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Monthly Archives: March 2011

March 7, 2011
by Larry Ferlazzo
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The Best Learning Games For Advanced ELL’s & Non-ELL’s

In one of my previous posts, The Best Ways For Advanced ELL’s & Non-ELL’s To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly (For Their Classmates & Teacher To See), I shared our situation of being able to have our mainstream ninth-grade students do our assignments in their computer class.

As part of my reflecting on that time, I’ve been identifying new resources and assignments for our class blog. Even though we’ve regularly placed online games on the blog specifically related to the units we’re studying, I thought it might also be useful to add some other games students can play if they just have a few minutes left before their class ends.

I wanted to identify games that would be engaging, provide some challenge, and contribute to enhancing their reading skills. There are tons of word games out there, but most don’t appear to help advanced learners gain an understanding of them in context. I also wanted to only have games that wouldn’t easily lead to other ones that would be enticing to students, but not particularly educational.

I was only able to identify a few that met that criteria, and hope that readers can make additional suggestions.

Here are my choices for The Best Learning Games For Advanced ELL’s & Non-ELL’s:

Headline Clues from Michigan State University is a great activity. In the game, you’re shown the lead paragraph, but letters from two words in the headline are missing. Players have to use clues in the first paragraph to identify what the missing words should be. As you play the online version, you can ask for clues. One of the great things about using this game is that students can create their own with pen and paper and have classmates try to figure out the answers, as well as giving them clues if needed.

Wordmaster is from the BBC. In it, you’re shown a sentence with a word missing (indicated by a blank). Then you have to click on an on-screen keyboard to type the correct word “hangman” style. You can ask for clues, and you’re competing against the clock. You can also choose various levels of difficulty, and the game has thousands of words. And after you’ve either guessed the correct word or the timer is up, you can have the sentence read to you.

Free Rice is the “granddaddy” of “cause-related” games. If you choose the correct definition of the word, the next word you’re given is “harder.” If you answer incorrectly, the next word is supposed to be “easier.” In addition, for every word you get correct, ten grains of rice are donated to an international aid agency. A year-and-a-half ago, the BBC published a story quoting United Nations’ officials as saying the game has generated enough funds to feed 50,000 for a day at that time. Free Rice recently expanded its game and now has questions related to grammar, geography, art, foreign language and math, too (Yes, I know, this doesn’t teach the words in context, but because they have questions in all the categories, it’s so fun, and it’s for a good cause, are all reasons why I added it to this list.

Vocabulary.com is a new free site from the creators of the “Visual Thesaurus.” It’s a vocabulary game that has lots of bells and whistles, including the ability to evaluate how you’re doing and use that information to determine the difficulty of future questions. You have register first (it’s a pretty painless process) before you can use the site.

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.

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March 7, 2011
by Larry Ferlazzo
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More On How Much Outside Factors Have On Student Achievement

Here are the newest additions to The Best Places To Learn What Impact A Teacher & Outside Factors Have On Student Achievement:

Experiences of poverty and educational disadvantage is the title of a good report from the Rowntree Foundation

Poverty and Potential: Out-of-School Factors and School Success is from The National Educational Policy Center.

Thanks to Paul Thomas for the tips.

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March 6, 2011
by Larry Ferlazzo
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The Michigan Fish Test & School Reform

I’ve just read one of the most interesting things I’ve seen in awhile — a guest column on CNN by professor Sheena Iyengar titled The Michigan Fish Test And The Middle East.

In it, she describes an apparently famous experiment of showing a picture of three large fish in a sea scene. When people from the United States were later asked to describe it, they focused on the large fish. When Japanese participants were asked to describe the same picture, they gave a much more holistic description of the picture. Ms. Iyengar states that it demonstrates the difference between the typical American individualistic approach versus the more collectivist one found in Asian cultures. She writes:

The divergent accounts point to differing narratives of what controls what in the world, and how individual people fit into it.

Her column got me thinking about how this same difference might apply to present school reform efforts.

Many school reformers continue to have a laser-like focus on the role of teachers, often dismissing any consideration of outside factors like poverty as just “excuses.” This despite abundant research showing that teachers have control of only one-third of the factors that affect student achievement. These reformers apparently see teachers as the “big fish” who are omniscient in their power — in the classroom.

