July 21, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
Will National Standards Improve Education? is a forum at the New York Times website, with responses from people like Alfie Kohn and Bruce Fuller.
I’m also adding the link to my post earlier today, “Common Core” Standards And English Language Learners.
July 21, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
1 Comment
I’ve posted previously about an upcoming study by Richard Allington showing the dramatic effect providing students books of their choice to read over the summer can have on student achievement (wow, that was a long sentence 
).
The study is not being published until the fall, but more information on it was released today.
Here’s an excerpt:
Allington compares the slide in reading ability to an athlete’s fitness. “Just like hockey players lose some of their skills if they stay off their skates and off the ice for three months, children who do not read in the summer lose two to three months of reading development,” Allington said.
According to the professors’ research, the summer reading setback is the primary reason for the reading achievement gap between children who have access to reading materials at home and those who do not. Students who do not have books at home miss out on opportunities to read. Those missed opportunities can really add up.
“What we know is that children who do not read in the summer lose two to three months of reading development while kids who do read tend to gain a month of reading proficiency,” Allington said. “This creates a three to four month gap every year. Every two or three years the kids who don’t read in the summer fall a year behind the kids who do.”
I’m adding this post to My Best Posts On Books: Why They’re Important & How To Help Students Select, Read, Write & Discuss Them.
July 21, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
2 Comments
I’ve previously shared my skepticism about national standards but they do appear to be becoming a reality. Today, even though studies have shown California standards to be “California’s (English) standards are clearer, more thorough, and easier to read than the Common Core standards,” the San Francisco Chronicle reports that California might adopt them within weeks.
There have been some useful recent posts on the Common Core standards, including “Why almost nobody is writing about the Common Core” (make a point of reading the comments there, too) and The problem(s) with the Common Core standards.
Will National Standards Improve Education? is a forum at the New York Times website, with responses from people like Alfie Kohn and Bruce Fuller.
Mary Ann Zehr has written about how they relate to ELL’s at Standards Organizers Leave English Proficiency to States.
The Common Core Standards (you can find them here) are pretty useless when it comes to English Language Learners. Certainly, the California standards can be helpful to teachers, and I assume our state will keep them.
It’s hard for me to believe that all this effort and money spent on developing new standards couldn’t have been better used on more concrete areas that will actually affect what happens in the classroom — like providing more resources to schools.
What do you think?
July 21, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
Here are the latest additions to The Best Sites To Learn About The Gulf Oil Spill:
The Ecological and Health Consequences of The Oil Spill is an infographic.
The Washington Post has a special page on the spill filled with graphics and multimedia features.
July 21, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
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.
I’m adding it to The Best Sites For Learning About Nutrition & Food Safety.
July 20, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
4 Comments
A new study says that bored workers are 2.5 times more likely to be dead of cardiovascular disease two decades later. The Harvard Business Review reports that:
Highly bored workers “are more likely to die younger than those who are not bored.”
Thanks to Daniel Pink for the tip.
July 20, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
Here are the latest additions to The Best Sites To Learn About The Gulf Oil Spill:
Oil and Water is a New York Times video.
For Cajuns, What Now? is a New York Times slideshow.
Capping The Flow is a Wall Street Journal slideshow.
July 20, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
A few months ago, I began to have PostRank index posts from my other blog, Engaging Parents In School. I began that blog a year ago to support my book, Building Parent Engagement In Schools.
Post Rank uses a variety of ways to measure level of “engagement” that readers have with specific blog posts. I have a constantly updated “widget” on that blog’s sidebar that lists these posts, but I thought a quarterly post would be helpful/interesting to subscribers who don’t regularly visit the blog itself.
I’ll also be posting a list of the “most popular” posts from that blog over the past year.
Here are their rankings for this past quarter:
July 20, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
A Taxonomy of Reflection: Critical Thinking For Students, Teachers, and Principals is a post by Peter Pappas where he tries to use Bloom’s Taxonomy as a frame to create reflective questions. It’s an interesting and useful idea.
