January | 2010 | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

January 21, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments

January’s Best “Tweets”

Every month I make a short list highlighting my choices of the best resources I shared through (and learned from) Twitter, but didn’t necessarily include them in posts here on my blog.

I’ve already shared in earlier posts this month several new resources I found on Twitter — and where I gave credit to those from whom I learned about them. Those are not included again in this post.

If you don’t use Twitter, you can also check-out all of my “tweets” on my Twitter profile page or subscribe to their RSS feed.

Here are my picks for December’s Best Tweets (not listed in any order):

Visions of the Cosmos is a neat Wall Street Journal slideshow.

‘How Bad For The Environment Can Throwing Away One Plastic Bottle Be?’ 30 Million People Wonder is satire from The Onion.

When the question is either/or, sometimes the answer is both (Thanks to Bud Hunt)

What Lessons Those Carrots Are Teaching, New York Times

The Bold, the Beautiful and the Incremental, Public School Insights

More to education than data, Diane Ravitch

Understanding the development of academic langauge for ELLs, Judie Haynes

See how the number of crayon colors have expanded over the years in this infographic

“The time has come for detracking”

Why You Haven’t Donated to Haiti Yet is an intriguing study of why & when we give

Vidinotes lets you create notes of video, including images

“Redefining Achievement”, Deborah Meier

Interactive on Doomsday Clock

Intriguing review of data used by author of Atlantic Teach For America article (Thanks to Susan Ohanian)

Fascinating interactive showing how energy use has developed since the Industrial Revolution

9 Amazing Bridges

Reading In The Brain: The Science and Evolution of a Human Invention, New York Times

“Make Beautiful Music on YouTube With This Interactive Video”

The Messiah Complex, David Brooks, critical thinking about Avatar

Hitching All Our Wagons to Tests, Public School Insights

How much data do Americans consume each day? Check out this visual breakdown

You might also be interested in seeing a list of favorite tweets at Shelly Terrell’s blog.

Share|

January 21, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments

In October, I posted about the series of “Fun Theory” videos of experiments sponsored by Volkswagen. They’re designed to encourage people to change to a more positive behavior by making the alternative “fun.” I commented that the message certainly could be useful for teachers to think about. The most well-known video was on making stairs musical so people would use them instead of an escalator.

Since that time, the Fun Theory site has had a contest where people could contribute their own similar experiments. You can see these neat videos at the Fun Theory site.

Thanks to the School Library Journal for the tip.

Share|

January 21, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments

Make Music…And Learn CPR?

The American Heart Association has unveiled a web application that lets you create a “hand symphony” and send the link of your creation to a friend or yourself. It can then be posted on a teacher website or blog.

It’s designed to promote the Association’s new hands-only CPR, and the site also has a one minute video demonstrating it.

It’s a fun site, and I’m adding it to The Best Online Sites For Creating Music.

Thanks to Innovative Interactivity for the tip.

Share|

January 20, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments

New Ning Community For Teachers & Parents of ELL’s

Colorin Colorado, a great organization that’s on The Best Ways To Keep-Up With Current ELL/ESL/EFL News & Research list, has just created a Ning Community for teachers and parents of ELL’s.

The main page explains: “The ColorinColorado.org Community offers a place to discuss resources and ideas that will help English language learners succeed!”

It looks good!

Share|

January 20, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
2 Comments

“Giving Classrooms a Purpose”

“Giving Classrooms a Purpose” is the title of an article I wrote that was published in Teacher Magazine today. It’s a revised and expanded version of a post I wrote in November titled Compasses Or Road Maps?

Ordinarily, you need to register (for free) to read their articles, but this one seems to be available without registration.

Any feedback is welcome.

Share|

January 20, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
5 Comments

“Point, Quote, Connect”

I’ve recently begun to try some quick writes with my students using an activity I learned from Kelly Young called “PQC” (Point, Quote, Connect or Comment). It’s a simple exercise that students can use after reading a text that means:

1) Make a point
2) Quote from the text supporting your point
3) Make a connection to your personal experience, another text, or some other knowledge

Lots of you might already know this acronym, but it was new to me. After briefly modeling it for my students (if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past few years, it’s that modeling is absolutely critical — the quality of learning is dramatically improved if I model activities and exercises first), students have really been successful. And they especially like that they’ve learned an easy process and acronym that they can use in their other classes when they’re asked to write something.

I’ve posted in the past about a similar acronym I learned from Kelly — “ABC.” It stands for:

1) Answer the Question
2) Back up your answer with evidence or facts.
3) Comment from a more personal opinion or perspective

If you have any other similarly useful acronyms, please share them in the comments section.