At the same time, however, many of these same reformers seem to think that they themselves are the “big fish” when it comes to making any major decisions about what occurs in the schools. This kind of cult of personality has most recently been exhibited by Michelle Rhee’s announcement of her new StudentsFirst organization, which she announced in a Newsweek article filled with too many “I’s” to count. It seems that they often believe that only they have the needed wisdom and only they have the true interests of students in mind. They do not appear to see that power is not a finite pie — if teachers and parents get some, that does not mean they they will have less. In fact, more possibilities and opportunities are created as a result of that partnership.

School reformers might be wise to keep in mind Professor Iyengar’s description of this more collectivist model:

The individual isn’t powerless in these conceptions, but he or she is just one player in a larger drama of life, not its center.

The words humble and humility come from the Latin root humus, which means the soil or earth.  I’d like to suggest that a dose of humility could help many school reformers get a little more “grounded” in what is really happening in our schools, and what really needs to happen.

Looking beyond the “big fish” would be a start…

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March 6, 2011
by Larry Ferlazzo
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A “Round-Up” Of Recent Posts, Videos & Articles On School Reform & Union Issues

There have been quite a few good and useful posts and articles on school reform issues over the past few days. Here they are, along with links to “The Best…” lists I’m adding them to:

* There have been some good posts challenging comments by some “school reformers” that the experience of having many years in the classroom is over-rated. They say that after the first few years, it has no impact on student achievement. Here are some posts rebutting that claim:

The Teaching Experience at the Shanker Blog

Teaching experience matters! is from NYC Public School Parents

Firing Teachers with Due Process is a good piece from Forbes that rebuts a different claim — that it takes many years to get rid of a bad teacher.

I’m adding those posts to The Best Articles For Helping To Understand Both Why Teacher Tenure Is Important & The Reasons Behind Seniority-Based Layoffs.

* I’m embedding this “must-watch” thirty minute video of a talk by one of my favorite education writers and researchers, Richard Rothstein. Here’s how the Education Testing Service describes it:

Rothstein, a former New York Times national education columnist, discusses the false narrative about public education — especially urban schools — that currently exists. Rothstein maintains that many education reform proposals, especially those that focus on teacher accountability, are based on a misinterpretation and misuse of data. He stresses the direct correlation between poverty and educational failure.

Rothstein makes many important points but, because of some of the key ones he makes, I’m adding the video to The Best Places To Learn What Impact A Teacher & Outside Factors Have On Student Achievement.

* Teach for America 20th Anniversary Alumni Summit: Conclusions, Questions, and other Ruminations comes from Education Notes Online, and I’m adding it to The Best Posts & Articles Raising Concerns About Teach For America.

* The relationship between education spending and test scores is an important piece that I’m adding to The Best Sites For Learning That Money Does Matter For Schools.

* The “three great teachers in a row” myth is a piece by Valerie Strauss at The Washington Post. I’m adding it to The Best Resources For Learning About The “Value-Added” Approach Towards Teacher Evaluation.

* Why politicians should spend time at school is another piece from Valerie Strauss’ blog. I’m adding it to The Best Resources For Learning About Effective Student & Teacher Assessments.

* Here are some useful pieces related to what’s going on in Wisconsin, and that I’m adding to The Best Resources For Learning About Attacks On Teachers & Other Public Sector Workers In Wisconsin:

Unions Hope States’ Attacks Nurture a Comeback comes from The New York Times.

Both Sides Begin Efforts for Recalls in Wisconsin is also from The New York Times.

How To Make A Misleading Public/Private Earnings Gap Disappear is from The Shanker Blog.

The Budget: Who’s Really to Blame? is a cartoon from The Atlantic.

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March 6, 2011
by Larry Ferlazzo
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The Best Ways For Advanced ELL’s & Non-ELL’s To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly (For Their Classmates & Teacher To See)

Our school is divided into seven “Small Learning Communities” (SLC’s). Our SLC’s contain 300 students and twenty teachers each, and we all stay together during the student’s four year high school career (see What Are Small Learning Communities? for more information).

I’m part of the Information Technology SLC, which means that most of my ninth-grade English students also take a basic computer class. Their teacher is gracious enough to let my colleague Katie Hull and me design assignments for our students to do every Friday in their computer class, and sometimes more often. You can see the types of assignments they do at our Ninth-Grade English Class Blog. It’s a huge asset to our class — like having an extra English class period each week.

