Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

…For Teaching ELL, ESL, & EFL

Monthly Archives: October 2009

October 6, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
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“One Survivor Remembers” Available For Free

One Survivor Remembers is a teaching toolkit on The Holocaust, including a film, offered for free to teachers by Teaching Tolerance. Here’s how they describe it:

“One Survivor Remembers” tells the unforgettable story of Gerda Weissmann Klein’s six-year ordeal as a victim of Nazi cruelty. Klein describes her years in Nazi labor camps and months on a forced death march. Though her experience was horrifying, Klein also remembers wonderful acts of decency and normalcy – testaments to the greatness of humanity.

This teaching kit sheds light on the 20th century’s terrible history of devastation and prejudice, yet offers hope that hatred can be overcome. It includes:

* A 40-minute Oscar-winning documentary film by Kary Antholis, available in VHS format, with closed-captioning;
* A collection of primary documents, drawn from Klein’s personal collection;
* A resource booklet including a Holocaust timeline; and
* A teacher’s guide with standards-based lesson plans.

I can’t speak highly enough about the similar free toolkits I’ve gotten from Teaching Tolerance and used with my students. I’ll certainly be requesting this one, too.

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October 6, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
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New U.S. Citizenship Test Takes Effect For Everybody This Month

U.S. Citizenship Podcast, which is on The Best Websites For Learning About Civic Participation & Citizenship list, just reprinted the press release announcing:

“U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is reminding the public that beginning Oct. 1, all citizenship applicants must take the new naturalization test.”

You can read the full press release at their site.

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October 6, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
4 Comments

The Best Online Resources For Drivers Education & Car Information

Learning how to drive, and car information in general, is clearly a high-interest topic among many of my students. So, in keeping with my philosophy that the best way to teach English is to find something students are interested in, and then they have to use English to access it, I’ve developed a “The Best…” list on the topic.

I’ve tried to stay away from the many teen-driving sites that are just packed with advertisements.

Here are my choices for The Best Online Resources For Drivers Education & Car Information (that are accessible to English Language Learners). These are not in any order of preference:

The Language Guide “talking” dictionary of car-related vocabulary is a good place to start for Beginning English Language Learners.

The California Department of Motor Vehicles has a great Flash-based test students can take to prepare for their drivers test.

Here’s a less attractive, but still useful, sample online drivers test from the State of Virginia.

The State of New York has short explanations of driving rules followed by online quizzes.

Driving Skills For Life from Ford has a ton of excellent online drivers education activities.

Ello has a listening game for English Language Learners related to car trouble and another one on traffic signs.

Here are a series of flash cards designed to teach about traffic signs.

Here are two other drivers education games — one related to the California test and the other to traffic signs.

The Los Angeles Times has an interactive graphic on how cameras at traffic lights work — a valuable safety lesson that can also save students a hefty fine. Here are more accessible resources about these red light cameras from the California Distance Learning Project (CDLP).  And here’s one more interactive about them.

The CDLP also has activities for English Language Learners on cellphone safety, polluting cars, and carjackings.

Here are another two activities for learning about road signs.

Impact Teen Drivers has a number of interactive resources on its site that are accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners.

Ride Like a Friend also has a rule-setting feature that teenagers can use to reflect on how they want their passengers to behave, and another survey on annoying car habits students can complete.

Here’s a listening exercise about buying a car.

What’s My Score has a good guide to Buying A Car.

The California Department of Motor Vehicles has its own YouTube channel that has numerous accessible videos, including a series on the “Top Ten Reasons For Failing The Driving Test.” In order to make it usable in most schools, of course, you’d have to upload them to a site like Edublogs TV.

Highway 55 is a “safe driving game” that students will enjoy and, I hope, learn something about driving safely.

The New York Times has an online game designed to reinforce why it’s not good to text while you’re driving.

Joe McVeigh left a comment with an excellent resource of podcasts relating to driving that are specifically designed for English Language Learners. Check-out ESL Pod.

How To Teach Your Teen To Drive is a useful infographic.

“Toyota Teen Driver” is a feature from Discovery Education that includes an engaging interactive and a number of other accessible resources related to…teen driving.

The All State Great Race, an online driver education game.

Driving Tests has online practice tests for learning permits from many states.

Expert Driving Techniques is a useful infographic.

