High-Beginner English Language Learners and above could do at least some of the activities on the site.

As many readers know already, you can receive new posts to this blog via email each day.   All you have to do is click on the Feedz By Email button on the right side of the screen.

Feedblitz, which provides this service for free, is great and it works wonderfully over 90% of the time.   However, sometimes, for some reason or other, it just doesn’t send out a new post.

When you do receive the posts via email,  the message also includes a list of links under the title “More Recent Articles.”   Take a quick look at that list to make sure you haven’t missed anything.

And, while I’m at it, please remember that I make many additions to my website that don’t highlight in this blog.    I only post here about thirty-to-seventy sites each month, while I add about 150 links to my web pages during the same period of time.  So you might want to do a quick review of those pages now and then.

I’ve been verifying the links on my website each month for the past several years, and usually find about twenty dead ones I eliminate each time I do it.

I wanted to let people know that in an effort to make life a little saner for me, I’m now just going to verify them every-other-month.    So, depending on when you’re using the site, it’s possible there might be as many as forty dead links.

Of course, with 7,000 links on my web pages, forty dead ones make-up a pretty tiny percentage.  

If you’re using the site and find any ones that aren’t working, feel free to letting me know which ones they are.  Even though I won’t be doing a thorough review of the links every month, I’ll obviously be deleting them whenever my students or I find them.

The California State High School Exit Exam has a multiple choice element as well as a writing section.  Many other states have similar exams.  When English Language Learners sometimes ask me, “Why do we have to learn this?” I hate very occasionally having to respond, “Because it might be on the test.”  Learning how to write a response to literature, and knowing the words describing literary elements, is one of those times.

Glencoe has an audio (and sometimes animated) glossary called the Interactive Literary Elements Handbook that could be helpful to English Language Learners trying to learn about writing a response to literature.

They also have a Name That Literary Element game, which, if you have to play a game to learn literary elements, isn’t that bad.

Links to both sites are on English Themes For Intermediate and Advanced page under Response to Literature.

Pitara, which I believe is a site from India, has a variety of good stories and exercises accessible to English Language Learners.  I particularly like their “Activities” section. It gives clozes (fill-in-the-gap) exercises, and then shows a variety of pictures (labeled with words) and students have to choose which one is most appropriate for that sentence.

I’ve place the link to this site at the bottom of the Vocabulary section of my English For Beginners page.

Netty’s Adventures is an Australian site that has a character named Netty teaching students about being safe on the Internet.  It’s colorful and animated, and has text along with audio.

I’ve placed it at the bottom of the Computers category of the English Themes for Beginners/Early Intermediate page.

Edublogs is continuing to have problems as they upgrade their hardware, and it’s been difficult to access this blog periodically because of it. It’s been a bad week for Edublogs, but, with luck, they’re now getting a handle on things. I can’t really complain, though, considering it’s a free service and has a great sense of community.  In addition, it’s one of the few blog hosts that are not blocked by my School District’s filter.

Because of these issues, it’s possible that email subscribers to this blog did not receive all the new posts I’ve written during the past week.  You might want to visit the blog itself to double-check.

I have three sites on my Examples of Student Work page where students can design and create their own virtual houses.  Both sites are listed, unsurprisingly, in the category named Student Houses.

One, which has been on my website for awhile, is from the school that Frank Lloyd Wright founded and is called Architect Studio 3D.  It’s a nifty application, but it’s only appropriate for very Advanced English Language Learners.

I’ve just added a new link, though, that’s great for all levels of English Language Learners.  This is from Benjamin Moore Paints and allows you to choose a house and specific rooms.  Then, you can choose different colors for them.  Finally, you can write about them and save them, all on Benjamin Moore’s site.

A brand new site is called 30 Elm.  There, you can look through many pictures of homes and rooms, pick the ones you like, and then write about them.  Others can then easily access online what you’ve picked and what you’ve written, and even comment on it.

Once again, I don’t think doing this online provides any distinct advantage over just using colored pencils and paper, or by cutting out pictures from magazines and writing about them,  and then posting designs on the classroom well.  It’s just a fun alternative that can also help students develop their computer skills.

One of the classes I teach English Language Learners is Geography.  It’s sometimes a challenge for my students when they have to do research on a specific country — they need to find sources that have language accessible to them.

Sometime back I created a section on the English Themes For Beginners and Early Intermediate called Country and U.S. States Information.  There, I posted links to a variety of “one-stop” sites that had information on countries that English Language Learners could use.

I’ve just added a new link to that list called World InfoZone (you need to click on “World” when you get to their page).  I’m not sure if it’s the best one, but it’s just one more place for my students to be able to look.I’ve also placed it on my Geography page under Sites That Cover Many Areas.  All the other links for information on countries are also “double-posted” there.