Sometimes, though, students get done early with the class blog assignments and are unclear about what they should do next. And, since Katie and I are not actually present, we can’t be there to help them out.

I’ve written about the crazy schedule we’re going to have this coming week with some of our students taking the California High School Exit Exam. Because of that, I’m going to have some students for many, many hours on Tuesday and Wednesday. During part of that time when we’re in the computer lab, I’m going to help train a small number of our mainstream ninth-grade students on some easy tools they can use when they’ve finished our assignments early. They, in turn, can show their classmates.

Though these tools are very simple, most are slightly more complicated than the ones I highlighted in The Best Ways For English Language Learners To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly. I’ve continued to try, though, to only include ones that do not require registration.  And, even though a few students will be learning how to use them under my supervision this week, I’m only listing tools that I’m confident most students can learn how to use pretty much on their own. All these sites allow students to create content that they will be able post in the comments section of our class blog.   Finally, all these sites can challenge students to use higher-order thinking skills.  I’ll be making a more simple version of this post over there. They will be able to use them to create online content for any unit we are studying at the time.

You may have noticed that I added a “qualifier” to the title of this post — (For Their Classmates & Teacher To See).  The reason for that is that I’m creating another “The Best…” list in the next day or so that highlights what I think are the best places for students to create content that others — beyond their teacher and classmates – can see.  I’ll cull them from two of my more popular “The Best…” lists:

The Best Places Where Students Can Write For An “Authentic Audience”

The Best Places Where Students Can Create Online Learning/Teaching Objects For An “Authentic Audience”

Here are my choices for The Best Ways For Advanced ELL’s & Non-ELL’s To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly (For Their Classmates & Teacher To See)):

ANNOTATE A WEBPAGE: WebKlipper lets you easily, without requiring registration, annotate any webpage with virtual post-it notes or a highlighter. You’re then given the url address of the annotated webpage. It’s quite easy to use. Students can use it to demonstrate reading strategies (visualizing, asking questions, making a connection, etc.). Bounce is another option.

MAKE A SLIDESHOW: Bookr is about as easy of a slideshow maker as they get. You can search through images with a tag word, drag them into a flip-like book, and add text.

CREATE A TEST: Testmoz is an app that lets you create an online, self-correcting quiz without having to register.

MAKE A LIST: Thinkmeter lets you makes lists and is designed as a survey-like tool, but I’d like students to use it somewhat differently. If you pick an item from Amazon, it will show an image of the item and, at least if you list a book, it will also show a description of it. In addition, if you insert the url address of an image from the Web, it will show it. You can post the link to your survey wherever you please. You can’t write descriptions of the items as you are making the list. However, once it’s made, you are given the ability to make a comment on each item. I think it’s the best thing out there (that doesn’t require registration) for students to make a list of their favorite books and explain why they picked each one, or, if we’re studying a unit like “Jamaica,” listing the things they like best about the country and explaining why for each one.

MAKE A MAP: Zee Maps, without registration, lets you create a map and add media by pasting the url address of any photo you grab off the Web.

MAKE A GAME OTHERS CAN PLAY: Jeopardy Labs lets you easily create an online Jeopardy game without having to register. Maybe I’m the only teacher who feels this way, but I’ve always found that playing Jeopardy the way they do on TV — giving players the answer and then they have to come-up with the question — to be overly confusing for students in the classroom. When I’ve played it in class, I’ve just given the questions and had students have to say the answers. Given my feelings about this, even though it’s super simple to use this tool to create the game, I tell my students to ignore the site’s instructions and just write the questions first and the answers second so that the board displays the question.

CREATE A WALLWISHER TO SUMMARIZE DATA SETS: Wallwisher lets you make a virtual wall of “sticky notes” where you can include images, text, and/or videos. Inductive learning is a key part of our teaching at Burbank, and we use what are called “data sets” as a major component of those lessons. You can read more about this categorization tool in both my book on teaching English Language Learners and my upcoming book on Helping Students Motivate Themselves. After students categorize the info in these data sets, they can summarize them and use them to create Wallwishers, as our students did in our Nelson Mandela unit. You can see many examples of their creations in our class blog. (You should be know, though, that Wallwisher has been “acting-up” a bit lately). (Corkboard might be an easier tool to use) You could also use a sites like Copytaste or Freedom Share to do something similar — they both allow just copying and pasting images from the Web.

