I’m going to have my combined Intermediate/Beginning English Language Learner class write research essays on the planets in our solar system (see The Best Sites For Learning About Planets & Space). So, today, before our Super Bowl party begins, I decided to bring together a few online reinforcing activities.

Of course, previous “The Best…” lists, The Best Resources For Learning Research & Citation Skills and The Best Online Resources To Teach About Plagiarism can also be useful.

I hope readers will contribute more!

Here are my choices for The Best Resources To Help Students Write Research Essays:

Having model essays is critical. Here are three interactive essays from HRW, in order of increasing sophistication:

Controlling Lava

Sixty Years Of Men’s Haircuts

Forgotten Heroes

Here are a series of interactive exercises from CUNY.

Great Source has a research writing tutorial.

You can see the other “Best of…” lists here, and you can also find links to these, and 8,000 other categorized sites, on my webpages.

You can also subscribe to this blog for free here.

I’ve revised and expanded an earlier post on Saul Alinsky — the organizer who is being demonized by Newt Gingrich and who started the organization for whom I worked for many years — and turned it into The Best Sites To Learn About Saul Alinsky.

Feedback is welcome.

Every January 30th is officially Fred Korematsu Day in California. Here’s some background on it from YES Magazine:

In 1942, 23 year-old shipyard welder Fred Korematsu refused to join over 120,000 West Coast Japanese Americans who were rounded up and taken to incarceration camps under President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order No. 9066. While Korematsu’s family was at the Topaz incarceration camp in the Utah desert, Korematsu was appealing his conviction. In 1944, the Supreme Court voted in a 6-3 decision against Korematsu, claiming the incarceration was justified for military reasons. It wasn’t until Nov. 10, 1983 that his conviction was overturned.

Fred Korematsu continued to speak up for civil rights throughout his life. He believed that “If you have the feeling that something is wrong, don’t be afraid to speak up.” That message remains alive in the mission and teachings of the Fred T. Korematsu Institute for Civil Rights and Education. In 2010, the state of California established January 30 as Fred Korematsu Day.

Here are my choices for The Best Resources On Japanese Internment In World War II:

The Fred Korematsu Institute has a full, and free, online curriculum.

World War II: Internment of Japanese Americans is a photo gallery from The Atlantic.

Here is a link to my Internment Of Japanese-Americans lesson on my older United States History class blog, which includes many resources.

U.S. official cites misconduct in Japanese American internment cases is a fascinating article in The Los Angeles Times discussing how the present United States Solicitor General is apologizing for the misconduct of one of his predecessors for his role in defending Japanese-American internment camps during World War II. During the war, he chose not to reveal a government study concluding that Japanese-Americans were not a risk to U.S. security.

Watch this video and do the three activities under “Explore.”

Look at these pictures from one of the camps.

Fairness Fighters is from PBS.

Life In A Japanese Internment Camp is from The Smithsonian.

A More Perfect Union is another resource from The Smithsonian.

These resources are from The University of California.

Digital History has a feature on the internment.

This video is from The History Channel:

Feedback, as always, is welcome.

If you found this post useful, you might want to look at the 850 other “The Best…” lists and consider subscribing to this blog for free.

(NOTE: Great additional suggestions are being left in the comments section of this post)

It can sometimes be useful to be able to embed a document so it can be easily read and shared on a blog or website. There are many simple tools that make this possible, and I thought I’d create a quick list of them. I’m sure I’m missing some obvious choices, so I hope you’ll help me and others out by sharing suggestions in the comments section.

Here are my choices for The Best Tools To Use For Embedding A Document:

I was prompted to write this list after I learned about a new site called Group Docs today.

Scribd

embedit.in

DocStoc

How to Embed a PDF Document Into Your Website is a post from Make Use of that shares other ideas.

What simple tools am I missing, and I mean simple, please…

If you found this post useful, you might want to consider subscribing to this blog for free.

You might also want to explore the 850 other “The Best…” lists I’ve compiled.

I’ve got to say that I have not been overly-impressed with the most of the commentaries I’ve seen today on President Obama’s call last night to have states require students to stay in school until they’re eighteen.

It seems pretty simplistic to me, and brings to mind the story of the person who loses their keys inside a dark house, but decides to move outside under a streetlight to look for them because it was too dark to see. The issue is making schools engaging so students want to stay in, and economic supports so students don’t have to drop-out to get a job to help their families.

