Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

I highlighted MyStudiyo in my The Best Ways To Create Online Tests.

David Deubelbeiss from EFL Classroom 2.0 has created some great quizzes for English Language Learners using MyStudiyo. You can check them out here. They’re just a small sample of helpful teaching resources you can find there.

I know a lot of money and effort has gone into the materials produced by the Annenberg Media Learner.org company, but I have to say I’ve generally been unimpressed with how accessible their materials have been — to either English Language Learners or mainstream students.

However, they do have two good online interactive activities I’ve recently added to my website and that I’d like to highlight here.

One is called Elements of a Story.  It has an audio and text version of Cinderalla, and presents a very accessible description of literary elements.  I’ve placed that link on my English For Beginners page under Reading.

The other is Spelling Bee.  This exercise provides text with audio support of simple passages, and then students have to type in the correct words that go into blanks.  I particularly like this interactive because there are various grade-levels to it, and, unlike in most online spelling activities, this one uses words in context.  I’ve placed it on the same English For Beginners page and under the Spelling section.

I hope Annenberg will produce similarly engaging online activities in the future.

Tutpup is a new site where students can compete in math or spelling games against other students from around the world anonymously — either with a made-up name or no name at all.

There are a number of sites where users can compete in learning games like these. The problem I’ve had with them is that there is no way to “level the playing the field.” In other words, an English Language Learner might be playing against a native-English speaker. A situation like that does not create much encouragement for an ELLer if they are going to lose all the time.

However, the key difference between Tutpup and these other sites is that Tutpup has multiple levels of play to choose from going from extremely easy to extremely hard. This ability to choose your level helps a lot.

Plus, there’s some sort of teacher’s option that allows students to sign-up in a class. It’s not clearly explained on the website what this means exactly — can students choose to play online with their classmates? If that were the case, my opinion of Tutpup would increase even more. I’ve emailed them for clarification, and will post their response (assuming I receive one).

Users can register a nickname or they can play without registering. Their spelling game is a good listening exercise, since audio for the word is voiced and the player has to then type the word correctly.

For now, I’ve just placed the link on my Math page.

It’s time for the fifth edition of the bi-monthly ELL/ESL/EFL Blog Carnival. Bloggers from thoughout the world who teach English Language Learners have contributed some great posts.

The next edition will be published on August 1st and the deadline for contributions is July 31st. You can use this easy submission form.

Starting with the August edition, different bloggers will be taking turns hosting each Carnival. David Deubelbeiss, the founder and coordinator of EFL Classroom 2.0, will be our next host. David has some fun ideas about turning this next Carnival into a contest. He’ll be announcing details soon on EFL Classroom 2.0, and I’ll be reprinting it here.

Let me know if you’d be interested in hosting future editions of the ELL/ESL/EFL Blog Carnival.

And, now, here are this month’s exceptional contributions (I’m a little tired today, so sorry if the listing is a little “dry”::

Since David Deubelbeiss will be the host of the next Carnival, I think we should start off with his excellent and timely post on The Mars Mission and Your Classroom.

Sebastian Mercado wrote about a neat Web 2.0 application called iSketch and shared an absolutely wonderful video of his students playing charades that you just have to watch.

Mary Ann Zehr, writer of the must-read EdWeek blog Learning The Language, contributed an excellent post (and don’t miss the comments, too) on ELL’s “Are Sick Of” Writing Their Immigration Story.

Lifting The Curtain To Share My Coordinate Graphing Lesson comes from my Sacramento colleague, Alice Mercer, who writes about a neat use of VoiceThread.

A helpful lesson plan for Earth Day was sent in by Sabrina De Vita.

James Feudo contributed Public Speaking Tips: Five Tips For ESL Speakers

The Learn English– English Speaking Tutorial blog wrote Apostrophe Usage — It’s A Blast! and When Is A Question An Indirect Question.

Eric Koshinsky submitted How To Teach Speaking.

ESL Trail wrote Why Phonics For ELLs/ESOL Students?

1 Language wrote about the Advantages Of Learning With Phonics.

Thanks again to the contributors from around the world!

Blog Carnivals are compilations of posts from blogs about a particular topic. Here are the latest ones I’ve been reading:

* 173rd edition of the Carnival of Education

* Carnival of Mathematics

* Assistive Technology Blog Carnival

* Tangled Bank Science Blog Carnival

* Days In A Sentence

This is the third in a series of posts on various positive classroom management strategies and tactics. You can see the rest of the series by clicking here. Though this series is a little different from the rest of my “The Best…” series, they have enough in common for me to include these classroom management posts withing that category.

These are just a few more ways I try to keep my classroom as a close to being a “community of learners” as possible. As I’ve stated in the other two posts on this same topic, I really don’t have to devote much effort to classroom management in my high school ESL classes. However, my mainstream ninth grade English classes are a different story.