Liberty Mutual has a number of interactives related to teen driving.

I’d certainly be interested in hearing other suggestions, so please feel free to leave them in the comments section.

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

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October 4, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
2 Comments

“What Would You Tell Your Parents You Learned In Class This Month?”

This past Friday, I asked students in my mainstream ninth-grade English class to write a response to this question:

What would you tell your parents you learned in class this month?

We’ve spent most of the month learning about Natural Disasters and, as I had expected, practically everybody wrote about something related to that topic.

I was, however, surprised by two other things.

We spent less than two periods on the lessons related to the brain and how it physically grows when it learns. However, practically every student wrote something about that lesson — in addition to something about natural disasters. Here are a few examples:

I learned about the brain and how it works.

I learned that when the brain is learning it’s growing neurons and it’s like a muscle.

I learned that the brain is like a muscle, if you exercise it it gets bigger.

The brain grows and you’re not just born with it and that’s it.

I learned that the brain is like a muscle and if you exercise it, it grows.

I really didn’t expect that it would have such an impact on students, and it reinforces my desire to have similar lessons related to issues that might tie in to students’ long-term self-interest (Helping Students Develop Self-Control). As I’ve shared, it’s quite easy to use that content to cover English reading and writing lessons.

The other surprise came when I saw that several students wrote something like this:

I learned to say, “I’m not sure, but I think that….” instead of saying “I don’t know” when I’m asked a question.

I learned this strategy from Magical Mystery Teacher (formerly California Teacher Guy). There’s a big poster on the classroom wall emphasizing it, and I only spent a few minutes going over it on the first day of school.

It’s interesting to see what “sticks.”

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October 4, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
42 Comments

The Best Web 2.0 Applications For Education — 2009

The two most popular posts that I’ve ever written in this blog have been The Best Web 2.0 Applications For Education — 2007 and The Best Web 2.0 Applications For Education — 2008, and now it’s time for this year’s edition.

The poll for this list — The Best Web 2.0 Applications For Education — 2009 — is located below this post, and closes on February 1, 2010. Please vote for no more than ten of the thirty-two sites listed. Please note that I’ll be listing these sites in my post from my pick from number thirty-two and ending at first place, but the poll is listed in the opposite order.

In order to make this list, a site had to be:

* accessible to English Language Learners and non-tech savvy users.

* free-of-charge.

* appropriate for classroom use.

* completely browser-based with no download required.

It’s possible that a few of these sites began in 2008, but, if so, I’m including them in this list because they were “new to me” in 2009.

You might also be interested in exploring the 300 other “The Best…” lists that I’ve posted over the past two years.

Here are my choices for The Best Web 2.0 Applications For Education — 2009:

Number thirty-two: Toobla is a brand new visual bookmarking site. I would actually rank it higher on this list, but didn’t learn about it until after I had completed this post and didn’t have it in me to reorder everything. It lets you very easily display thumbnail images of websites, photos, and videos. You can read in The Best Social Bookmarking Applications For English Language Learners & Other Students how I use these kinds of sites to promote higher-order thinking in students.

Number thirty-one: BookRix is a new site that lets you very easily upload a document which is then turned into an embeddable virtual book. It’s easy-to-use, and the final product has a neat interface that I think students would like. The site also seems to have a fairly strict code on content suitability.

Number thirty: Strutta is a really neat site that lets you very easily create contests (for free) where people can enter videos, images, or text. Multiple winners can be judged by popular vote or by the contest creators.  It has a ton of other “bells & whistles,” too.  Teachers can set-up these contests or, even better, students can create their own. With a little direction, English Language Learner students should be able to navigate the site.  I think there are a ton of ways this can be used in fun and engaging ways for language development.

Number twenty-nine: Embedr lets you easily make a playlist of videos from across the web, and then lets you embed them all with one embed code. This could come in handy if you want your students to watch a series of videos you embed into your own site.   Embedr certainly is compatable with a ton of video-hosting sites, including TeacherTube and Edublogs TV .

Number twenty-eight: WeToku is a neat online app that lets you interview someone via webcam, and records it for later viewing. You can read more about it at Nik Peachey’s blog. There are lot of things that can be done with this kind of tool, but using webcams is problematic at many schools.