I’ve added a link to another good BBC online activity called Nina’s Lab.   In it, students learn the five senses and how they can use them to help in simple science experiments.  There’s good audio and visual support for the text in this game.

I’ve placed in on my English Themes for Beginners/Early Intermediate page under the Descriptions category (because I couldn’t think of any better place to put it).  It’s at the bottom, and it’s entitled “Senses.”

What Was There? is a series of games from Games For the Brain.  They show a picture, then you change the screen to a question asking you something about the picture.  For example, one picture shows a series of billard balls.  You are then asked if the eight ball was on the upper-right of the picture.

This kind of game is great reading practice for English Language Learners.  Obviously, in order to answer the question correctly they have to work to understand the question to begin with.

I’ve placed in under the Word Games category on my English For Intermediate/Advanced page.

If you are teaching in a public school you might find that your filters are blocking some of the video-like games I have listed in this same section.  Our School District’s filters are pretty strict about blocking games and any kind of streaming media.  However, they are also pretty flexible about letting any link I request to be made exempt from the filter, though it might take awhile.

If you have the same problem, I’d encourage you to talk with your tech person about the process to have some of these sites allowed.

I just learned about a site called Simple Spark via the TechCrunch blog.  Simple Spark is a compilation, continually updated, of new Web 2.0 web applications.  It’s well organized and easy to navigate. 

I was able to find ten new (to me) free online web applications that would be great to use with English Language Learners and, in fact, any students.   And I was able to find those ten in less than fifteen minutes of browsing the site!

In the coming weeks and months I’ll be highlighting these ten and the many others that I’m sure to find on Simple Spark.   But I thought I’d share this site with others now in case you didn’t want to wait to read my posts.  I’d love to hear about any gems you find.

There are a number of other compilers of new web applications out there, some of which are quite good, like Jane’s E-Learning Pick of the Day.  But I’ve got to say that Simple Spark is the most comprehensive and most usable “catalogue” of new ones that I’ve found.  I’ll be a regular visitor!

Of course, this means I’ll continue to be challenged with the fact that there just isn’t enough time in the school-day to have my students work with all these new tools.    I’ll be experimenting to see which of these new applications truly bring an added value to  the experience of learning, and which are just glitzy toys.  Of course, playing with a toy now and then is okay, too…..

Edublogs has been doing some more upgrading this week, which has resulted in periods of time when no one, including me, has been able to access this blog.   With luck,  this lack of accessibility has now come to an end, and Edublogs should be better than ever!

I’ve heard that the GED is harder than the California State High School Exit Exam, so it’s unlikely that many of my English Language Learner students are going to be taking it in the near-term.  However, one major advantage the GED does have is that students can choose to take it in Spanish.

I’ve created a new category called GED Practice on my English For Intermediate and Advanced.  It has a variety of resources, including online study materials in Spanish.  I hope that all my students will graduate high school, but the English Language Arts section of the Exit Exam is a huge challenge.

Steve Dickie’s Teaching With Technology blog recently had a post about making a Star Wars video.You can now mix and match nearly 300 different clips from Star Wars movies to make your own short video. 

English Language Learner students (and others) would have a lot of fun doing this.  It’s an excellent language development experience since students would have to create something that actually made sense and followed some reasonable sequence.  Steve has a nice example on his blog.

I’ve put the link on my Examples of Student Work page under Student Videos.

The Teach42 blog by Steve Dembo recently pointed out Demofuse, a new online application that allows you to create a tour of your website. Steve has an example of one he created — it’s a little difficult to explain in words.

I’m thinking about trying it out on my own site.  I also think it might be an interesting exercise for my English Language Learner students to do on their own webpages they create next year.

I’ve placed the link on my Examples of Student Work page under Student Web Pages.

Talking Math Flashcards is another online math application that, in addition to teaching math skills, provides an English language development opportunity, too.  Students are given many addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division math problems to solve.  The key element that differentiates this site from other math practice sites is that audio support is given, too.  The problem is spoken as well as shown.

I’ve placed the link on the bottom of the Math category on my English Themes for Beginners page.

Remember, on this page I only place math links that I believe also give students an opportunity to develop their English skills.  I have a separate Math page that has thousands of other math activities and games.

Talkr and Odiogo allow you to have an audio feature on your blog — it will “speak” the text that you write.  This feature, of course, is a great tool for English Language Learners.

I haven’t had my students actually write blogs.  Instead, I’ve had them use Online Journals for a few reasons.  I’ll post about these in the near future.

However, these two features that easily allow and audio feature with blogs are making me think about having student blogs next year.

I’ve placed the links to these two sites on my Teacher’s Page under Podcasting.