Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

…For Teaching ELL, ESL, & EFL

Monthly Archives: February 2010

February 17, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
2 Comments

“Brain-Priming”

I’ve written before about Malcolm Gladwell’s citing a study that showed students who were asked to take five minutes and write everything they knew about a professor (not a particular professor — just the qualities, responsibilities, etc of one) scored higher on a test they then took (see Getting Into A “Smart” Frame Of Mind on Test-Days). He says this is called ‘Brain-Priming.”

A new study has come-out and reached the same conclusions.

Both studies, though, raise the same question in my mind — both “primed” two groups: one to think about a professor, and the other to think about a less academically successful person. I wonder why neither had another group that wasn’t “primed” at all?

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February 17, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
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“Lyrics Training”

Lyrics Training looks like a neat new website using music and lyrics to help people learn English. You can read more information about it at The English Blog.

The big problem, however, is that it appears they only use YouTube videos, which pretty much makes it inaccessible to most schools in the United States (since most content filters block YouTube). Because of that, I won’t be it on The Best Music Websites For Learning English.

Too bad they don’t “rebrand” their videos like some other websites so they can be accessible.

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February 16, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
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More On Teen Sleep

Last week I posted about a lesson I’ll be doing soon with my students on sleep (see “Will Sleeping More Make Me Smarter?” — A Lesson I’m Trying This Week).

Today, Science Daily came out with a report on a related study titled Lack of Morning Light Keeping Teenagers Up at Night. It talks about one of the reasons teenagers find it difficult to get to sleep early is because they tend to get less morning light (which, and this is new to me, is called “blue light”).

The report talks about how schools should be better designed to take advantage of natural light to deal with this issue.

I had read something like this before and, because of it, have made sure that I don’t cover up my classroom windows with student work. We’re also a bit lucky since we’re in California, and most of the classrooms are not contained in a single building, so students walk outside quite a bit.

The study is interesting and, no matter what, it certainly can’t hurt to get students exposed to more natural light.

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February 16, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
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A Few Last Mardi Gras & Carnival Resources

Here are some last additions to The Best Sites To Learn About Mardi Gras & Carnivals:

Mardi Gras New Orleans Saints Style is a slideshow from TIME Magazine.

Carnival in Rio de Janeiro is a series of photos from the Sacramento Bee.

A Carnival Artist Without a Carnival is a video from The New York Times about a Haitian artist.

Carnival celebrations around the world is a slideshow from MSNBC.

Here’s a Mardi Gras video from MSNBC.

Carnivals Come To A Close is a slideshow from The Wall Street Journal.

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February 16, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
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My Most Popular Posts On Parent Engagement (Over The Past Six Months)

As regular readers know, I began a second blog about seven months ago that was timed with the publication of my book, Building Parent Engagement In Schools.

I’ve been regularly posting in that blog, “Engaging Parents In School,” and thought it might be useful to share — in order of popularity — which posts have been “clicked-on” most over the past six months.

Here are My Most Popular Posts On Parent Engagement (Over The Past Six Months):

1) Worst Idea To Promote Parent Involvement Ever: If You’re Poor, You Get Government Benefits Cut-Off Unless You Go To PTA Meetings

2) School Secretary Fired For Translating For Parents

3) Boy, Did Ruben Navarrete Get Up On The Wrong Side Of The Bed This Morning!

4) My Best Posts & Articles About Building Parent Engagement In Schools — 2009

5) How NOT To Communicate With Parents

6) October Is “Parent Involvement Month”

7) “Harlem Program Singled Out as Model”

8. Will Somebody Tell Secretary Duncan’s Staff That There Are “Regular” Public Schools Engaging Parents, Too?

9) Some Of These “Parent Academies” Just Don’t Get It….

10) Conditional Cash Transfers, Parents, And Schools

I hope you find the list helpful.

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February 15, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
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The Economic Consequences Of Dropping-Out Of High School

I’ve written before about my sharing data with students about income levels of drop-outs versus high school graduates versus college graduates (See “How Much Is A College Degree Worth?”).

Through Alexander Russo and Matthew Yglesias I’ve found a chart titled:

Unemployment by Education Attainment

It’s a graphic reinforcement of the need to stay in school. Some might listen….

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February 15, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
4 Comments

TIME Magazine Can Do Better Than This…

TIME Magazine today came-out with a big story today titled A Quick Fix for Bad Schools. It perpetuates the myth that private charter schools often come in, takeover a challenging school and, then with the same students, quickly turn everything around.

The story leads off with a recounting of a school takeover in Philadelphia by charter operators Mastery Schools:

In fall 2006, the School District of Philadelphia gave the building over to Mastery, a local operator of charter schools–that is, ones that are publicly funded but privately managed. The adults left, the kids remained, and the once failing school has been turned around.

