I’ve previously posted about studies that have shown student benefits to having plants in the classroom (see Do You Keep Plants In Your Classroom? — it received a number of good comments).
Since that time, I expanded the number of plants I have in my classroom, and students seem to like them. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see one or more of them (or their pots) “vandalized” a bit, but nothing at all has happened to them.
These findings build on a body of research based on Attention Restoration Theory. According to this theory, the reason why you can stare at spreadsheets for only so long before wanting to toss your computer monitor through the window is that everyone has a limited capacity for this kind of work. This limited capacity system makes use of “directed attention” which is effortful, controlled voluntarily, and diminishes with use.
You can contrast this with the kind of attention that is engaged when you are out walking in a park. Your attention is drawn first to that leaf, then to another. The shadow of a bird streaking across the green grass pulls your eyes along… until a flash of color from flowers by the path grabs your focus. This second kind of attention, called undirected attention, is effortless, automatically oriented to interesting features of our surroundings, and, according to the theory, allows the directed attention system to rest and rejuvenate itself.
The study found that having houseplants around can result in the same type of rejuvenation.
If you didn’t get a chance to comment on my previous related post, please leave one here sharing your experience with plants in the classroom…
I’ve previously mentioned that our district recently loosened up its content filter to allow teachers to access many previously-blocked sites, like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, etc.
This has created some great learning opportunities for our students, and I thought I’d bring together the ways I’ve begun using this access through a classroom projector.
I’m definitely eager to hear other ideas from readers, too.
Here are my choices for The Best — And Easiest — Ways To Use YouTube If, Like Us, Only Teachers Have Access To It:
ESL Video has been on previous “The Best…” lists. Teachers from around the world have made simple quizzes connected to YouTube videos. I divide up students into pairs, each pair has a small whiteboard, marker and eraser and a team name or number, we show the video, and then students answer the questions. Every correct answer gets a point for their team. Winners are supposed to get a tiny piece of candy but, since we usually do this a few minutes before the class bell rings, everybody forgets on their rush out the door. Students just love playing it. And it couldn’t be more simple to make your own, too.
Lyrics Training shows YouTube videos of the latest popular songs, and provides subtitled “clozes.” In other words, it will show the words as they are sung, but it will periodically show a “blank” where a word has been removed. The video will stop at the end of that line, and listeners have to type in the correct word that they heard. The “blank” also shows how many letters there are in the missing word. You’re given the option of watching the video with a few blanks, more blanks, or none (which is great after you complete the whole song). It’s great to project it up on the screen and then have students — either individually or in small groups — use small whiteboards to write down their answers. It’s simple to use — no registration is necessary — and you can learn more about it at Teacher Training Videos.
Batlyrics has been on The Best Places To Find Lyrics On The Web list for awhile. It shows the lyrics on the side while playing a YouTube video of the song at the same time. Now that we can access YouTube, it’s great to have a full sing-along.
Instalyrics is a new site that shows you the lyrics to any song very, very quickly, along with a music video that goes along with it. The lay-out is very “clean” and it replaces Batlyrics as my favorite place for music videos and lyrics.
Lyrics Gaps lets you choose a song and the language you want it sung in and then gives you the option of seeing/hearing it in different modes — karaoke, beginner, intermediate, expert. Apart from karaoke mode, you’re then shown a YouTube video of the singer, along with the lyrics on the side including blanks (fill-in-the-gap). I especially like the beginner mode, which provides several options to chose to complete the sentences. The higher levels don’t give any hints.
LyricsNMusic is a nice site that lets you easily search for lyrics and you can a very clean and accessible copy. It also finds music videos of the song. What I particularly like about it, though, is that is shows the lyrics at the top and the video at the bottom, so you can play the music and show the lyrics without students getting distracted by the video. Other sites show the lyrics right next to the video.
Interactive YouTube videos are great, though there aren’t a lot out there appropriate for classroom use. There are a few, though, and you can make your own (I haven’t tried, but there are plenty of “how-to” links at The Best Places To Read & Write “Choose Your Own Adventure” Stories). They’re basically video versions of “Choose Your Own Adventure” stories. I show the video, and then students vote on which choice to make.