Share|

January 19, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
2 Comments

Updates On Some Classroom Lessons & Research I’ve Been Doing

As readers know, I’ve been trying-out some lessons and classroom practice related to self-control, goal-setting, and visualizing success this semester (and I’ve got a few more I’ll be doing during the second semester). I thought people might find an update interesting/useful:

VISUALIZING SUCCESS:

I’ve been having students in both my mainstream ninth-grade English class and my Intermediate English class visualize being great readers, writers, and speakers twice-a-day for thirty or so seconds each. It’s voluntary, though everyone has to be silent and motionless during that time. About forty percent of the students in my ninth-grade class say they’re doing it, while seventy percent in my Intermediate English class say they are. You can read more about it here.

I’ll be doing cloze and reading fluency assessments in about two weeks, and it will be interesting to see how the “visualizers” compare with the “non-visualizers.” I’ll certainly share the results here. No matter what the assessments say, I’m finding that taking the thirty second break prior to beginning a new activity is a good focusing exercise — even for the students who don’t actually participate in the visualization exercise. I can notice a difference in general concentration on class work when I forget to take the time to do it.

SELF-CONTROL:

I used the points system I tried last year (see Have You Ever Taught A Class That Got “Out Of Control”?) for only the first week of school — my ninth-grade English class really showed a lot of self-control. However, the first week after Winter Break was a little tough, especially because we have gotten some challenging new students who entered the class. So, last Monday I temporarily re instituted the points system, saying that I would take people off of it individually as they demonstrated the ability to control themselves. Most students are already off of it, and the rest will be soon. However, a key to it working last week, I think, was just asking students to take a couple of minutes and write down what they remembered what they learned about the “Don’t Eat The Marshmallow” lesson (see “I Like This Lesson Because It Make Me Have a Longer Temper” (Part One)). I then asked them to share with a neighbor what they wrote.

Here is what one student wrote, and it’s representative of what most shared:

I remember on the video that the little kids were doing different things to distract themselves from eating the marshmallow. And the kids that ate the marshmallow didn’t do as well in school as the kids who didn’t eat it did.

I think just taking a few minutes to remember what they learned in that lesson was equally as effective as the new classroom management system in helping them to be more focused. It’s a reminder of the importance of periodic review of key concepts.

GOAL-SETTING:

We’ve been doing some goal-setting exercises in class. Students set goals for the end of the semester — which is in two weeks — so we’ll see how that goes (It’ll also be interesting to see if the “visualizers” have any better success achieving them).

Since we did the first lesson, I had read about a new related study (see Intriguing Study On Self-Control). That study highlighted the importance of having a friend to support you in achieving your goal, and the potential effectiveness of having people identify ways they could reward themselves if they achieved them.

I did have students “buddy-up” and talk about how they feel they had been doing in working towards their goals. We’ve done it for a few minutes once-a-week. And last week I had them think and write about how they might reward themselves. Here are a few things they came up with:

I can reward myself by playing games for an extra hour and have nothing to worry about.

I would reward myself with some chocolate.

I’d probably go a day without doing anything.

I don’t know if these activities will have any measurable effect on the data that we’ll see in assessments over the next few weeks. Either way, though, I believe students are learning some skills related to self-control and goal-setting that will help them throughout their lives, and it’s clearly contributing to a more positive classroom climate right now.

Share|

January 19, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
3 Comments

The Best Sites For Learning About Nutrition & Food Safety

There have been a number of web tools that have “opened for business” in the past year related food nutrition and safety. I thought it might be useful to both my students and others to create a “The Best…” list related to the topic.

You can also find links to most of these sites — and more — on my website under Health.

Here are my picks — not in order of preference — for The Best Sites For Learning About Nutrition & Food Safety (and that are accessible to English Language Learners, of course):

Breaking News English has a lesson, including audio support for the text, titled Life Near Fast Food Restaurants Unhealthy.

Calorie King has a fairly accessible database on the nutritional content ofmany different kinds of food. It would require some pre-teaching on what nutrition labels mean, though.

Fatburgr provides basic nutritional information on menus from popular fast food restaurants in a very simple and accessible interface.

The University of California-Davis has developed some wonderfully entertaining, informative, and accessible music videos about food safety issues. They’re closed-captioned, and many, if not all, are not sung very fast.

Here’s a slideshow called How Many Calories In A Thanksgiving Dinner? Not only does it show the different foods that compose a typical Thanksgiving dinner, but it also shares the calorie content of each one.