CREATE AN INTERNET SCAVENGER HUNT: Students have been completing Internet Scavenger Hunts, which are basically a series of questions along with links where they can find the answers. We’ve just been grabbing ones we find on the Web and putting them on our class blog for students to complete, but there’s no reason why students now can’t start making their own. Their classmates can then complete them. Even though there are relatively simple sites that are solely devoted to the creation of scavenger hunts and more sophisticated Webquests (see The Best Places To Create (And Find) Internet Scavenger Hunts & Webquests), I think, for our purposes, just having students come up with a few questions, then list a url address where they can find the answers, and then list a few more questions, etc. would be sufficient for what we want to do. For that purpose, I don’t there’s anything easier than a site like Copytaste (Freedom Share is another one). Students just have to make the list of questions and websites and the page is automatically converted into a website whose url address can be pasted on our class blog.

CREATE A POWERPOINT PRESENTATION: Like the online book and slideshow tools mentioned at the top of this list, converting something they’ve written in class (or writing a short piece in the computer lab about a topic we’re learning) into a PowerPoint presentation and uploading it to Slideshare is another easy way to create web content.

SEND AN E-CARD: In several of our units, we have students write “postcards” to people they know from the places we are studying, sometimes including some of the local dialect or slang. Nations Illustrated has thousands of world images — all of which can easily be converted into an E-Card and posted on a blog (students can send it to themselves or to their teacher). If I was teaching a Social Studies class, Smithsonian Images and Picture History would be other E-Card sources. More sites include Cardkarma, The Guggenheim Museum, and Worldwide Health.

MAKE A “FAKEBOOK” PAGE FOR A HISTORICAL Or FICTIONAL CHARACTER: Fakebook lets you make a fake Facebook page for a historical or fictional character. No registration is required, and students can see a ton of examples here.

MAKE AN ONLINE TUTORIAL: tildee lets you very easily create a simple step-by-step tutorial for just about anything. You can add text, maps, videos and photos (unfortunately, though, you can only upload photos — not grab them from the Web. They say they’re adding that ability soon). And you don’t even have to register for the service.

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.

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March 5, 2011
by Larry Ferlazzo
1 Comment

It’s Easy To Create Slideshows With “SlideBomb,” But….

SlideBomb is a new tool that lets you easily create an embeddable slideshow with videos and images grabbed off the web or uploaded from your computer, and you can add text to each slide, too. My only concern, though (in addition to not liking its name), is that some of the other slideshows accessible on the site made by other users might not be appropriate for the classroom.

Nevertheless, I’m adding it to The Best Ways To Create Online Slideshows. It’s worth a visit.

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March 5, 2011
by Larry Ferlazzo
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GeoTrio Is Great For English Language Learners

GeoTrio lets you create a virtual tour of just about anyplace on a map. You type in addresses or locations and easily create multiple “stops” that show the Google Street View snapshots of the area. You can also upload your own images.

But that’s not all.

What really makes GeoTrio stand out is the ability to easily make an audio recording for each stop on the map.

In many ways its similar to Tripline, which you can read about on The Best Sites Where Students Can Plan Virtual Trips (I’m adding GeoTrio to that list, too). Tripline is “slicker” and lets you grab images off the Web. However, it does not have the ability to provide audio narration.

I’ll be having students try-out GeoTrio in our upcoming field trip in a couple of weeks.

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March 5, 2011
by Larry Ferlazzo
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February’s Best Tweets — Part Two (and a little late)

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.

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 February’s Best Tweets — Part Two (not listed in any order):

“Detroit Public Schools Face ‘Draconian’ Cuts” NPR

“Why Your Boss Is Wrong About You” NY TImes

The Forgotten History of Muslim Scientists [Slide Show], Scientific American

“Could “micro-charters” fuel charter-school growth?” (This is one of most bizarre school reform ideas I’ve heard of..)

