This year, though, I’m going to be posting two separate lists specifically related to English Language Learners. The first is this one, which shares my choices for the best resources made available this year for teaching ELL’s. In a month or so, I’ll be posting a second list that will share sites specifically for students.
That second list will be ranked, and will include a readers’ poll. This one is not ranked, and I have not included a way to vote.
However, if you feel like voting, the polls are still open in two other lists:
Here are my picks for The Best Sites For Teachers of English Language Learners — 2009 (not in order of preference):
Complete United States History Curriculum Available Online: As regular readers know, during the last school year I taught two U.S. History classes to English Language Learners — one in a regular classroom and the other in the computer lab. You can read more about the results of this research experiment at Results From My Year-Long U.S. History Tech Experiment. I used a blog during the computer lab class. You can access the United States History Class blog and see an entire year’s of lessons designed for student self-access. You can also see links to the students blogs used during the course. The lessons include quite a bit of original material I developed for use in both of the classes, and they are available for download (during the year students would open up the documents and cut-and-paste the exercises into their own blogs). You’re obviously welcome to use the resources there with your students. I just ask that you not publish or reprint any of my original materials for use other than by your students.
The “Wizard English Grid”: Jason Renshaw was generous enough to share on his blog about a nifty tool he’s come-up with called The Wizard English Grid.That link will take you to the direct PDF download. You’ll see it’s a simple sheet laid out in a grid. You might be thinking, “Big deal!” Don’t stop there, though. Go to Jason’s blog post Wizard English Grids for “Finding Out” to learn how he uses it. After reading it, I immediately printed out the Wizard English Grid for use in my own English Language Learner classroom. Jason also continues to write about more ways he uses the grid and keeps all of his “Wizard” ideas in one place on his blog.
Teaching Recipes: EFL Teaching Recipes is a brand new site that immediately joins The Best Resource Sites For ESL/EFL Teachers. It’s an extremely accessible site where ESL/EFL teachers can share their lessons, including video and images. It’s just beginning, and I’m sure it’ll be filled-up with with ideas quickly. Go over and contribute some, as well as read the excellent ones that are already there! Of course, it’s not unexpected that EFL Teaching Recipes would be so good after you learn who’s behind it — David Deubelbeiss, who’s blog is on The Best ESL/EFL Blogs list and who began and continues to guide EFL Classroom 2.0, which is on a ton of “The Best…” lists.
Teaching About The Environment: The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has a free 133 page downloadable curriculum that connects English language-learning with environmental issues. It’s called Teach English, Teach About The Environment, and looks pretty good to me.
Classroom Starters: A nice short PDF called “Fifty Stimulating Classroom Starters” shares ideas specifically for ESL/EFL classes. It was put together by Jack Bailey and Marit ter Mate-Martinsen.
Two hours before I was going to post this list, Sean let me know that he has just started yet another excellent site called Listen A Minute. It has short audio pieces with supporting materials and online quizzes. It looks like another great resource.
Ideas For Student Activities: Pilgrims is a UK-based EFL/ESL teacher-training organization that — among other things — publishes one of my favorite online journals, “Humanising Language Teaching.” Their main site, where you can access past (as well as current) issues, is on The Best Resource Sites For ESL/EFL Teachers list. Ozge Karaoglu, whose blog is on The Best ESL/EFL Blogs list, attended a Pilgrims training and wrote two great posts sharing lots of ideas she learned about student activities. You probably already know many of them, but there certainly were some new ones to me.
Blogging Advice For ESL/EFL Teachers: Karenne Sylvester put together an incredible collection of ESL/EFL bloggers responding to the question What advice would you give to another TEFL teacher interested in becoming a blogger? Thirty-one teachers of English Language Learners responded. Trust me, you don’t want to miss this post. For what it’s worth, you can read my contribution here.
Finding New Websites: I’ve written many times about the great site Ressources Pour Le College. It has a ton of great resources for English Language Learners. Michelle Henry, who has been the primary person responsible for locating and organizing all of these resources, is no longer updating that site. Instead, she has created a new site that should be bookmarked by all ESL/EFL teachers.
This post contains a listing of the most popular posts in this blog during the month of August. These are the ones that have been most “clicked-on,” and are different from my Websites Of The Month. Those are the posts that I personally think are the best and most helpful.
Because of the popularity of my “The Best…” lists, it should be pointed out that often the most clicked-on posts are not necessarily ones that I wrote that month. Instead, they might have been written earlier, but then one of these older ones has just been highlighted elsewhere and all of a sudden become popular.