Eat, Drink, and Be Wary is the name of an interactive from the Sun-Sentinel newspaper in Florida. It shows images and descriptions of various holiday foods. If you click on them, you’ll then see how much exercise you have to do in order to “work off” each food’s calories.

Food Fury is a fun game where players have to select which foods are important to eat every day and which ones should not. It’s good for nutrition education and vocabulary acquisition. It’s definitely accessible to English Language Learners of all levels. The same site also has another healthy food game called Juice Jumble.

Stadium Nutrition from Aetna is an interactive exercise where you create a meal you’d eat at a baseball stadium and you’re then told its nutritional content.

Make Your Calories Count is a good tutorial from the Food and Drug Administration. It demonstrates how to read nutrition labels on food products. It’s probably accessible to Early Intermediate English Language Learners.

The Lunch-o-Matic game from PBS has players pick foods that help provide a healthy lunch. It uses both text and audio.

The great Learning Edge computer-based “paper” has an audio and text article on “Men Don’t Eat Vegetables.” The Learning Edge has another one called Eat Less Meat.

Healthy Eating is a song from the British Council.

Get On The Right Track To Healthy Eating is a simple e-book with audio support.

Fantastic Food Challenge is another healthy food game — this time from Michigan State University.

The Incredible Adventures Of The Amazing Food Detective comes from Kaiser Permanente Health

Healthy Roads Media has some great web-based nutrition multimedia tools. You just have to scroll down until you reach the Nutrition section.

The Top 100 Foods To Improve Productivity is an interactive from the British newspaper The Guardian.

The Food Pyramid is a good animated movie from Brainpop, Jr., though you have to subscribe in order to view it.

(The United States Agriculture Department has now replaced the Food Pyramid with “My Plate.” You can read about the change at The Christian Science Monitor. More importantly, you can access online interactive tools and printables at the My Plate site. You can also see an interesting Wall Street Journal slideshow documenting the history of the government’s efforts to help the public learn about nutrition.)

Good Guide, which I’ve posted about previously, rates products on health, environmental and social performance. They’ve recently added food items to the items they review (you can read more about it at this Webware post). Their ratings are a little different from the other sites on this list, and might be worth a look.

Still Tasty tells you how long different foods will stay safe to eat and what’s the best way to store them. It’s more appropriate for Intermediate ELL’s.

Mission Nutrition is yet another healthy food game. This one is from Kids Health.

Buy Better Groceries is an interactive graphic from the Washington Post. It lets you choose from a variety of grocery sections. Then, you choose brand names from that product category. You’re then shown the different nutritional values of your choice, and you can compare that with other options. You can then fill-up a virtual grocery cart with your “purchases” and see a total nutritional information for everything you’ve “bought.”

The My Pyramid Blast-Off Game is a fun way for students to learn about the Food Pyramid. It’s accessible to Intermediate ELL’s.

CBS News has an impressive interactive on Diet and Nutrition.

Two Foods lets you easily compare the nutritional content of…any two foods. My Foodapedia is a similar site.

Why Americans Are Fat is an infographic that explains why knowing about nutrition is critical for our students.

Fizzy’s Lunch Lab is from PBS, and is designed to help kids learn healthy food habits. Most of the text on the site is provided with audio support.

The Nutrition Cafe at the Pacific Science Center has some neat activities.

Dole’s Superkids also has a bunch of neat activities and games. You might need to click on the “low-bandwidth version,” and that seemed fine to me.

Food Champs has a lot different leveled activities related to food vocabulary and nutrition. Most, if not all, of the site is accessible to English Language Learners.

You can play the Food Pyramid Adventure game.

Guess The Calories is another online nutrition game.

Dining Decisions is yet another healthy food game.

Play “Unmuddle The Meals.”

Start Making Choices has some good interactive guides on nutrition, as does Nutrition Explorations.

9 condiments that are good for you is an MSNBC slideshow that would be accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners.

The Salt Hiding in Your Diet is an interactive from the Wall Street Journal that shows…where you wouldn’t think you’d find salt in your diet.

Lunch Line Redesign is a New York Times interactive that highlights ways that school cafeterias are using to encourage students to eat more healthy foods. It’s really quite interesting, and I think it could be a great discussion starter with students.

Pick Chow is an interactive game on nutrition.

ADDENDUM:

Here are some sites related to obesity that are accessible to ELL’s:

What is the current state of obesity in America? is an infographic.

The Wall Street Journal has a Childhood Obesity Map.

The Journal also has another map called Obesity Rates, State by State.

The Trust For America’s Health has just published a map titled F as in Fat: How Obesity Threatens America’s Future 2010. It shows adult and child obesity rates by state.