Number twenty-seven:  Embedit.in lets you to upload any file or url address, and then create an embed code for it so it can be embedded in a blog or website. It’s made by the same company that created Backboard, which I’m very impressed with.  Webware wrote a post about it that’s worth reading. Embedit.in is very helpful. Students can embed many of their Web 2.0 projects that just allow them to create links right now, such as the ones on my Examples of Student Work page. Instead, they can upload the url addresses of their creations to, for example, websites they’ve made.

Number twenty-six: I’ve added Ediscio to my very tiny The Best Tools To Make Online Flashcards list.  You can create, and use, flashcards very quickly and easily, and grab images and videos off the Web to insert them in the virtual cards.

Number twenty-five: Quizlet is another new site on The Best Tools To Make Online Flashcards.  In addition to letting you create and study flashcards, it also lets you study the words in “game” forms.  Plus, it allows voice recording for some features.

Number twenty-four: Hipero bills itself as “The easiest Free Website Builder ever!”  I don’t know if that’s accurate, but it is, indeed, pretty easy to use.  I’ve added it it to The Best Ways For Students Or Teachers To Create A Website.

Number twenty-three: Doodle has been added to The Best Sites For Creating Online Polls & Surveys.  Registration isn’t required, and it’s extremely easy to create a poll that can be embedded in a blog or website or be accessed via its url address.  Participants can leave comments, too. It appears to have been set-up primarily to organize group events, but it can be used as a poll for just about anything.

Number twenty-two: Yarp is a new web tool that very,very easily lets you create a simple online invitation or survey. I’m particularly interested in the survey aspect, and I’m adding it to The Best Sites For Creating Online Polls & Surveys. It has a lot of benefits:  no registration is required; you can quickly type a question in and choosed various responses (a or b; true or false, yes or no); and those who respond can also write their own comments.  This is a stand-out application for English Language Learners who want to use a simple survey for an in-class project or, even better, with sister classes in other places.  It provides wonderful and accessible opportunities for reading and writing.

Number twenty-one:Flash Meeting looks like a very impressive free application for video conferencing. It’s designed specifically for school use, and you can participate even if you don’t have a microphone (you can text) or a webcam. I’m adding it to The Best Online Tools For Real-Time Collaboration.

Number twenty: PodOmatic is an extraordinarily easy way to create a podcast. Sign-up and your class has your own channel — all you need is a computer microphone. I’m adding it to The Best Sites To Practice Speaking English.  I’m also adding it to The Best Places Where Students Can Create Online Learning/Teaching Objects For An “Authentic Audience”.

Number nineteen: MapBuzz is also a new addition to The Best Map-Making Sites On The Web.  As I describe on that list, using an easy mapmaking site like MapBuzz  can be an excellent learning activity for English Language Learners and all students. “Markers” or “push-pins” can indicate with text and images places visited and routes taken on a field trip; battles fought in a war; key milestones in the life of a student or a famous figure; highlighting key natural disasters around the world — and these are just a few examples.  MapBuzz lets your draw lines, insert images, write text — all in a very accessible way.

Number eighteen: I’ve known about DoInk for awhile, but when I first visited the site it seemed a little too complicated to me for creating an online animation. But I recently visited it again and liked what I saw. I would say it’s slightly more complicated than some of the other animation tools I’ve listed on The Best Ways For Students To Create Online Animations and The Best New Sites Students Should Use With Supervision, but English Language Learners should be able to make simple animations pretty easily. I especially like what sounds like a strict and pro-active policy at ensure classroom appropriate content on the site.

Number seventeen: PinDax is a new web tool that lets you “pin” virtual “Post It” notes on a virtual bulletin board.  It’s very, very similar to a tool I like a lot called Wallwisher.  It has a lot more “bells and whistles” than Wallwisher.  That additional complexity (and I have to admit, it doesn’t seem that much more complex — it just seems to have a lot more options) doesn’t necessarily make it more attractive for classroom use.

Number sixteen: Chirbit is also the newest addition to The Best Sites To Practice Speaking English.  After registering (which is very easy — I love sites that don’t require an email activation), you can very easily make a recording or use a text-to-speech feature to create audio.  You’re then given a unique url address for the recording.  It’s as simple as that.  It has other capabilities, too, including responding to the audio message.