Teaching ninth-grade mainstream students in an inner-city high school provides different kinds of challenges than teaching English Language Learners — no better, no worse, just different. And class management can be one of them.

Of course, even with my list of over twenty-five different tools I use, sometimes none of them work. I might just not be using them effectively enough, or maybe there are issues beyond my control that are contributing to the problem (for example, my gender). In my five years of teaching, I’ve had to move two students out to another class because nothing seemed to work. I’ve also had more than two moved into my classroom because of behavior issues elsewhere, and those have worked out fine.

Here are a few more ideas from my classroom management “toolkit”:

HAVING STUDENTS PUT POST-IT NOTES ON THEIR DESKS: For students who have particular challenges, like difficulty focusing or not having much self-control when it comes to speaking without thinking first, I offer the suggestion (which they are free to reject) of their putting a reminder post-it on their desk at the beginning of each class. I have multi-colored post-its that they can choose each day, and they can spend the first two minutes of class (which is usually a time for silent reading) writing and decorating it. Depending on their issue, they might write “FOCUS!” or “THINK!”.

Other times, after a discussion, they might decide on another optional use of post-its. One strategy I’ve used at times is having students write a hash mark on a post-it for every ten or fifteen minutes they feel they’ve been “on-task” and carrying their weight in class. On occasion, I’ve felt like I’ve had to offer a reward of some kind as an incentive, but the vast majority of time this has worked because the student has just wanted to develop more self-control.

SAYING I”M SORRY: It’s not unusual for me to show impatience, make a mistake, accuse a student of doing something when he/she did not, or just have a bad day. My sense is that many of my students have not experienced many adults apologizing to them. Not only does my apology depolarize tension, but I think it’s good modeling behavior as well.

TRYING TO INVOLVE STUDENTS IN DECISIONS TO CHANGE SEATS: I’m often tempted to arbitrarily change a student’s seat because of behavior issues. Sometimes I succumb to that temptation. However, what I try to do instead is engage the student in a conversation about how he or she is doing in class, where he/she wants to be at the end of the school year, and wonder if changing seats might be a tool to help them reach their goal. Generally, after that conversation, they agree, and then I ask them for their suggestions about what they think would be a good place for them to be and why. Usually it works out pretty well.

RECOGNIZING STUDENTS: I don’t know if this activity can be correctly defined as part of a class management strategy, but it does help maintain a positive classroom atmosphere. I can’t remember where I first read about this idea, but every Friday I have a “What I See In You” time. I pick a student, ask him/her to stand, and spend a few minutes sharing what I see in them, examples of their actions, etc. Every student is recognized during the course of the school year, and they seem to like it a lot.

DEVELOPING STUDENT CONTRACTS: Sometimes, particularly when a student’s behavior is worsening, I’ll sit down with him/her to discuss what would make the class work better for him/her and, in turn, what he/she could do to make it work better for me. We’ll then write out a contract which we both sign.

I hope you’ve found these ideas useful. Feel free to contribute classroom management suggestions based on your experience, too.

I’ve posted before about our Family Literacy Project, which provides home computers and Internet service to immigrant families. You can read several additional articles about it here that will share more about how we encourage families to use the computer together (a key reason, I believe, for the program’s success), as well as giving more detailed data. As readers of this blog know, the project won the 2007 International Reading Association’s Presidential Award For Reading and Technology.

We periodically perform English assessments on the students who have home computers and use our website one hour each day, along with giving the same tests to a control group of English Language Learner students who do not have Internet access at their home. We just finished the latest round. Before I share the results, let me give a chronology of our assessments:

We began a small pilot project about two-and-a-half years ago. We gave students clozes (fill-in-the-gap) assessments that evaluated vocabulary development and comprehension, along with reading fluency assessments to evaluate speed and decoding ability. After the first four months the students with home computers had twice the rate of improvement than the control group in their cloze scores. There was no difference in reading fluency.

We didn’t do assessments again until, with our School District’s help, we expanded the project to a much larger group six months later with similar assessments. Six months afterward, we tested both groups. Once again, students with the home computers scored twice the gain in vocabulary development and comprehension than the control group. In addition, though, this time they also scored three times the gain in reading fluency, too.

This leads me to the just-completed assessments. These measure an even larger group of students as our project expanded, as well as measuring score differences between last September and the end of this month — May. This time students with the home computers more than quadrupled the gain in cloze scores over those of the control group. Because of the much larger numbers of students involved, we just didn’t have it in us to do reading fluency assessments this time around.

I have a healthy skepticism when it comes to statistics — there are just so many other factors involved. That said, though, it does seem pretty clear that our Family Literacy Project is having a positive effect on students developing their English skills.