I’m adding that post to The Best Resources For Helping Teachers Use Bloom’s Taxonomy In The Classroom.
July 20, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
I’ve written a chapter about the importance of relationship-building in my book, English Language Learners: Teaching Strategies That Work. There’s lots of research documenting its importance, including showing how it reduces stress for students and, therefore, enhances their ability to learn a second language.
I just learned today about a two-year-old study that finds, in general, that reinforces that research. It says:
The higher the level of participants’ social interaction, researchers found, the better their cognitive functioning.
In addition, the study found that ten minutes of discussion on an assigned topic (a “social issue”) also specifically resulted in participants scoring higher on tests.
I’m adding this post to My Best Posts On How To Prepare For Standardized Tests (And Why They’re Bad).
July 20, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
The first part of this post is my usual introduction to this series. If you’re familiar with it already, just skip down to the listing of new sites…
Here’s the latest installment in my series on The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly. As you may remember, in order to make it on this list, the web tool has to:
* be easily accessible to English Language Learners and/or non-tech savvy computer users.
* allow people to create engaging content within minutes.
* host the user’s creation on the site itself indefinitely, and allow a direct link to be able to be posted on a student or teacher’s website/blog to it (or let it be embedded). If it just provides the url address of the student creation, you can either just post the address or use Embedit.in , a free web tool that makes pretty much any url address embeddable.
* provide some language-learning opportunity (for example, students can write about their creations).
* not require any registration.
You can find previous installments of this series with the rest of my “The Best…” lists at Websites Of The Year. Several hundred sites have been highlighted in these past lists. You might also want to take a look at the first list I posted in this series — The Best Ways For Students (And Anyone Else!) To Create Online Content Easily, Quickly, and Painlessly.
You might also want to look at The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly — 2009.
I’ll also be publishing an “all-time best” list later this year.
Here are the newest additions:
WRITE A “RANSOM” NOTE: This idea is a bit sick, if you ask me, but it might have some value to ELL’s. At the Ransom Note Generator, you can write a message using cut-out magazine letters, and then post the url of your creation online.
MAKE A TALKING PERSON: The Arby’s restaurant chain will let you take any image off the Internet and then make it talk by either recording a message on a computer microphone or using the text-to-speech feature.
TURN A WORD DOCUMENT INTO A WEB PAGE: TxtBear is a new and very useful web application that allows you to easily upload and document and immediately turn it into a webpage. A site like this is one is wonderful for students and others who are not very tech savvy. All they have to do is create a document in Word (including easily copying and pasting images into it), which they might be more familiar with, and easily turn it into a website. Students can upload papers they’ve written, as well. Then, they can just copy and paste its url address into a teacher or student blog. For example, now I have students type essays in a Word Document and then copy and paste them directly into the comments section of our class blog. With TxtBear, they use Word, illustrate it if they want, and then paste the link into the class blog. It makes the document much more readable that way.
If you found this post useful, you might want to consider subscribing to this blog for free.
You might also want to explore the 470 other “The Best…” lists I’ve compiled.
July 20, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
Students Remember Rwanda Genocide is a new lesson for ELL’s from Breaking News English.
I’m adding it to The Best Sites To Learn About Genocide In Rwanda.
July 19, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
I’ve just returned from North Carolina, where I met with a group of teachers from around the country working with The Center For Teaching Quality. We’re preparing a policy report on Teacher Working Conditions and how they relate to student learning.
It was an excellent gathering, with stimulating discussions during the meetings. In addition, there was plenty of informal talk, too, ranging from comparing how doctors were listened to in the health care reform debate and how teachers are not listened to in school reform policy discussions, to wondering if the Obama Administration’s willingness to compromise on just about everything masks an inability to tell the difference between “half a loaf” and “half a baby.” My wife and I also were able to repeatedly experience true “southern hospitality” from the gracious Center staff.