There’s one thing wrong with this story: Mastery Schools in Philadelphia have a huge student attrition rate.

Of course, this myth of private charter turnarounds is being promulgated by the Obama administration, too.

To TIME’s credit, though, they do at least mention that the strategies being pushed by Secretary Duncan don’t have evidence behind them to show they really work:

In 2008, the Institute of Education Sciences, the Education Department’s research arm, published a guide to turning around low-performing schools that noted that “the research base on effective strategies … is sparse.” In other words, taxpayers are betting billions of dollars on what essentially remains a crapshoot.

I just wish so much of the media wouldn’t buy-into these, as TIME puts it, “Keep the Kids; Bring In New Adults” stories…

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February 15, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
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More Chinese New Year Resources

Here are additions to The Best Resources For Chinese New Year:

The Great Race is an accessible talking story from the British Council.

The Kent ICT Website has a number of New Year materials.

Chinese New Year Photos comes from CBS News.

Tigers, Penguins Celebrate New Year is a video from CBS.

Building new memories for the Lunar New Year is a CNN video.

Chinese New Year is another CNN video.

Year Of The Tiger is a slideshow from The Wall Street Journal.

Year Of The Tiger is a slideshow from Reuters.

The Orange County Register has a slideshow of an elementary school celebration of the Year of the Tiger.

Year of the tiger: Chinese lunar new year celebrations around the world in pictures is from The Telegraph.

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February 15, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
5 Comments

“Idolizing Just One Person Undermines The Struggle”

This week, The New Yorker has an exceptional article about pioneers in the civil rights struggle, accompanied by quite a few images.

I was particularly struck by this passage:

“One thing that I think the history books,and the media, have gotten very wrong is portraying the movement as Martin Luther King’s movement, when in fact it was a people’s movement,” Diane Nash, a founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, said. “If people understood that it was ordinary people who did everything that needed to be done in the movement, instead of thinking, I wish we had a Martin Luther King now, they would ask, ‘What can I do?’ Idolizing just one person undermines the struggle.”

In community organizing, we often taught and discussed the long-term dangers to social change brought about by idolizing charismatic leaders.

As a teacher, though, it’s easy to lose sight of that important concept when dealing with trying to help students learn so many other things.

We’re in the middle of teaching a unit on Nelson Mandela now in our mainstream ninth-grade English classes, and this passage is prompting me to think about how I can integrate a bit of discussion on the role of others in that country’s liberation struggle.

How do you avoid just teaching the “cult of personality” or the “cult of the hero” in your class?

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February 15, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
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FactCheckEd For Good Lessons

FactCheckEd from the University of Pennsylvania seems to have some surprisingly good lesson plans.

I learned about it from The Big Deal Book Of Technology Newsletter, which is also a good resource with reading. Here is how they describe it:

FactCheckEd.org is an educational resource designed to help high school students learn to cut through the fog of misinformation and deception that surrounds the many messages they’re bombarded with every day. The site, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, aims to help students learn to be smart consumers of these messages, not to accept them at face value; to dig for facts using the Internet, not to stop looking once they get to Wikipedia; and to weigh evidence logically, not to draw conclusions based on their own biases.

Under the heading Tools of the Trade, find a five-step framework for analyzing information and avoiding deception. Some of the Lesson Plans present students with a message, such as a real advertisement, and guide them through a process of discovery leading to the facts. Another group of lessons teaches some of the basic concepts of reasoning, giving students the building blocks that will help them parse others’ arguments and strengthen their own. Using Monty Python skits and clips from other popular television programs and films, these core lessons address deductive versus inductive reasoning, logical fallacies and similar subjects. Straight from the Source is a list of Web sites to visit when looking for information, along with synopses of what they offer.

The lessons will need to be modified a lot to be made accessible to English Language Learners, but they’re perfect for my Theory of Knowledge students.

I’m adding the link to The Best Places To Find Free (And Good) Lesson Plans On The Internet.

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February 15, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
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Smithsonian Kids

I’ve known about the Smithsonian Kids site for quite awhile but, either because I just missed it or because it’s a new feature, I recently discovered that it had audio support for the text.

This makes it a great site for English Language Learners — it’s engaging and accessible.

I’ve placed the link on the U.S. History page on my website.

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February 14, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
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“Why did so many people die in Haiti’s quake?”

Why did so many people die in Haiti’s quake? is an article from the BBC that, with text and infographics, compares the Haiti earthquake with the recent major ones in Italy and China.

It’s probably not accessible to English Language Learners on their own, but there is a lot of good information there that’s worth sharing with guidance.

I’m adding it to The Best Sites To Learn About The Earthquake In Haiti.

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