Number fifteen: Rooh It! is a tool to annotate webpages.  Since the Make Use of blog has written a good post describing it, I’m going to encourage you to read their explanation.  I’d like to highlight a couple of great features, though. One, you don’t have to register for it. And, two, all you have to do is put “roohit.com/” before any web URL address and you can start highlighting and leaving notes about it.  The only negative I see is that it looks a little “busy” — English Language Learners could be a bit confused by all the initial options and text. But a short teacher explanation should take care of that.

Number fourteen: Grapevine is an audio “chatboard” that I’m adding to The Best Sites To Practice Speaking English. t’s super-simple to set-up a private forum where students can listen and respond to others and don’t have to be online at the same time.  English Language Learners can communicate with other classes around the world, like in our International Sister Classes Project or just be given a simple speaking assignment to complete.

Number thirteen: Gizmoz lets you pick from a variety of images, then choose a background, and then quickly speak a message or, using the text-to-speech feature, type one. Then, after signing-in (registering or signing-in just takes seconds) you can either email the link or post it yourself on a blog or website.  As an opportunity for speaking practice, it doesn’t get much easier, which is why I’m adding it to The Best Sites To Practice Speaking English. The only tricky part is that you can access messages other users have created, too.  I didn’t see anything that was inappropriate for the classroom, but I just don’t know how much that’s monitored.

Number twelve: Google Voice is Google’s new phone tool.  In terms of teaching, I could see it as an easy way for English Language Learners, particularly those with no Internet access, to practice speaking “homework.” They can call my Google Voice number, leave a message, and I can then access both their audio and an automatically generated written transcript of what they said. I can then easily embed both on a classroom blog. I’m also adding it to The Best Sites To Practice Speaking English.

Number eleven: Fur.ly is a new tool that lets you combine multiple links into one.  It’s a little different from others I’ve posted about — they show you visual snapshots of each site that you can then click on one at a time. Fur.ly, on the other hand, shows you the first link in the collection and you can then click on arrows to go review each one.  I’m adding it to both The Best Places To Create (And Find) Internet Scavenger Hunts & Webquests and The Best Ways To Shorten URL Addresses.

Number ten: Sketchcast was on The Best Web 2.0 Applications For Education — 2007 list, and then was off-line for a very long time, is now back and operating. It was gone long enough to now qualify for this year’s list. For those of you who don’t remember what it is, It’s like “drawing” a video (you can also type text) that can be replayed.   In Sketchcast you can also easily provide audio narration to your sketch.  Your completed work has a unique url, and visitors can leave comments.  It works for English Language Learners on a number of levels.

Number nine:  Note Pub is a great way for students to share their work on the Web. before, but ignored it because it required downloading an application to upload photos. But a post in Technology Tidbits prompted me to take another look.  It’s extremely easy to register and, it’s very easy to write text. Plus, like Posterous, you can just copy and past images off the web. But it seems even easier than Posterous. Of course, it won’t look as pretty and it’s not really in a blog format. But I think if you’re working with students who have very little technology experience, and you just want them to have an easy place where they can paste their work (and where other students can view it, too, after the links to all student sites are posted on a teacher page), Note Pub might just be the web application to use. Obviously, they won’t be able to post comments, but that can all happen orally.

Number eight: Babelwith.me is the newest addition to both The Best Online Tools For Real-Time Collaboration and The Best Online Tools For Collaboration — NOT In Real Time.  No registration is required, and it takes a few seconds to set-up a private chatroom.  Of course, a number of other tools on those lists do the that same thing.  However, Babelwith.me lets you do it and automatically translates what you’re saying in the recipients language and in the language you’ve written.  This last feature could be very helpful with English Language Learners (or any other students) communicating with sister classes in other countries.  Another great capability is that the chatrooms themselves appear to stay active indefinitely, so users can come back to them whenever they want to continue the conversation.

Number seven: MapTrot is the newest addition to The Best Map-Making Sites On The Web. No registration is required and it’s super-easy to use. You can write descriptions of the points you place on the map, and you can link to a Google search of images for that place, but you can’t choose a specific photo. (There seems to be a problem with this site — I don’t know if it’s temporary or not).

Number six: Blerp lets you annotate webpages and, I think, might be the best tool of its kind out there. Once you register (which is extraordinarily easy and doesn’t require activation by email), you type in a webpage address, click on “post” and you can type on a virtual post-it note and place it anywhere on the text of the page and you are then given the page’s url with the notes. It’s extremely user-friendly.

