Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

ESL Bee is a teacher-designed site to assist Intermediate and Advanced English Language Learners in writing academic essays.

There’s a lot of material there. For me, though, the gold mine is in the examples of student essays (for example, these persuasive essays). It’s not easy to find good, short, accessible, and well-written examples of different types of academic essays that can be used with English Language Learners as models, but you’ll find a wealth of them here.

The same site also has a number of good English practice quizzes.

I’ve placed the link on my website under Practice Writing.  I’ve also added it to The Best Websites For K-12 Writing Instruction/Reinforcement.

Whack Attack is a game from the BBC that tests knowledge on Math, English or Science. It’s probably accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners.

The questions are good, though the game is a little weird. You’re given three answer choices. Each answer is color-coded, and in order to choose an answer, you have to “whack” the correctly-colored figure that keeps popping up.

I’ve placed the link on my website under Word and Video Games.

The Minnesota Adult Basic Education Online Activity List has a wealth of leveled resources for English Language Learners.

You’ll periodically find some dead links, but you’ll also find many excellent categorized ones.

I’ve placed the link on my website under Favorite Sites.

Here’s another activity from McDougal Littell — Interactive Vocabulary Practice Games. They’re connected to stories in their textbooks, but they’re engaging and accessible to English Language Learners even outside of that context.

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

(You first have to click any state on the map you see)

This “The Best…” list is sort of a combination of two lists I had been thinking of making to go along with The Best Online Resources To Teach About Plagiarism (Another list to keep in mind might be The Best Reference Websites For English Language Learners — 2008).

The more I thought about it, though, the more I felt that a list of engaging (and even fun) sites to teach research skills and accessible citation resources would make a good combination.

Since a graduation requirement in our district is that seniors need to develop a “Senior Project,” I’ve spent some time finding these kinds of helpful sites that might be accessible to English Language Learners.  I have to say, though, that these sites (except for the first one) would probably only be accessible to more advanced ELL’s.

Here are my choices for The Best Resources For Learning Research And Citation Skills:

LEARNING RESEARCH SKILLS:

Here’s the one resource that’s probably accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners. It’s called How To Do Research, and its from the Kentucky Virtual Library. It’s designed to look like an interactive board game.

The Information Literacy Game comes from the University of North Carolina. It’s an online game designed to help students develop research and citation skills.

Adventures In Library Research comes from Lycoming College. It was created to teach students how to navigate successfully around library resources.

Students learn some Internet research skills through playing The Gold Rush Game. The group that created this game, 21st Century Information Fluency, has also developed quite a few other interactives designed to help students learn about using the Web for research, including The Internet Search Challenge, the Keyword Challenge, and even more challenges. All of these are accessible to Intermediate ELL’s.

Carnegie Mellon has two games related to research and libraries — “I’ll Get It” and “Within Range”.

The St. Joseph School Library has a large number of surprising accessible games related to research.  This site might be accessible to high Intermediate English Language Learners.

Boolify is a search engine designed for elementary and middle school students that is accessible to English Language Learners. I think there are others that are more accessible, but this is a good one to help teach basic search strategies.  It’s on  The Best Search Engines For ESL/EFL Learners — 2008 list.

The City University of New York has an excellent series of exercises on actually writing a research paper.

CITATIONS:

Fairfield University has a good tutorial on Using Citations. It’s followed by a quiz.

Eastern Washington University also has a good tutorial on Citing Your Sources.

Here are several sites that will correctly format citations once you input the necessary information:

Ottobib
Citation Machine
Bibme
EasyBib
MLA Citation Generator
OSLIS Citation Maker
Knight Cite

Suggestions are always 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.

Plagiarism, I think, can be a tricky concept to help students understand.  I can understand how an English Language Learner in an academic setting might be tempted to copy-and-paste someone else’s work.

This is a very short “The Best…” list sharing online resources that my students have found engaging and, I believe, helpful to them “getting it.” (Also, for my purposes, I’ve found the Plagiarism Detector to be a helpful tool to confirm that students are using their own words. Plagium is a similar too).

Here are my choices for The Best Online Resources To Teach About Plagiarism (and that are accessible to English Language Learners). They are not in any order of preference:

Plagiarism is from Acadia University, and should be accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners.  It’s an animated slideshow reviewing the problem.

The Monash University Library has an accessible quiz where users have to choose if examples show plagiarism or not. It’s not flashy, but I think it’s exceptionally effective.

Lycoming College has a simple slideshow on plagiarism. Again, it’s not flashy, but the language is fairly simple, and should be accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners.

Breaking News English features an article and exercises about plagiarism that’s specifically geared towards English Language Learners.

Mt. Hood Community College also has a simple and accessible Avoiding Plagiarism interactive slideshow.