You can see previous reports on my Most Popular Posts here.
I also share a list of Post Rank’s analysis of each month’s top posts. 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 my blog’s sidebar that lists these posts, but I thought a monthly post would be helpful/interesting to subscribers who don’t regularly visit the blog itself.
I regularly highlight my picks for the nine or ten (or a few more) most useful posts for each month — not including “The Best…” lists. I also use these in a more extensive monthly newsletter I send-out. You can see back issues of those newsletters here and my previous “Top Ten” picks at Websites Of The Month.
These posts are different from the ones I list under the monthly “Most Popular Blog Posts.” Those are the posts the largest numbers of readers “clicked-on” to read.
Here are the posts I personally think are the best, and most helpful, ones I’ve written during this past month (not in any order of preference):
I was searching for something else on the Web today, and happened to instead find a nice short PDF called “Fifty Stimulating Classroom Starters” for ESL/EFL classes. It was put together by Jack Bailey and Marit ter Mate-Martinsen.
Bloom’s Taxonomy is talked about a lot in educational circles. However, if you believe a recent survey of visits to 23,000 U.S. classrooms, the higher-order thinking skills it’s ideally designed to promote doesn’t get much use.
And I can understand why.
It’s easy to get caught-up in the day-to-day work involved in teaching a class or multiple classes, and it’s easy to fall into the trap of doing the “usual stuff” and not “think out of the box.”
I thought it might be useful to share in a “The Best…” list the resources that help me try to use Bloom’s Taxonomy in my classroom.
There may very well be resources out there that do a far better job of explaining the Taxonomy and how to use it. However, a lot of them are caught up in academic jargon or are just not offered in a way that I find particularly usable.
I personally try to use Bloom’s Taxonomy in two ways. One, I have a big wall chart in the front of my classroom with a summary of each level of the Taxonomy and “question starters” for each of them. Since I spend a lot of time helping my students practice reading strategies, and one of them is asking questions, they can take advantage of the accessibility of this poster. After reviewing what the whole thing means, we discuss how — by practicing asking themselves the higher-level questions while they read a text — they can gain a deeper understand of its meaning.
In addition, I try to use Bloom’s to help me formulate my own lessons. In order to do that, I just need simple, accessible, and practical reminders that I can use. That’s what you’ll primarily find on this list.
Here are my choices for The Best Resources For Helping Teachers Use Bloom’s Taxonomy In The Classroom (most, though not all, are materials prepared by different school districts):
Here’s a Bloom’s Taxonomy chart that’s organized very simply, and that I can keep on my desk or with my papers to help me remember the levels, questions, and practical activities that could go with them.
Here’s another simple list that contains the questions but, more importantly, good ideas on how to implement them in the classroom.
This short article has an even smaller Verb Chart that can serve as a reminder when planning lessons.
A blog called ESL School ran a series of posts last year on applying Bloom’s specifically to English Language Learners. Here are individual links to each of their posts:
The New Jersey World Languages Curriculum Framework is a PDF document with a lot of interesting stuff. The most interesting item in it — by far — is a Bloom’s Taxonomy framework for language learners. It’s Figure 47. It lays-out teaching and learning strategies — specifically for language learners — for each level of the taxonomy.
Harry Tuttle has come-up with an intriguing way to evaluate student projects using Web 2.0 application. I’d encourage you to read his post (and the comments section where he answers a question I left for him). He basically assigns each level of Bloom’s Taxonomy a number — the higher the level, the higher the number. He identifies the level the student achieved in his/her project, and then multiplies it by the number of days they worked on it. It seems to me that this could be a useful formula.
The Differentiator is a cool online application designed to use Bloom’s Taxonomy and other similar thinking/planning “charts” to come-up with appropriate high-level student assignments (I’m sorry, I couldn’t think of any better way to describe it). Though I’m not that sure if it brings much more value than other sites on this list, it still belongs here just because it’s a cool-looking tool. Check it out and you’ll understand what I mean.
Developing Questions For Critical Thinking is an interactive site using a revised version of Bloom’s Taxonomy that was developing in the 1990’s. It seems like it has some very useful resources.
Beginning in September, 2008, I’ll write a monthly post sharing the most popular posts from the blog. In other words, the posts that are “most clicked-on.”
This list is different from the Websites of the Month, which are my picks for the most useful posts that I write each month.
This page will compile each of these monthly popular post reports all in one place. Since I didn’t start this feature until September, 2008, I began with with a summary report of the most popular posts from the first nineteen months of this blog.