But that’s not all.

It also allows you to see what other readers of the same page have written. All those virtual post-it notes are listed on the side of the page. All you have to do is click on a note and it magically appears at the location on the page where it was placed.  I believe a lot of the things many web tools allow you to do are neat, but don’t necessarily provide much “value-added” benefit to doing the same task using non-tech tools. Even the other tools on the “website annotating” best list only let you do the exact same thing you can do with hard copy.

With Blerp, however, after students have completed demonstrating their reading strategies, they can then see what everybody else has written, too. Now, that’s what I’m talking about in terms of a way technology can enhance learning.

I think the ability to annotate webpages — the equivalent of making notes on a written text — is absolutely critical for students to develop their reading skills.  Using “post-it” notes on text to demonstrate the use of reading strategies is a key teaching and learning approach I use in the classroom.  I am always searching for web tools that will allow students to do the same on Internet pages, which is why I created the The Best Applications For Annotating Websites and, obviously, added Blerp to the list.

Number five: I’ve posted in the past about how the ability to make easy screencasts — with audio– could be an excellent learning opportunity for English Language Learners (you might want to take a look at that post). A screencasting tool called Screentoaster couldn’t be more simple to use, and they’ve just added both the ability to record audio and add subtitles. All you do after you log-in is click on a button, open up the window on your screen that you want to record, and it starts recording your screen.  After that’s been recorded, you can provide audio or subtitles.  And it’s free. I’ve also placed it on The Best Sites To Practice Speaking English.

Number four: ProProfs, the exceptional multi-tool site that is already on The Best Ways To Create Online Tests and The Best Tools To Make Online Flashcards lists, now may be the number one tool on The Best Sites For Creating Online Polls & Surveys list. Their new poll-making feature has just about everything I’m looking for in a tool to create polls — very accessible, you can easily add images or videos, you can include links, they’re embeddable, there are no limits in the number of responses, you can restrict voting and….it’s free.

Number three: Wallwisher lets you, with very, very minimal registration, create a “wall” where you can place virtual sticky-notes. You can allow others to also place notes on the board, or keep it so that only you can do so (which is what I would recommend for students). The sticky-notes can include images you grab off the web, videos, or websites, and you can add text to them (you can also just include text without adding anything else). Each sticky has a 160 character limit for text.

Wallwisher appears to me to be one of the most useful Web 2.0 sites I’ve found in awhile. It can be a great place for students to use higher-order thinking by creating categories of images (and descriptions) or short texts they copy and paste (or write themselves). It can also be used as a site for social bookmarking of websites if you just right-click the website you put inside the sticky-note and then click on “open in a new window.”

I’ve explained in The Best Social Bookmarking Applications For English Language Learners & Other Students more details on how a site like Wallwisher can be used by English Language Learners for categorization and website bookmarking applications, and I’d encourage you to take a look.   The other sites listed there can be used for similar purposes, but Wallwisher appears to be the easiest and most user friendly of the bunch.

Number two: PhotoPeach is an excellent online slideshow creator that is very easy to use. You can upload your own images as well as grab them off the Web.  Plus, you can also now create quizzes within your slideshow. I’ve also added it to The Best Ways To Create Online Slideshows.

Number one: File2.ws lets you, without registering, quickly upload any document and turn it into a webpage.  This is an extraordinary tool.  You can see examples of how my students used it to create multilingual materials on swine-flu prevention. Students can create anything, for example, using Microsoft Word, and immediately turn it into a webpage.  This is an extraordinary way for people who are not familiar with creating online content to use a program that they’re familiar with — like Word — and develop something very useful that can be shared with everybody. (Unfortunately, File2.ws seems to have gone out of business since this list was originally posted. However, Crocodoc is a new application with similar capabilities).

Don’t forget to vote in the poll that appears after this post.

As always, feedback is welcome.

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October 3, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
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Interview Of The Month: Kelly Young

I’m starting a new feature called “Interview Of The Month.” I was inspired by David Kapuler’s Inside The Cyber Studio, where he interviews teachers about how they use technology in the classroom.

My “interviews of the month,” though, will have a different focus. I’ll be talking with anybody in the education world who I want to get to know better and who I think others might be interested in, too. How’s that for a broad criteria?