You might also be interested in The Best Resources For Showing Students Why They Should Continue Their Academic Career.

Here are the best commentaries that I’ve seen so far today. I hope you’ll contribute additional suggestions:

Obama Says “No Dropping Out Until Age 18″ …But Here’s How We Make It Work is by Dan Brown.

Does Changing the Dropout Age Matter? is from The American Prospect (thanks to Alexander Russo for the tip).

More on Obama’s SOTU Proposal on High-School Drop-Outs is by Dana Goldstein.

Why Raising the Dropout Age Won’t Solve America’s Education Crisis is from GOOD.

The True Cost of High School Dropouts is from The New York Times.

Higher Dropout Age May Not Lead To More Diplomas is from NPR.

Feedback is always welcome.

If you found this post useful, you might want to consider subscribing to this blog for free.

You might also want to explore the 850 other “The Best…” lists I’ve compiled.

The issue of teachers using social media with students is an on-going question that been receiving a lot attention recently.

This is just the beginning of a “The Best…” list on the topic, and I hope readers will suggest additional resources.

You can find some additional resources at A Beginning List Of The Best Resources For Learning About Facebook.

You might also be interested in this Sacramento Bee article, Is it OK for teachers and students to be Facebook friends?, that includes a quote from me in it.

Here are my choices for The Best Resources On Teacher/Student Use Of Social Media (as I mentioned, it’s starting off very small):

Response: Can Teachers Be Friends With Students Using Social Media? is one of my Education Week columns with guest responses from educators on the question.

Rules to Stop Pupil and Teacher From Getting Too Social Online is from The New York Times.

Using Social Media to Teach: Keep It Transparent, Open and Safe is from The School Book section of The NY Times.

Social Media in Schools #EdChat is from The Nerdy Teacher.

Feedback and/or Additional suggestions are always welcome.

If you found this post useful, you might want to consider subscribing to this blog for free.

You might also want to explore the over 800 other “The Best…” lists I’ve compiled.

Ruby Payne is a popular consultant to school districts around the United States and, perhaps, the world. I have major concerns about her “deficit” view of low-income students and their families — it smacks of a “blaming the victim” mentality.

I’ve written extensively about the concept of “blame,” and you might be interested in The Best Resources For Helping Students (& The Rest Of Us) Learn The Concept Of Not Blaming Others.

I thought it might also be important, though, to create a “The Best…” list specifically related to Ms. Payne. Her popularity is a fact (you can read this fawning New York Times Magazine article about her to confirm that statement).

There have been some good critiques written about her, though there have also been ones that are not particularly accessible and written in “academic-ese” and others which I think have been overly ideological. Here’s a comment I left on Scott McLeod’s blog a few years ago during a conversation about Payne:

I agree that the most effective long-term strategy for dealing with many of the problems facing low-income communities (and the children who live in them) is to organize for better housing, employment, health, etc.). I would also add that schools and their staff should work as partners with parents and other local neighborhood institutions to push for those changes.

At the same time, though, I don’t necessarily believe that this kind of strategy is the only avenue to pursue, just as I don’t believe that most teachers are attracted to Ruby Payne’s deficit model because it’s “comfortable.”

I believe that there is much that can be done day-and-day-out in the classroom by teachers. And that many of these teachers are desperate to learn any kind of instructional strategies and classroom management tactics that they can apply effectively to respond to the many challenging situations that can be found in inner-city schools.

Saul Alinsky, the father of modern-day community organizing and the founder of the organization that I worked for during my organizing career, once said, “The price of criticism is a constructive alternative.”

I believe that those of us who are critics of Ruby Payne need to do a far better job of offering constructive alternatives that teachers can use today and tomorrow — right in their classroom — if we want more to see the fallacies of Payne’s approach.

One of the things I try to do in this blog and in my books is to offer practical strategies for teachers to use instead of getting sucked into “blaming the victim.”

But there have been some good accessible critiques written, and I thought I’d share a few of what I think are the best ones:

The Myth of the Culture of Poverty by Paul Gorski at Educational Leadership.

A Framework for Understanding Ruby Payne by Anita Bohn at Rethinking Schools.

Savage Unrealities by Paul Gorski at Rethinking Schools.