Sail Safe is a combination game and tutorial on how to sail a ship.  The National Maritime Museum in Great Britain created it.

It’s an opportunity for students to learn vocabulary and to answer questions and follow simple instructions in English.

I’ve placed it on my Intermediate English page under Word Games and Video Games.

Soundflavor is an intriguing and new music website. It’s basically a source of online music not unlike several others I’ve already posted about and placed on my website under Movies & Music For ESL.

However, it does have one unique feature — you can search for music by subject (nature, war, peace, work, money, etc.). It looks like the results are a little uneven, but even so this kind of capability could be very helpful to an ESL/EFL teacher who’s being hard-pressed to find a song connected to a theme he/she is teaching in class.

Wild Sanctuary is a neat web application that shows you the world with different “spots” in most continents. Clicking on each one will show you some basic information on that wildlife area along with audio of the sounds found there.

I learned about this site from an excellent blog that I’ve mentioned in a previous post and is on my blogroll. It’s called Free Technology For Teachers, and is written by Richard Byrne, a teacher in rural Maine (USA).

I’ve placed the Wild Sanctuary link on my Geography page.

Here is the direct link to this year’s ThinkQuest winners. They’re pretty impressive, and I’ll be putting direct links to all of them in the appropriate sections of my website.

You can read yesterday’s post to learn more about ThinkQuest.

Joust Challenge is an online game from the Metropolitan Museum in New York.  Players have to answer simple multiple choice questions about knights in the Middle Ages.  Depending on whether the answer is correct, their “knight” will  either win or lose an animated joust.

The game would be accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners, especially if done in combination with lessons on that time period.

I’ve placed the link on my World History page under The Middle Ages.

This “The Best…” list was initially a difficult one for me to compile. A number of my previous lists, including the ones on reading and conversation, can also be characterized as “listening.”

I finally decided on the following criteria for sites that would appear on this list. They would need need to:

… be free.

… be accessible to English Language Learners.

… let English Language Learners listen to pretty much anything they would either write or anything they could find on the Internet, OR

… have a wide range of listening options that would be combined with comprehension assessments.

Other links that didn’t make this list can also be found on my website under Listening.

I’m not listing these sites in order of preference, as I’ve done with a majority of my previous “The Best…” lists. Instead, I’m just dividing the list into the two categories that I’ve shared in my criteria.

Here are my choices for The Best Listening Sites For English Language Learners:

SITES THAT LET USERS LISTEN TO ANYTHING THEY WRITE OR FIND ON THE INTERNET

YAKIToME lets you copy and paste pretty much anything you want and the convert the text to speech.You can choose the type of voice (it uses ATT technology, which I’ve had a link on my website to for a longtime because it’s so good), the rate of speed (there are numerous settings), and even customize pronunciation for certain words. You choose to see the text when you’re listening to it being spoken. And you can create private groups if you want. Most importantly, it seems to work without any technical difficulties. Plus, it’s free.

Read The Words lets you convert any text – from a document, blog, or website – into audio with your choice from a variety of voices. You can then embed the voice player into your site. English Language Learners can easily copy and paste an essay they’re writing to hear if it sounds “right.” They can complete a story or essay, paste it into a Jottit page, and then embed a Read The Words audio player that will speak what they wrote. The site had some technical glitches when they first began, but it seems like those have been worked out.

Scribd lets you upload anything and then provides audio of the text. It’s particularly useful when students want to write a “talking story” with illustrations, like these student samples. Just this month Scribd eliminated all adult content from their site, which makes it much more feasible for classroom use. (Unfortunately, Scribd has eliminated this feature from its site, so I’m also removing it from this list)

The above three sites all require registration and log-in to use (though they make it easy to do so). These next few don’t allow you to save what you’ve written, or text that you copy-and-paste. And you can only use it for relatively small amounts of text. However, they don’t require any registration at all so you can use their services immediately.

They include ATT, Voz Me, Oddcast, and Cepstral. You’ll find links to them at the top of many of the pages on my website.

Expressivo is a similar free online tool that lets you type, or paste, in up to 200 characters and it then “speaks” what your wrote.  Expressivo, though, has a great feature that the others I listed do not have — it provides a link to what you typed in which you can then email or post on a teacher/bog website so that others can see and hear what your wrote.

SITES THAT HAVE A WIDE-RANGE OF LISTENING OPTIONS COMBINED WITH ASSESSMENTS

This section of sites itself is divided in two — first, I’ll share excellent resources that offer specific listening exercises that are then generally followed by questions to measure comprehension; then, I’ll share links to sites that provide online dictation activities.

Even though I said earlier I wasn’t going to list sites in order of preference, I have to say, as I’ve said before, that I believe Henny Jellema’s Online TPR Exercises are not only the best online listening activities. I believe they are the best online ESL/EFL activities — period. If you have not tried them out, I would strongly encourage you to do so and have your students do the same.