Future people who I’ll be talking with for this series include:

Claus von Zastrow, the director of the Learning First Alliance, a partnership of 17 leading education associations. He writes the influential Public School Insights blog.

David Cohen, one of the key people behind The Accomplished Teachers Forum and co-author of a recent Op Ed piece titled Test scores poor tool for teacher evaluation.

John Norton, director of The Teacher Leaders Network.

Anne T. Henderson, co-author of Beyond the Bake Sale: The Essential Guide to Family/School Partnerships.

Jim Burke, author of numerous books and founder of the popular English Companion Ning group

I’m starting off this series with Kelly Young, who I consider a key mentor.  I’d be surprised if there is  anybody else in the country who knows more about effective instructional strategies than Kelly.

Kelly is the founder of Pebble Creek Labs, which provides curriculum and professional development to urban high schools across the United States in Language Arts and Social Studies.  Kelly has been a teacher, principal, and district Superintendent (and a lot else along the way!).

Luther Burbank High School, where I teach, has had the advantage of working with Kelly as we have completely restructured our ninth and tenth grade English curriculum — and instructional strategies. We  have done the same with Geography and World History.   A great number of our teachers say that working with Kelly has transformed the way they teach – including me.   Readers know by the student evaluations I’ve shared here that students like the results, too.  I don’t believe that test results are the be all and end all of assessment, but it’s good information to have, and our test scores have gone up, too.

Other ESL teachers and I at Burbank have also been able to successfully adapt these engaging instructional strategies to these classes. I share a number of examples in my forthcoming book “Teaching English Language Learners: Strategies That Work,” which will be published next year by Linworth Publishing.

Because of Kelly’s talent and expertise, I asked him if he would agree to answer a few questions:

Based on what you’ve seen in the time you’ve spent in hundreds of schools across the country, what have you seen working most successfully and what have you seen not working well?

Well I’m biased, but I find that teachers get energized when working on instruction.  Teachers want more tools, more options. Relative to engaging and challenging students, teachers want choices.  They need repertoire, our favorite word.  They want to think about the science and art of teaching—learn more, talk and share, practice and get better.  The work is more satisfying and stimulating, also they become successful, so it becomes a self-renewing and self-sustaining proposition.

What breaks spirits and creates cynicism is prioritizing things other than teaching, turning down the screws relative to test scores, and not giving teachers’ relevant tools, skills, and support.

As part of your work, you do professional development regularly with hundreds of teachers.  How do you think they would characterize the challenges they face today?  What do you think they take-away from your trainings?

My, the challenges…  If you think too hard about it, it blows you away.  It overwhelms.  It breaks your heart.  The good news is how much students need good teachers.  Forget how badly they deserve them, regardless of ability, SES, race, gender, language, their antennae is sharp; they can sniff immediately when they have a teacher that a) cares, and b) has tools that will help them.  Our professional development is all about application and classroom practice.  The take-away is that what I learn today I can use tomorrow, and the more I practice it, the more I can help students.  And students can smell that.  They know when they are in the hands of a teacher who learns, who cares, who believes in their skills and is eager to change student learning trajectories and really, lives.

What do you think are the three most important skills/strategies for a teacher to have in their repertoire in order to help students learn?

Just owning a rich, powerful repertoire is huge.  And that journey never ends.   We have to study our craft continually.  There is a huge library of instructional strategies, stuff I knew nothing about when in school or in my early years of teaching.   But when I found out about the concept of repertoire, it was like a religious experience.  Imagine playing guitar your whole life knowing only two chords.  When you know there is much more, it is freeing, and a life long study.  So three?  Hard question.  I’m going to cheat a little by being a bit broad in my answer… 1. Literacy strategies to help students engage with text and make meaning.  There are a lot of them. 2. Strategies to help students talk with one another about their learning.  They like school more, and learn more, when they have to dialogue, purposefully, about their learning.  It is also a vital skill for work and life.  3.  The Inductive Model.   This strategy is so rich, so full, can go so many places.

Can you expand a bit on those three skills you think teachers should have?  Could you briefly “paint a picture” of what each might look like?

I could write and talk for days about this… but I’ll try to exercise brevity…

  1. Students HAVE to learn how to make sense of text.  There is no getting around that, as a high school student, college student, worker or adult.  But students have been woefully unprepared, especially with expository text, which is 90% of their reading in high school, college and workplace.  So we MUST learn techniques that teach and help students think while they read. Our curriculum provides strategies, that with modeling and lots of practice, make a big difference for students.