I was finally able to meet several people face-to-face, like John Norton, whose blog is on The Best Blogs For Sharing Resources/Links list.
I also met Barnett Barry, who began the Center over ten years ago, and has done brilliant work working to, not necessarily finding a middle ground in the school reform debate, but instead to transcend it. I’d strongly recommend you subscribe to his blog, Advancing The Teaching Profession, and I’m adding it to The Best (& Most Thoughtful) Blogs On “Big Picture” Education Issues list.
Barnett will also be my “guest” in the next Interview Of The Month.
If you get a chance, I’d also encourage you to check-out the free publications offered at the Centers website.
July 19, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
1 Comment
As I’ve explained in earlier pieces, I periodically post “most popular” lists of websites (and books) that I think educators might find useful. Of course, there are a number of ways to gauge “popularity.” I just view these lists as opportunities to check-out some new sites and resources, and find it interesting to see which ones might be particularly “popular.”
“Who Went Viral?” shows you the most popular online videos. Like similar sites, they’re divided into categories, like “education.” However, unlike other similar sites, Who Went Viral? lets you sort them by country and period of time, too.
I’m adding it to The Best Ways To Find Fun (& Somewhat Useful) Videos On The Web.
July 19, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
USA Today has begun a “Voices” Project, where the paper poses a question and then people can respond in writing (via Twitter) or video.
Some of the questions have included:
How has the oil spill changed you?
What does freedom mean to you?
I’m adding it to The Best Places Where Students Can Create Online Learning/Teaching Objects For An “Authentic Audience.”
July 19, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
State of the Planet: A Snapshot is an audio slideshow from Scientific American. It shows humanity’s impact on other species. The narrator speaks quite fast, but the maps shown in the slideshow are accessible to English Language Learners.
I’m adding the link to The Best Resources For World Biodiversity Day (& Endangered Species Day).
July 19, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
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. Now and then, in order to make it a bit easier for me, I may try to break it up into mid-month and end-of-month lists.
I’ve already shared in earlier posts 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 Twitter profile page or subscribe to their RSS feed.
Here are my picks for July’s Best Tweets — Part One (not listed in any order):
Who Are The Millennials? infographic
Unlikely Tutor Giving Military Afghan Advice, NY Times
Create your own font through your handwriting
Wall St Journal reviews new biography of Saul Alinsky;I worked for many years as community organizer for organization he founded
Supporting Kids: A Conversation with School Counselor of the Year Barbara Micucci
“12 Writing Tips from Mark Twain”
The links between bloggers’ personalities and their use of words
“Sac City Unified gets corporate look” Sacramento Bee
“Matisse’s ‘Bathers by the River’ amazing NY Times interactive showing development of Matisse painting over 8 yrs
What the class size research REALLY says
Wikipedia Explained By Common Craft
“The Medium Is the Medium”, NY Times, David Brooks on books & Internet
Creating Edible Illusions–and Great Art [Slide Show]
World’s Strangest Festivals slideshow
You might also be interested in seeing a list of favorite tweets at Shelly Terrell’s blog.
July 18, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
The San Francisco Chronicle published an article with photos on a group’s effort to design and distribute one million durable soccer balls in the Third World.
It’s a pretty interesting piece, and I’m adding it to The Best Sites For Learning About The World Cup.
July 18, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
Here are the newest additions to The Best Sites To Learn About The Gulf Oil Spill:
The Environmental Impact of Oil Spills is a slideshow from The New York Times.
Lessons From an Old Oil Spill is a slideshow from The Times.
Experimental cap stops oil flowing into the gulf is a series of photos from The Sacramento Bee.
July 18, 2010
by Larry Ferlazzo
0 comments
LIFE in the Korean War is a slideshow from LIFE.
I’ve added it to The Best Sites For Learning About The Korean War.