ELLO provides hundreds of listening activities that are well-designed and engaging. Randall’s ESL Cyber Listening Lab does the same — it has great activities, though I just don’t think it’s as user-friendly as ELLO.

English Trailers puts a brilliant idea into practice. It shows tons of trailers to popular movies, and then follows them with various exercises. And, even better, you can set-up a virtual classroom to monitor which ones students have completed. Plus, it’s all free! (English Trailers went off-line in August, 2008, but it might be back soon. )

Cambridge University Press has excellent online listening activities that support its textbooks. These exercises are usually called “What Do You Hear?”. Here are links leading to them:

Interchange “What Do You Hear? — Introductory
Interchange “What Do You Hear? — Book One
Interchange “What Do You Hear? — Book Two
Interchange “What Do You Hear? — Book Three
Touchstone Arcade
Connect “What Do You Hear?” Book One
Connect “What Do You Hear?” Book Two
Connect “What Do You Hear?” Book Three
Connect “What Do You Hear?” Book Four

Now I’d like to list some excellent online dictation sites, where student listen to audio and have to type what they hear:

Listen and Write is a new web tool that I think has a lot of potential for English Language Learners. A user first chooses a text he/she wants to hear read to him/her. Many of the choices are from the Voice of America, and are both high-interest and accessible. Their levels of difficulty are also indicated. Then the story is dictated to you, and you have to type it correctly. You can choose the speed of the reading and how often it’s repeated. When you type, only the correct letters actually show-up on the screen, and you can ask for hints.

English Online has a series of Interactive English Listening Exercises that provide numerous dictation opportunities.

Teacher Joe also has quite a few. I like his site because they seem particularly geared to Beginning and Early Intermediate English Language Learners.

The English Club has a series of simple and effective dictation exercises. They’re well organized, simple, don’t require registration, and have ones for a variety of English levels.

English Speak has 100 listening lessons (framed as dialogues) that give you two different speeds in which to listen to them.

Many English Language Learner teachers and students are familiar with Randall’s ESL Cyber Listening Lab. It’s provided high-quality listening exercises on the web for a longtime.  It’s now gotten even better with the addition of videos. Video Snapshots for ESL/EFL Students show short video clips along with comprehension quizzes for students to take.

David Deubelbeiss has posted a very good document for ESL/EFL teachers sharing ideas for listening activities to do in the classroom.  Even thought it’s for teachers, it’s so good that I’m adding it to this list.

Feedback and other suggestions are always welcome.

If you found this post useful, you might want to consider subscribing to this blog for free.

ThinkQuest, the annual international competition sponsored by Oracle, will be announcing their winners sometime on Thursday. Students from throughout the world submit well-designed websites that, whether they win or not, get included in the massive (and searchable) ThinkQuest Library.

I have links to many ThinkQuest sites on various pages of my website. They’re well-done, generally accessible to English Language Learners, and cover numerous subjects.

The submissions get better every year. I’m looking forward to seeing what is announced on Thursday.

Alice Mercer has written another great post for the Instructify blog. She writes about a website that’s new to me called Invent Now.

I’d encourage you to read her post describing this interactive site. The only negative is that students have to register first, but that takes less then a minute.

I’ll be placing the link on my website on my regular Science page under Inventions.

Thanks to a post in Kevin’s Meandering Mind, I was reminded of a site that I should have included in my The Best Sites To Practice Speaking English.

For some reason, when I originally made the list I forgot to include Sketchcast, an excellent site that has appeared on some of my other lists. You can read my original post about it here.

It’s now included in the post where I originally shared my choices for best sites for speaking English.

Beat The Clock is a British Council game where the player has to complete a sentence by choosing the right word before the timer runs out.

The games are categorized by theme, and there are tons of them.  They are also labeled by the appropriate English level (beginner, early intermediate, etc.).

I’ve placed the link on my Intermediate English page under Word and Video Games.

I’ve written previously about Marvin Marshall, whose positive system of classroom management I admire a lot.

He just wrote a useful post in his blog called “About The Question ‘Why?’” He shares how pointless it is to ask that question of a student about his/her behavior, and how critical it is for us to consider that same question when we reflect on, and explain about, the content we are teaching.

In April I wrote a post about a search engine that was very accessible to English Language Learners called Search Me.

At that time, however, you could only use it with an invitation. Now it’s in “public beta,” which means they’re still testing but that anyone can try it. You might want to read my previous post about it.

I’ve now also placed a link to it on my website under Search Engines.

Education Week has an interesting article about a study showing that students whose teachers spent one month preparing for a standardized test scored lower then those who had much less prep time.

The study focuses on Chicago. The article is titled ACT Test-Prep Backfiring in Chicago, Study Finds.