Academic Integrity is from Ryerson University.  It’s very well put together, and is basically a series of animated stories with text and audio support.  The language, though, might only be accessible to advanced English Language Learners.

What Is Plagiarism? is a series of entertaining videos from Rutgers University. It, too, is probably only accessible to advanced English Language Learners.

How To Avoid Plagiarism from the University of Maryland is less “entertaining,” but is a helpful presentation for advanced English Language Learners, nevertheless.

CyberBee has an accessible animation giving background on the whole idea of Copyright.

How to Avoid Plagiarism: A Complete Guide for ESL Learners is an excellent article specifically designed for ELL’s. It even provides audio support for the text.

On a “different” note, teachers (particularly ESL teachers) might find an article titled A Different Perspective on Plagiarism thought-provoking. It comes from The Internet TESL Journal.

Suggestions are always 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.

Our Intermediate English classes will be sharing a class blog with various assignments, though eventually each student may get their own individual one.

I thought readers might be interested in seeing the first few assignments.

Cyberbee Copyright is an interactive exercise, accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners, that explains the legal, and moral, aspects of copyrights.

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

Thanks to iLearnTechnology for the tip.

Magme has a ton of magazines that are readable online, including many that students would like

I’m always a bit concerned that when students are reading magazines, they’re doing less reading of the words and more looking at the pictures. Nevertheless, they have to do at least some reading, so it might be a site to look at when you have a few minutes left in the computer lab, and one that, if they have access to the Internet at home, they might want to explore on their free time.

The Atmosphere Design Lab at the Smithsonian lets you change the mixture of our atmosphere and see its effects.

The language is relatively accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners, and the images are good and the text is short.

I’ve placed the link on my Science page.

The History Channel has a neat series of timeline puzzles related to its Life After People television series.

In the game, you have to put images from the series in the correct timeline order — what happens when — after humanity disappears from the planet. Each image also has a short and relatively accessible (to high Intermediate English Language Learners) explanation of it.

I’ll be adding it to my Science page when I get a chance.

Learning about inventors and inventions can be connected to many different subject areas, and offers lots of opportunities for English-language development.  Plus, students often find it pretty engaging.

This “The Best…” list is divided into several sections.

The first focuses on sites that offer straightforward and accessible text or online videos on the history of inventions and biographies of inventors.

Next, comes interactives that students can use to learn a little more about specific inventions.

The third section includes sites that students can actively use to participate in the inventive process and develop some of their own ideas.

The final part shares some sites that are just plain fun (and educational!).

Here are my choices for The Best Sites Where Students Can Learn About Inventions:

INVENTION HISTORY:

The History of Invention comes from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and is very accessible to ELL’s.

Fact Monster also provides information on many types of inventions, though it’s not as accessible as the CBC site.

Zoom Inventions and Inventors has a lot of very accessible information.

Here’s a video about American Inventors.

The Library of Congress has a feature on Thomas Edison.

Learn about Technology in the Year 1900.

Watch this video about the Wright Brothers.

How Stuff Works has quite a few short videos on inventions.

You can learn a lot at Invention Facts And Myths.

Take a look at some Ancient Inventions.

Learn about Benjamin Franklin’s inventions. Audio support is provided for the text.

The History Channel has a number of short video clips on different inventions.

The Voice of America has a report on the history of the Internet, including audio support for the text.

Here’s a relatively accessible description of how television was invented.

You can read a very accessible biography of Leonardo da Vinci here.

Here are Top 10 Ancient Inventions You Think Are Modern and 10 More Ancient Inventions You Think Are Modern.

12 Greatest Low-Tech Inventions

The INDEX Award winners for this year have just been announced. It’s a Danish-based effort that provides large cash prizes for “designs to improve life.” You can also read more about it at this San Francisco Chronicle article.  It’s really a neat idea, and a great site. If you click on any of the categories at the top of the Index page — Body, Home, Work, Play, Community — it will bring you to very short multimedia presentations on each invention, and they’re very accessible to English Language Learners.

Inventors And Their Inventions is a TIME Magazine slideshow.

INTERACTIVES:

This interactive from Prentice-Hall focuses on a few early U.S. inventors.

Play a “choose your own adventure” game when you pretend to be Thomas Edison. Click on “Inventing”.

Read about Thomas Edison and answer the questions.

This Brainpop movie on Thomas Edison (it requires a subscription, but offers a free trial) includes quizzes.

Watch these early films made by Edison.

How Edison Are You? is a pretty “non-linear” site about Thomas Edison. There’s a timeline and many images of his inventions.  It’s a bit tricky to navigate, and not super-accessible to English Language Learners because of it, but this resource is a nice complement to all the other Edison sites.

Watch this video about the Wright Brothers and answer the questions.

Pretend that you’re flying in the first airplane made by the Wright Brothers.