If you scroll down this Journal article, you’ll also see an accessible infographic will more useful information.

“Dangers Of Obesity” is a well-done infographic from a Florida newspaper.

Weight of the world is a fascinating interactive infographic from The Washington Post that lets you see how people in different countries have gained weight over the past thirty years.

Food contamination: E. coli outbreak in Europe is an Associated Press interactive.

You Say Potato, Scale Says Uh-Oh is a Wall Street Journal report on a study that “quantifies how much weight a person is likely to gain or lose over four years based on one additional daily serving of a range of specific foods.” This article is particularly useful to English Language Learners because it contains a very accessible infographic.

Let’s Take a Look at How Fat the World Has Become is a chart from The Atlantic.

I’m also adding a slideshow on America’s Wacky Fair Foods. It could be a fun example to show students about what not to eat.

The New York Times has published a fascinating article titled Is Junk Food Cheaper? It’s not accessible to English Language Learners, but it includes a lot of important information that teachers might want to modify to share with students. Here’s an excerpt that particularly struck me:

…the engineering behind hyperprocessed food makes it virtually addictive. A 2009 study by the Scripps Research Institute indicates that overconsumption of fast food “triggers addiction-like neuroaddictive responses” in the brain, making it harder to trigger the release of dopamine. In other words the more fast food we eat, the more we need to give us pleasure; thus the report suggests that the same mechanisms underlie drug addiction and obesity.

As always, feedback is welcome.

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.

Share|

January 18, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
2 Comments

The Best Places To Learn About (And View Video Clips Of) Teachers In The Movies

I recently received an email from Jay Sugerman, a fourth-grade teacher in Massachusetts, asking me if I knew of any places that had video clips of teachers portrayed on television or in the movies.

I thought it was a good question, and so decided to make a quick “The Best…” list.

I’d also be interested in hearing readers share which TV or movie teachers you feel are the best — and worst — role models out there. Please leave a comment if you have an idea. Also, please share if you have other suggestions of where to find similar clip collections.

Here are my choices for The Best Places To Learn About (And View Video Clips Of) Teachers In the Movies (I generally only included sites that also had video clips, though I’ve also included several good commentaries, too):

Here is Listicles choices for 9 Inspirational Movie Teachers.

You can see a short video collage titled Top 5 Best Teachers in the Movies.

10 A+ Worthy Movie and TV Teachers is the title of another list.

10 Best Movie & Television Teachers

The Onion has a list of 26 evil, awful, or just plain stupid educators in TV and film.

Here’s a good commentary titled Teacher Leadership, Hollywood Style.

The New York Times ran a piece titled Class Distinctions, a response to the “Freedom Writers” movie.

Rethinking Schools had a similar column, Freedom Writers: White Teacher to the Rescue.

This is an interesting analysis of teachers in the movies over the past sixty years. You can see a chart showing class, race and gender.

Films and School Reform by Larry Cuban and Depictions of Education in Film at Learning First both provide good commentary on “hero” teachers in movies about schools, as does Saviors and Burnouts: Rethinking Teachers in Popular Culture from Rethinking Schools.

Feedback is always welcome.

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

You might also want to explore the 400 other “The Best…” lists I’ve compiled.

Share|

January 18, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
2 Comments

Update On My ELL Book

I just sent in the final edits for my forthcoming book, English Language Learners: Teaching Strategies That Work. It should be published by Linworth Publishing in April. It focuses on looking at English Language Learners through the lens of “assets” instead of “deficits.”

Sometime between now and then I’ll be publishing the rather lengthy introduction to the book here in my blog.

This past Saturday I presented at the California League of High Schools Annual Conference. My first workshop was on technology and ELL’s. It went okay, but I let some minor technical snafu’s knock me off-balance a bit.

The second one was focused on my book and, I thought, went quite well. Here’s how the workshop was described:

This session will share research-based methods to teach English Language Learners that are used in the context of what the presenter calls the “Organizing Cycle” — Building Relationships, Accessing Prior Knowledge Through Student Stories, Developing Student Leadership, Learning By Doing, and Reflection. This process reflects the presenter’s twenty-year community organizing career prior to his becoming a teacher, and is featured in the forthcoming book, English Language Learners: Teaching Strategies That Work.

Even though parts of it won’t be easy to follow without my commentary, I thought readers might be interested in seeing the short and very, very simple slide presentation I used during the workshop. Here it is:

English Language Learners

View more presentations from mrferlazzo.

You can also see a Wordle of the book here.

I’ll keep people posted. The book is very practical, and I think teachers will like it.

Share|