Revisiting Ruby Payne by Anita Bohn at Rethinking Schools.

Poverty and Payne: Supporting Teachers to Work with Children of Poverty is by Mistilina Sato and Timothy J. Lensmir.

Shifting from Deficit to Generative Practices: Addressing Impoverished and All Students is by Paul Thomas. And thanks to Paul for helping me find some of the articles on this list.

The Corrosive Power of Stereotypes in Politics and Education is also by Paul Thomas.

Return of the Deficit is by Curt Dudley-Marling.

More resources can be found at Debunking Ruby Payne’s Framework of Poverty.

Feedback and/or Additional suggestions are always welcome.

If you found this post useful, you might want to consider subscribing to this blog for free.

You might also want to explore the over 800 other “The Best…” lists I’ve compiled.

I’ll be writing a post soon in my Education Week Teacher column about Social Emotional Learning (SEL) (sometimes referred to as “character” education) soon, and thought it would be useful to develop a “The Best…” list on the topic.

Here are my choices for The Best Social Emotional Learning (SEL) Resources (I’m going to first start with sharing posts and resources from this blog, and then highlight several other sites):

You might want to visit the publishers website for my book, Helping Students Motivate Themselves. If you click on “sample chapters,” you’ll be able to get several lesson plans and hand-outs for free related to SEL.

Social Skills Training Report Is Even More Interesting Than I Thought… is a post on recent SEL research.

The Best Resources For Learning About Teens & Stress

The Best Resources For Learning About The Importance Of “Grit”

My Best Posts On Students Setting Goals

My Best Posts On “Motivating” Students

My Best Posts About Helping Students Develop Their Capacity For Self-Control

Now, for other resources:

Maurice Elias writes a great blog for Edutopia on SEL.

The Collaborative For Academic, Social and Emotional Learning has many resources.

Edutopia has a Social and Emotional Learning page.

Education Week also has a number of SEL resources.

Feedback and/or Additional suggestions are always welcome.

If you found this post useful, you might want to consider subscribing to this blog for free.

You might also want to explore the over 800 other “The Best…” lists I’ve compiled.

Summify and paper.li let users create daily summaries of blog posts and tweets they read on a particular topic (and there may very well be others). Two days ago, Twitter bought Summify, and it appears that they will be shutting down it down in its present form very soon. A site called News.me is encouraging Summify users to change to them.

They can be great ways to curate useful resources, and to find good stuff, too — if you know people who put together good ones.

Last month, I asked if readers knew of any good ones, and got a few responses. I’ve put them together with the two I know of and like. I hope others will contribute more.

Here are my choices, and reader choices, of The Best Summify & Paper.li’s On ESL/EFL/ELL:

The OUP ELT Global Daily

Pearson Longman USA ESL/EFL daily

English Language Teaching Resources is published by Phil Chappell.

The TESOL Daily is put together by Stephen Thergesen. Thanks to TEFL Jobs for the tip.

Marisa Constantinides publishes a daily summary using Summify.

Additional suggestions are always welcome.

If you found this post useful, you might want to consider subscribing to this blog for free.

You might also want to explore the over 800 other “The Best…” lists I’ve compiled.

(Two weeks after I originally posted a shorter version of this post, I turned it into a longer “The Best…” list)

Newt Gingrich is continuing to attack President Obama by tying him to Saul Alinsky, the person who is considered by many to be the father of modern-day community organizing (and who died forty years ago). Gingrich’s victory speech tonight in South Carolina was the latest example of this tactic, and it looks like we’ll be seeing a lot more of it. In fact, ironically, earlier this week Rudy Guiliani attacked Gingrich for “acting like Alinsky.”

Some readers might not know who Alinsky was, and I thought a quick post might be useful. Prior to becoming a teacher, I worked for many years as a community organizer for the organization Alinsky began in the 1930′s and directed until his death.

I’ve previously posts a number of links about him in The Art And Value Of Compromise.

Tonight, I also created a short “stack” of videos on Delicious about him.

Newt Gingrich and the Real Saul Alinsky is by Bill Moyers.

Who is Saul Alinsky? is also by Bill Moyers.

Newt Gingrich is no Saul Alinsky is by Nicholas Von Hoffman.

I hope you find these resources clarifying and helpful.