See how many questions you can answer correctly in the Wright Brothers Game.

Read about Alexander Graham Bell and answer the questions.

Here’s an interactive about James Watt, the inventor of the steam engine.

Print-out and complete this cloze (fill-in-the-gap) about the Wright Brothers.

Here’s a downloadable worksheet on strange inventions from ESL Printables. They have a second one, too.

Here’s a U.S. Invention Timeline.

And here’s yet another Invention Timeline.

Here’s an animation of the first printing press.

Check-out Devices Of Wonder from the Getty Museum.

Play this Library of Congress game and guess which inventions are which…

Inventive Kids offers a number of informative games for students to play.

Learn about a cardboard box solar cooker that won an invention contest. Audio support is provided for the text.

Universal Leonardo has a bunch of great online interactive experiences students can have with Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings and experiments.

CREATE:

Rube Goldberg made complex machines for performing simple tasks. You can see a video of one of a Rube Goldberg machine here and create your own online version of one here.

Invent your own “gadget” at Kids.com.

Invent something at the Invention Factory.

FUN:

Take a look at 30 Of The World’s Strangest Inventions.

Play invention games at the Invention Playhouse.

You can do a lot of fun stuff at the Cyberchase Inventors’ Workshop. You have to register, but it’s quick and easy to do so.

“30 Dumb Inventions” is a slideshow from LIFE.

This one doesn’t necessarily fit in any of my four categories, but here’s a bunch of PowerPoint presentations on inventors and inventions.

Feel free to share additional suggestions.

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.

State Of Debate is another excellent learning game from the BBC. It’s accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners, and, as strange as it sounds, it’s basically an online video game where you have explain why you’re not wearing a “hoodie.”

Don’t worry about the description — it’s an excellent listening and reading game.

I’ve placed the link on my website under Word and Video Games.

The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Business Week have collections of interactive graphics related to both business and non-business related current events.

Quite a few of them would be accessible to high Intermediate or Advanced English Language Learners. The links will take you directly to their interactive features.

I’ve placed the links on my website under Multimedia Resources From News Outlets.

Spell-a-thon is a fun game for Intermediate English Language Learners where players have to first identify the words that are spelled (though the game uses the British “spelt”) correctly. Then they have to identify words that are spelled incorrectly and spell them the right way.

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

The Smart Growth Game lets players design the downtown area of a city. It’s probably accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners.

I’ve posted about several other “city-creator” type activities. You can find them on website under Student Cities.

This game is a little different, though, since the player is judged at the end by if they’ve made decisions about making it a more “livable” city.

I’ve placed the link on my website under Student Neighborhood Maps.

At Car Science you can create your own car and see how it performs against the cars that others have created in terms of mileage, emissions, etc.

Language that’s accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners is used, and simple explanations of the advantages and disadvantages of different car options are shown.

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

Mindopia is the newest addition to The Best Websites For Students Exploring Jobs and Careers.

After clicking on a career you might be interested in, you’re led to a page of simple interviews with people working in that profession, along with other resources (including salary projections).

I particularly like that the videos are divided into separate sections answering specific questions, which makes it a lot easier for English Language Learners to follow.  In addition to that, you can see the transcript of the interview right below the video.  Ordinarily, I don’t think video transcripts are that helpful to ELL’s who also need the visual clues being shown — it’s hard to look at both (which is why closed captioning is so much better).  However, these interviews are just “talking heads,” so students really don’t need to watch the videos and, instead, can just listen to the audio as they follow along on the transcript.

The site is just beginning, so it doesn’t have a huge list of careers, but they promise to be adding more.

Spellbee! is a spelling game where, after you register, you choose a player to compete with in a spelling contest. Each player chooses from a variety of words and challenges their opponent online to correctly spell the word that is spoken to them in the context of a sentence.

It’s a pretty neat concept and, though the text-to-speech software it uses is definitely not top-tier, it’s still a game students would enjoy playing and would be accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners.

It’s quite easy for players to register very quickly. There’s also a slightly more complicated registration process that students and teachers can use in order for teachers to monitor student progress.

I’m adding Spellbee! to both The Best Sites Where Students Can Work Independently & Let Teachers Check On Progress and to The Best Online Games Students Can Play In Private Virtual “Rooms”.

I’m also placing the link on my website under Word and Video Games.

Thanks to Donna Murray for the tip. She comes-up with some real finds…

You’re Going To College is from Thinkfinity (which is on The Best Places To Find Free (And Good) Lesson Plans On The Internet list).

To quote from their description: “Students make their way through this three-stage game by demonstrating their knowledge of: funding costs and benefits, the cost of college, and potential lifetime earnings.”

I’ve added it to The Best Sites For Encouraging ELL’s To Attend College.