“An Unsung Hero of the Nuclear Age: Maj. Harold Hering and the forbidden question that cost him his career.” Slate

“An ingenious way to get kids to eat healthy: Give cafeterias a psychology lesson” Boston Globe

“The Top 100 Words on Twitter”

“How to Make Oatmeal . . . Wrong” NY Times

“The irony of Obama’s ‘help’ for Wisconsin teachers” by Valerie Strauss

“A historian traces our long, complicated relationship with mechanical beings” Boston Globe

OK: How a little word conquered the world, BBC

“Reform: Another Questionable Urban Prep “Success” Story”

You might also be interested in seeing a list of favorite tweets at:

Shelly Terrell’s blog

Kalinago English

Eye On Education

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March 5, 2011
by Larry Ferlazzo
1 Comment

The Best Learning Games For Intermediate English Language Learners

I have about twenty separate “The Best…” lists related to games. You can see them all by going to “The Best…” page on this blog and scrolling down to “Games.”

But, as I explained in yesterday’s post, The Best Ways For English Language Learners To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly, we have some logistical issues at school coming up next week, so I’m using the opportunity to identify “The Best of the Best” from various lists so students can have something different to do.

In order to make it on this list, games had to be very simple to play, be accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners, be engaging, provide a superior language-learning opportunity and offer the chance to learn additional content knowledge, too. I didn’t want to include many of the learning games that had only specific subject content, though, since it would be important for players to have some prior knowledge to get the most out of them, and I’m not sure many of my students have it.

That said, after spending a fair amount of time reviewing all the games on my lists, the conclusion I came to was quite surprising to me.

I’ve ended up choosing only one particular game and one previous entire game-related “The Best…” list — that’s all.

The one particular game that I like so much is this one:

Gut Instinct is from the BBC. It has questions divided into three categories — English, Math and Science, and is accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners, and maybe even Early Intermediates. But the exciting feature of the game is that students can super-easily create their own virtual “rooms” for between two-and-thirty people where they can compete with their peers. All they have to do is all type in the name of their room (or “league”), choose their avatar and nickname, and the game begins.

The previous “The Best..” like that I like so much is:

The Best Places To Read & Write “Choose Your Own Adventure” Stories

Most of the games on that list just seem superior on so many levels to many of the games on other “The Best…” lists. They seem to provide many opportunities for higher-order thinking, language-learning, and for gaining accessible content knowledge.

Let me know what you think of what — to me, at least — is very surprising content for this “The Best…” list. I had expected it to be far longer.

“Turn-O-Phrase” is a fun new game where you are shown images that give hints to common English phrases, and you need to identify that words that would go along with them. You can also get hints. You can play without registration, or you can log-in to keep track of your “points.” The site says that they are working on a feature that lets users create their own “phrase games,” which will really be an asset. I’m tentatively adding it to this list– depending on how the “create-your-own” feature will end up working. Unfortunately, for now you can only play it by logging in via Twitter or Facebook so, if they don’t change that soon, I’ll be removing it from this list.

R U Revising lets you answer your choice of English, Math, or Science questions. It has separate links to versions for each subject, so the link here is to the main game page. It’s particularly nice for English Language Learners because it provides audio support for the text.

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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March 4, 2011
by Larry Ferlazzo
4 Comments

Jon Stewart & Diane Ravitch Knock It Out Of The Park!

Last night’s “The Daily Show” was a classic. Jon Stewart opened with what was probably the most insightful, funny, and effective response I have seen to on-going teacher-bashing. Ten minutes late, Diane Ravitch came on and did a fabulous interview. For some reason, I wasn’t able to get the embed code for the entire episode. However, I was able to embed the three key sections: The first two videos are the two segments of the amazing opening piece on schools, and then the third is the interview with Diane Ravitch:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Crisis in the Dairyland – For Richer and Poorer
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook
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March 4, 2011
by Larry Ferlazzo
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Create A Message With Letters Bouncing To Your Music

Font de Music lets you type in a message, choose music to go with it, adjust the font and color, and then it turns your letters into a bouncing, live performance. In addition, and most importantly for English Language Learners, it also lets you write a message that goes along with it, in addition to giving you the url address of your creation. It can be posted on a student or teacher blog or website.

It will certainly be on a future “The Best…” list.

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March 4, 2011
by Larry Ferlazzo
3 Comments

The Best Ways For English Language Learners To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly

I’ve posted 60 (yes, 60) “The Best…” lists in my series on tools to “create online content easily & quickly.” You can see all of them under the Web 2.0 category on my “The Best…” list page, as well as my annual best list on this topic for the past several years.