  1. Learning groups, and later work groups, talk to one another.  They problem solve, they read, discuss, argue, interact.  Schools where teachers talk and gab and blab some more aren’t doing students any favors, especially with students of limited engagement and lackluster skills.  Students need daily practice with working in teams, with reading text and writing to prompts and talking to one another about their work, their ideas, their problem solving.  We simply don’t have enough classrooms where dialogue is student to student around text, ideas, student work.

  1. The Inductive Model is a learning/teaching strategy that is as powerful as they get, and few teachers know about it. It’s a natural higher-order learning strategy, and if students used it daily they wouldn’t just like learning more, AND learn their content better, they’d actually become smarter.   I cannot say enough about its power.

I understand that Pebble Creek Labs is in the midst of some changes.  Could you share what those are?

We began as a consulting shop that helped teachers grow their instructional repertoire.  Studying teaching is fun, real, relevant, useful, inspiring.  I began to write curriculum to help teachers practice the strategies daily, to get more expert with strategies faster.  This also exposed what a lack of engaging curriculum there is out there.  It is sad.  We had to start somewhere, and chose to start where the greatest need is— the early years of secondary school, in literacy.  The work took off and we got so busy helping schools with our curriculum that we become kind of nichey… inadvertently.  We want to help teachers of all levels, at all disciplines, with learning about teaching.  I really believe in our curriculum, and have seen amazing results.  I believe in the need to help urban, traditionally underserved, secondary schools and their students.  Having said that, we also want to work with students and teachers everywhere on instruction and repertoire.  All students, and all teachers, want to be in classrooms of diversity, depth, challenge, creativity.

If a school or district has a relationship with Pebble Creek Labs, what does it look like?

It depends.  We start with a focus on instruction, and a commitment to practice.  We have curriculum materials to move the process along.  We have other embedded structures to assist with professional community.  Mostly we care about a commitment to learn and get better, and establishing and developing a learning relationship together.  We don’t do “in and out” work. We partner with the school and/or district and go on a learning journey.

What cities are you working in now?

We’ve been lucky to work in interesting projects and towns over the years.  We spend between 35-50 days a year in a site, so we get to know it well and develop some really special relationships with school and district personnel.  It’s a joy and pleasure.  Most of our projects are multiple years. We are into our sixth and seventh year in a handful of projects, so the impact and change is profound.

Presently we have large projects in Milwaukee, Austin, Sacramento, Houston, with a number of smaller projects across the country.

Is there anything else you’d like to share with this blog’s readers?

Oh, well, probably some dirt on you…..  Nah, actually I’d like to share how much fun it has been to watch your growth as an educator, and how satisfying it is to see how much you model what it means to be a “professional teacher.” Your readers see your expertise through your web site and blog, but probably don’t get how much you are an “everyman”  teacher… like them, with classes that go well, and classes that don’t.  With colleagues that are amazing and colleagues that aren’t.   My guess is your readers are much like you—smart, dedicated, committed.  So I guess I’d like to thank you for your contribution to the field, and for keeping it real.  And I’d like to thank them, who by virtue of reading this website are kindred spirits. Let’s keep helping kids and representin’ this wonderful profession.

How should people get in touch with you if they’d like more information?

We have a new, improved web site we are just launching…. pebblecreeklabs.com We want it to be dynamic, helpful, fun.  Check it out and help us improve it.  I can be reached at Kelly@kellyjyoung.com .  We care, we respond.  Please feel free to connect.

Your new web site has a blog, doesn’t it? I know that I, and I suspect other teachers,  would be very interested in hearing your views.

Well I’m not afraid to share my views, and maybe, hopefully, my musings will be of interest to readers. Our new site will have a blog, in some respects inspired by yours.  We are still learning about the new web site and its applications.  We know we want it to a) explain the company, b) provide a place for Pebble Creek teachers to talk and share and problem solve with one another, and c) to allow for us at Pebble Creek to share all the great things we see, as well as to comment on and “weigh in” on topics of interest and importance to teachers and the field.