I thought people might be interested in seeing a listing of the most popular posts of the year — the ones that have been “clicked-on” the most during 2008:
Here are the most popular posts for this month. These are the ones that have been most “clicked-on,” and are different from my Websites Of The Month. Those are the posts that I personally think are the best and most helpful.
Because of the popularity of my “The Best…” lists, it should be pointed out that often the most clicked-on posts are not necessarily ones that I wrote that month. Instead, they might have been written earlier, but then one of these older ones has just been highlighted elsewhere and all of a sudden become popular.
You see previous reports on my Most Popular Posts here.
As I mentioned earlier, I am going to start listing each month’s most popular posts, and compiling them at Most Popular Posts.
Since my “The Best…” lists are always by far the posts that get the largest number of “hits,” I’ll list the top five of them and then the top five non-”The Best…” lists:
Here are the ten most popular posts since this blog began nineteen months ago. In addition, since all the most popular posts are “The Best…” lists, I decided in this nineteen month summary to also list the ten most popular posts that weren’t “The Best…” lists.
I’ve placed a link at the top of the screen where readers will be able access all the monthly “Most Popular Post” reports.
Here are ten most popular posts — all “The Best…” lists:
I think having English Language Learners create short online animations is a great benefit the Web provides. Students can work individually or in a group very methodically by making well-thought-out storyboards and then implement them, or they can make “quick and dirty” ones right on the spot.
Their creations can then be posted for all to see and comment on, both online and in-person.
Because they can be so useful to English Language Learners, and to other students, I’ve decided to create another “The Best…” list — this time highlighting the sites that I think are most accessible to English Language Learners (and are free).
You can also find links to these sites, and to other animation sites that didn’t make this list, on my Examples of Student Work page.
All of these sites are very good (or else they wouldn’t be on my list!). However, there is one that stands-out among the rest. So even though I’m not ranking them all like I usually do, I will be highlighting one as the best.
Here are my picks for The Best Ways For Students To Create Online Animations:
I’ll start off with the site I think by far is the best (and which has appeared in other “The Best…” lists) — Dvolver Moviemaker. It’s so easy, no registration is required, and it can be done quickly. Very new Beginning English Language Learners have been able to use it very effectively. You can see many examples of their work here. The company also has a more advanced application called Digital Films. You can create a more complex animation, but it is far more complicated to use — so I stick with the first version.
Junior Net is an easy animation site that’s comparable (though not quite as good) as Dvolver. You don’t have to register here, either, in order to create a show, get its url address, and then post it on a blog or website.
Myths and Legends is a United Kingdom site where students can create animations of……myths and legends. It’s pretty neat and easy, and has the added great benefit of letting students record the narration for their story. Teachers have to register, and they’re very open to schools participating from around the world.
The Zimmer Twins are another popular animation site among ESL/EFL teachers. You have to register for it, but doing so is quick and easy. One nice feature it has is that you can make a movie from “scratch” or it gives you pre-made scenes and plots (I guess its the animation equivalent of sentence-starters or sentence frames).
Kerpoof is a great site where you can make an animation and a lot more. You have to register here, too, but the process is also easy. Up until recently you weren’t able to get the url address of what you’ve created, but they’ve now developed that option.
Fuzzwich is a new site that is in the process of developing a full-blown animation process. Right now, though, you can easily create a “mini-animation” called Minivids. One advantage they offer is that, in addition to providing their url addresses, you can embed your Minivid in a blog or website.
DoInk is slightly more complicated than some of the other animation tools I’ve listed here, but English Language Learners should be able to make simple animations pretty easily. I especially like what sounds like a strict and pro-active policy at ensure classroom appropriate content on the site.
I regularly highlight my picks for the ten or twelve best posts for each month. Here you can find a collection of them all. I also use these in a more extensive monthly newsletter I send-out. You can see back issues of those newsletters here.
These posts are different from the ones I list under the monthly “Most Popular Blog Posts.” Those are the posts the largest numbers of readers “clicked-on” to read.
The ones here are the posts I personally think are the best, and most helpful, ones I’ve written. These don’t include my “The Best…” lists.
This month, I wrote quite a few “The Best…” lists. Instead of listing all the new ones here, I’d encourage readers to just go to Websites of the Year to find them.
This month includes several of the newest “Best of…” lists I’ve compiled. I won’t bother listing them here, but you can check them all out on my Websites of the Year.
This month includes the five newest “Best of…” lists I’ve compiled. I won’t bother listing them here, but you can check them all out on my Websites of the Year.