In this “The Best…” list, I’m going to highlight “The Best of the Best” of these tools for English Language Learners. I’ll be creating a similar list for non-ELL’s soon, too.

As in all the web apps I recommend in this series, they had to meet the following criteria:

The only skill required to use these applications is to have a very beginning level understanding of the English language. You do not need to have an email address.

In addition, here are a few other criteria the site had to meet to make this list:

1) No registration is required to use the service.

2) It’s available free-of-charge.

3) Users can create attractive and engaging online content in a few minutes.

4) Users can email the link to the content they created from within the site itself. In other words, there is an email feature within the web application so the user doesn’t have to use his/her own email — even if they have one. I have included a few sites, though, that don’t include this feature — instead, they just provide a link or code that the user has to copy and paste. But most do have this email feature.

5) The online content the user creates is hosted indefinitely on the web application’s server — it is not deleted within a week or a month like many others do.

6) Even though a microphone, or the ability to upload a photo, might be useful on some of these sites, you can still create engaging content even without the extra equipment or image.

The immediate impetus for this list is that next week we’ll be giving the California High School Exit Exam. This causes a huge two-day change in our schedule, and the bottom line is that I’ll have all of our school’s Beginning and Intermediate English students in the same class for eight hours during that time. We’ll be spending some time in the computer lab and, in addition to various regular sites we use, I wanted to pull together a few others that students could use for simple and fun creation of online content that also includes language learning opportunities.

During a portion of our time in the lab, I will be asking students to — either on their own or with a partner — use these apps to develop short narratives that should reinforce what we have been learning about writing essays — an autobiographical incident, problem/solution, or persuasive. I’ll be making a simpler version of this list for our class blog, and students will copy and paste the url addresses to their creations under the post.

So, here are my choices for The Best Ways For English Language Learners To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly (not in order of preference):

WRITE A PICTURE STORY: Five Card Flickr Story lets you pick five photos from a group of pre-selected images from Flickr and then write a story about them. It saves your selection and story, and provides you with a link to it. No registration is required.

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.

MAKE A MOVIE: Use Dvolver Moviemaker to create short animations with text bubble dialogue. You can see many examples of these films on my Examples of Student Work page.

CREATE A CARTOON/COMIC: Again, there are a number of great sites in this category. They include MakeBeliefsComix and the Toronto Public Library Tell-A-Story Builder.

MAKE A SLIDESHOW: Bookr is about as easy of a slideshow maker as they get. You can search through images with a tag word, drag them into a flip-like book, and add text. My students love it. You can see some of their samples here.

PICK AN IMAGE AND WRITE A SPEECH BUBBLE: There are a number of sites that allow you to easily grab an image off the web and add a speech bubble with your text. The best one is Bubblr.

SUBTITLE A CLIP FROM A BOLLYWOOD OR A B-MOVIE: Bombay TV lets you choose a scene from a B movie from Bollywood and have fun creating subtitles for the clip.

WRITE A STORY WITH PAINTINGS: The Art of Storytelling is a site from the Delaware Art Museum that allows you pick a painting, write a short story about it, record it with your computer microphone, and email the url address for posting on a student website or blog. It’s extraordinarily simple, and extraordinarily accessible to any level of English Language Learner. No registration is required.

MAKE A “FAKEBOOK” PAGE FOR A HISTORICAL Or FICTIONAL CHARACTER: Fakebook lets you make a fake Facebook page for a historical or fictional character. No registration is required, and students can see a ton of examples here.

CREATE A PAGE OF CATEGORIZED VOCABULARY IMAGES & WORDS: Copytaste or Freedom Share let you copy and paste images from the Web into an automatically created webpage. ELL’s can be given categories (like “transportation”) and have to find images they would label for their own personal online dictionary that could be seen by the entire class.

SEND AN E-CARD: E-Cards are always ways to make the idea of writing more engaging, and the visual prompts of the photo can make it easier, too. Nations Illustrated has thousands of world images — all of which can easily be converted into an E-Card and posted on a blog (students can send it to themselves or to their teacher). If I was teaching a Social Studies class, Smithsonian Images and Picture History would be other E-Card sources. More sites include Cardkarma, The Guggenheim Museum, and Worldwide Health.

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.

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