Here are some that are good for classroom use:
Jason Renshaw (aka English Raven) has unveiled his long-awaited “Choose Your Own Adventure” series titled “World Adventure Kids.” It’s a neat interactive video audio book, and there are going to be quite a few of them:
Drop The Weapons is a very intriguing “choose your own adventure” video developed by the London police to discourage people from carrying guns and knives:
Here’s an interactive spelling bee where students can again use whiteboards:
The Ken Burns National Parks Interactive Photo Challenge is “Find The Difference” game. Students can write on their whiteboards how the pictures are different:
Here’s one from Sesame Street on the scientific method:
David Deubelbeiss at EFL Classroom 2.0 will be hosting the April 1st edition of the ESL/EFL/ELL Blog Carnival. Any posts related to teaching or learning English, including examples of student work, are welcome. You can contribute a post to it by using this easy submission form. If the form does not work for some reason, you can send the link to me via my Contact Form.
There will be a special May 1st edition focusing on Young Learners and hosted by Shelly Terrell. The following edition will be published by Eva Buyuksimkesyan on September 1st. Let me know if you might be interested in hosting future editions.
You can see all the previous editions of the ESL/EFL/ELL Blog Carnival here.
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 (and sometimes I’m a bit late).
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.
This book comes out of my seven years of teaching at Luther Burbank High School in Sacramento, California, and out of my previous 19 years working as a community organizer.
This book comes out of my recognizing that in order for me to be as effective as I wanted to be as a teacher, I needed to identify ways that I could help my students not only learn content knowledge, but also develop higher-order thinking skills and the attributes that good community leaders must have, including self-motivation, personal responsibility, and perseverance. More and more research is showing that these qualities are critical for success in careers, college, and in life. In fact, a 2011 review of over 200 studies covering nearly 300,000 students found that simple lessons taught by teachers covering these kinds of topics resulted in substantial student academic gains. (Note to readers: You can read more about that study here in the Washington Post).
And it comes out of my understanding that developing these kinds of attributes needed to be done in conjunction with students gaining the academic skills they needed to learn. In most of our schools today, for better or for worse, both we teachers and our students are primarily held accountable for teaching and learning those academic skills – no matter how important we might believe those other life skills might be.
This book is an attempt to share classroom-tested strategies to accomplish both of these goals simultaneously.
Most, though not all, chapters follow a similar structure:
They begin with a question relating to a common classroom problem, which is then followed by an imaginary complaint/concern voiced by a teacher. Even though it is “imaginary,” I’d bet that most of us have either said or thought something like each concern at some point during our teaching career.
Next comes a section on immediate responses that teachers can take today to deal with the issue. Each response is accompanied with research that supports it. Almost all of these suggestions support the idea of developing higher-order thinking skills and enhancing self-motivation, personal responsibility and perseverance.
A “Setting The Stage” section comes next and provides ideas (and supporting research) on what teachers can do to provide longer-term solutions.
The last section of each chapter includes detailed lesson plans, including reproducibles, to implement some the “Setting The Stage” recommendations. Each lesson plan includes the Common Core Anchor State Standards For English Language Arts, Grades 6-12 that are covered by the lesson. A webpage containing all Internet links for use with these lessons can be found at the Eye On Education website . All the reproducibles in this book can also be found at the Eye On Education site and can be downloaded. In order to download them, however, you must type in the code found at the front of this book.
In addition, the lessons have specific suggestions for how to incorporate technology into the activities. Even though each lesson has a different tech suggestion, most of them could be included in all of the lessons in the book. Those ideas, along with the activities recommended in the free-standing chapter on using technology in the classroom, provide a wealth of different ways to effectively use tech to enhance student learning.
This book is not designed as a road map. Rather, it should serve more as a compass that might help point us, and our students, in the right direction….
Today, I’d like to introduce a new regular feature I”m calling “Links I Should Have Posted About, But Didn’t.”
I have a huge backlog of resources that I’ve been planning to post about in this blog but, just because of time constraints, have not gotten around to doing. Instead of letting that backlog grow bigger, I’m going to regularly (I hope each week) grab a few and list them here with a minimal description. It will force me to look through these older links, and help me organize them for my own use. I hope others will find them helpful, too. These are resources that I didn’t include in my “Best Tweets” feature because I had planned to post about them.
This “Links I Should Have Posted About, But Didn’t” series joins several other regular features I post, including:
English Grammar Lessons has tons of engaging activities. Click on the grammar lesson you want on the left side of the page and, then, when you get there, click on any of the exercises that will be on the right side.
