I’ve written extensively about bilingual and monolingual resources I’ve used in Social Studies classes as part of a “preview/view/review” teaching and learning strategy with Beginning English Language Learners (see Great Resources For English Language Learners In Content Classes and The Best Multilingual & Bilingual Sites For Math, Social Studies, & Science).

Here are three more sites I’m adding to the list:

CNN Espanol is an excellent site to use to connect what we’re learning in U.S. History to today.

These next sites are not particularly useful to the U.S. History classes I’m teaching now, but I think could be useful in other content classes:

National Geographic en Espanol

National Geographic Kids Video en Espanol

Discovery Latinoamerica

Let me know if I’m missing some important sites.

The St. Paul’s Public Schools produces some great bilingual materials in English and in Khmer (Cambodia), Hmong, Oromo, Somali, Spanish and Vietnamese. They’re not online, and you have to purchase them, but the prices are very reasonable. I’ve used their materials for years.

Even though they aren’t online, I’ll still adding the resource to The Best Multilingual & Bilingual Sites For Learning English just because they’re so useful.

Sometimes I can be pretty dumb, as I wrote in How I Milked A Lesson For Every Last Ounce Of Learning And Why I’m An Idiot For Not Thinking Of It Earlier.

I have demonstrated that cluelessness yet again….

Let me explain:

As I’ve previously posted, one of my U.S. History classes this year is a combined Intermediate and Beginning ELL one. The range of students’ English level is pretty vast, as is its native language diversity.

One of the instructional strategies I’m using is a variation of the tried-and-true technique called Preview/View/Review — offer a brief preview of the lesson in the native language, do the main lesson in English, and then follow it with a brief review in the native language.

I can’t use this strategy “by the book” because of the multiple languages and the large class size. But, at the beginning of the period when the Intermediates are reading a U.S. History book of their choice, I have been able to manage — with the help of aides and peer tutors — the “Preview” stage fairly well, and it has really helped with the overall lessons.

I use many of the resources found in The Best Multilingual & Bilingual Sites For Math, Social Studies, & Science.

Last week, though, I had an epiphany and realized that I had completely overlooked two extraordinary sources of materials for the “Preview” section of my lessons. In fact, they would be great resources for the “Preview” of any lesson in any class!

The first “duh!” moment is when I thought of Wikipedia and how it’s available in multiple languages. At the beginning of each class, I tell them what we are studying that day, they type the topic into their electronic translator, then go next door to call up Wikipedia on a colleague’s computer for ten minutes. Their comprehension of the subsequent lesson in English has improved dramatically.

The second “duh!” moment was when I realized that there must be videos in Spanish about U.S. History. I went to Yahoo’s Mexico site, clicked on Video, typed in “historia estados unidos” and found a huge number of U.S. History documentaries and re-enactments in Spanish. Many look very good. My Spanish-speaking students go to an adjoining classroom to watch video clips at the beginning of each lesson.

These two resources, as well as others on the previously mentioned “The Best…” list, can be used in similar ways for all content classes.

I wonder when my next major “duh!” will be?

As I’ve previously written, I think textbook publishers Holt, Rinehart and Winston clearly provide the best online multilingual resources of all the major publishers. Earlier in August, though, they inexplicably took much of them off-line.

After some frustrating attempts at communicating with them online, this afternoon I gave them a call. After spending an hour on the phone with them, they discovered that it was a technical glitch. The resources are now back online and available!

You can read the specifics about how to access them at The Best Multilingual & Bilingual Sites For Math, Social Studies, & Science.

Many thanks to Holt!

I have written a lot in my blog and in my book on teaching English Language Learners on how I use inductive learning in the classroom. Teaching “inductively” generally means providing students with a number of examples from which they can create a pattern and form a concept or rule. Teaching “deductively” is first providing the rule or concept and then having students practice applying it.

This two-and-one-half minute video below explains that this is how Google Translate learns, too. It’s definitely worth watching.

By the way, Google Translate is on The Best Reference Websites For English Language Learners list.

Many Ideas Open The Way is a book sharing Hmong proverbs. The author has a short slideshow with some proverbs and images at his website.

I’ve placed the link on my website under Hmong.

I’ve also added it to The Best Websites To Learn About The Hmong.

Here’s another review of some of my “The Best…” lists.As I’ve mentioned before, the links to these list might not work if you’re subscribing to this blog via email, or if you’re reading it on Facebook. There won’t be any problems if you’re reading it off an RSS Reader. And if you go directly to the blog post you’ll be able to access them, too.

Today, here are lists related to multilingual sites:

The Best Multilingual & Bilingual Sites For Learning English
The Best Multilingual & Bilingual Sites For Math, Social Studies, & Science

Google Translate, which is on The Best Reference Websites For English Language Learners — 2008 list, has just gotten better by adding a text-to-speech ability. Unfortunately, though, it doesn’t seem to function for lengthy passages.

You can read more about their improvements at Richard Byrne’s Free Technology for Teachers blog.

Melodict is a new English-Russian Dictionary that I’ve placed on my Bilingual Exercises webpage under….Russian.

If you haven’t seen that page on my website, you might want to check it out. There are links to many bilingual English-learning exercises.

Google has just announced their Google Translator Toolkit. It builds on their great Google Translate tool, which is on The Best Reference Websites For English Language Learners — 2008 list.

I’d encourage you to read the post at The English Blog, which gives an excellent explanation of the new application.