People can visit and subscribe to Kelly’s new blog here

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October 3, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
2 Comments

The Best Resources To Learn About World Teachers Day

World Teachers’ Day, held annually on October 5th since 1994 – when it was created by UNESCO – celebrates teachers worldwide (in the United States, National Teacher Day is Tuesday in the first full week of May). Here are few quickly put together resources you might find useful/helpful:

UNESCO itself has a website on the day with links to many related resources.

Here’s some interesting data from The New York Times comparing class size and teacher pay in countries around the world.

ESL Holiday Lessons, one of many great sites developed by Sean Banville, has an excellent lesson on the day.

The National Education Association has many materials on the U.S. National Teacher Day.

There are two interesting videos on YouTube that trace the history of teachers over the past four hundred years:

The Evolution of Educators – Part 1 (1600-1900)

The Evolution of Educators – Part 2 (1900-Present)

I’m not embedding them here because I think it’s worth watching them at the YouTube site and seeing the surprising number of other videos related to the history of schools you’ll see on the side of the page.

You might also be interested in The Best Places To Learn About (And View Video Clips Of) Teachers In The Movies and The Best Quotes About Education — Contribute Your Own Favorites.

Here’s an exceptional list of quotations about teaching.

8 Teachers Who Changed History is a nice, short article.

Here is a list of “Teacher Days” celebrated on different dates in different countries.

10 More Teachers Who Changed the World is worth a look.

“Teach!” is a slideshow from Slate showing educators from throughout the world.

Slate has a slideshow showing classrooms from throughout the world (Thanks to Eye On Education for the tip).

K – 12 America Since 1981 is a multimedia feature from Education Week.

Here’s an interactive timeline on the history of schooling and education.

ESL Holiday Lessons has a lesson plan for the day.

Here’s another World Teachers’ Days site from UNESCO.

Other suggestions are welcome, so please feel free to leave them in the comments section.

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

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October 3, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments

“Legal Issues for School Districts Related to the Education of Undocumented Children”

Legal Issues for School Districts Related to the Education of Undocumented Children is a short publication from the National Education Association and the National School Boards Association that answers thirteen questions schools and school districts might have about this issue.

It’s available as a free downloadable PDF file.

Here’s what NEA’s news release says:

Sixteen national education organizations have signed on to the guide, “Legal Issues for School Districts Related to the Education of Undocumented Children.” The publication will go to every school district in the United States and is available on the NSBA and NEA Web sites. The guide provides answers to 13 questions that school districts face as they navigate the growing trend of undocumented student enrollment.

“America’s classrooms are changing, and we need to change too,” said NEA President Dennis Van Roekel. “We must strengthen our school districts and the services they can provide to undocumented students.”

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October 3, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments

“I Know My Brain Is Growing…” Slideshow Of Student Work

Regular readers are familiar with my recent series of posts about my “growing your brain” lessons. These are ones where students learned why physically happens to their brains when they learn.

I just made a very “quick and dirty” slideshow of a few examples of my students’ culminating activity — showing how they perceive the brain when it’s not learning and when it is learning using either literal or figurative language.

I’m putting together an article that will probably run in “Teacher Magazine” to summarize the whole series of what we did. You can also read about its progression in these four posts:

Reading Logs — Part Two (or “How Students Can Grow Their Brains”)

“Now I Know My Brain Is Growing When I Read Every Night”

“This Is Your Brain On Learning”

“What Would You Tell You’re Parents You Learned In Class This Month?”

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October 2, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
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Wiggio Adds Features

Wiggio is on Not “The Best,” But “A List” Of Social Network Sites list. Even though I don’t rate the sites there, I did comment on how easy Wiggio was to use.

TechCrunch just posted about a bunch of new features Wiggio just added to its site, including live video conferencing, screen sharing and whiteboard collaboration.

I think it’s worth reading that post and checking-out Wiggio.

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October 2, 2009
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments

Do Your Presentation Slides Pass The “Glance Test?”

This is a very interesting post about the Glance Test:

“…slides should be processed in 3 seconds or less. It’s impossible for people to process your slides and your words simultaneously. The test gives you a quantifiable way to test a slide’s viability as a glance medium by calculating a signal-to-noise ratio for individual slides.”

This can be a very useful tool for both teachers and students to keep in mind when developing any kind of presentation slides. I’m adding it to The Best Sources Of Advice For Making Good Presentations.

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