Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

I’ve placed three additional resources on various pages on my website — all from the great British Council.

One is a list of scores of short cartoons with text and audio support.  The humor is a little subtle at times, so it’s probably most appropriate for Intermediate English Language Learners.

The other two resources are stories accessible to Beginners.  One is a fun little one called The Animal Orchestra.  The other is a story that teaches about time zones.  It’s called One Moment Around the World.  Both are animated and have text with audio support.

I’ve put the links on three different pages on my website, and I’m feeling too lazy tonight to list them all.  Let me know if you have trouble finding them.

If any of your high-Intermediate or advanced English Language Learners are baseball fans, you’re not going to find a higher-interest site out there to encourage reading than Baseball Boss.

It’s not quite opene to the public yet, but TechCrunch, in addition to having a great post explaining the site, has some invitation codes left.

It won’t be easy for Intermediates but, if they’re baseball fans, they’ll push themselves to understand it.

Admittedly, it’s for a pretty narrow audience of English Language Learners, so I won’t be putting a link to it on my website, but I thought it was neat enough to at least mention here.

A few months back I ranked Literactive as the number two site on my list of The Best Websites To Help Beginning Readers.

Unfortunately, shortly thereafter the site experienced major technical problems and new people were not able to register so they and their students could use it.

Good news, though, from the excellent Welcome to NCS-Tech blog (which I would encourage people to subscribe to) — Literactive is now fixed and is fully-functioning!

Check it out if you haven’t already done so…

I’ve mentioned Awesome Highlighter in previous posts as a nice little application that lets you pick any webpage; highlight whatever words you want, and then email the page for posting on a blog or website. I’ve had students use it when we are in the computer lab to help reinforce some skills I teach in the classroom about being very careful about highlighting only the most important words — not the whole paragraph.

TechCrunch, though, just posted about either a new feature, or one that I just missed the first time around. You can write virtual notes, like post-its, and connect them to each area you highlight.

This ability now makes Awesome Highlighter move way near the top of my list of useful applications. I often have students use sticky notes in class when we’re reading something to demonstrate reading strategies (summarize, evaluate, predict, connect, etc.). When we’re in the computer lab, I’ll have them do the same with similar online tools like Jump Knowledge and Fleck. However, with this feature, Awesome Highlighter becomes the easiest of the bunch and the one that is most accessible to English Language Learners. No registration is required.

Wordle lets you either copy and paste or upload text. It then produces a word cloud that give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently. You choose from different formats about how you want your word cloud displayed, and then have them displayed on the website with its own url address.

This could be a fascinating exercise for English Language Learners and other students. Beginning ELL’s could use it to see the importance of learning sight words. Social Studies students could upload speeches by Barack Obama and John McCain and compare the two.

I know there have been other ways to identify high-frequency words from text, but I think Wordle is the easiest and has the most elegant presentation.

I haven’t figured out, though, where I’ll be putting it on my website yet.

The British Council has a nice listening activity where you have to pick the correct dragon that is being described.  You can also read and listen to a story called The Princess and The Dragon.

They are both accessible to Beginning English Language Learners.

I’ve placed these activities on my World History page under The Middle Ages.

That might seem like a strange place to put those links.  But I have activities related to the legend of King Arthur in the same section, and it just seemed like a good fit.

Silly Books has over twenty “talking stories” on their website that are accessible to Beginning English Language Learners. They have images, text, and audio support.

I’ve placed the link on under Stories on my website, where you can also find literally thousands of other accessible stories.

Mingoville is an exceptional site from Denmark designed to teach Beginning English Language Learners. There are many interactive exercises and games, it’s very colorful, and there are both listening and speaking activities. I haven’t explored the site fully, but it has an easy voice recording feature.

You can experiment with it as a guest for a few minutes, but then you have to register. It’s completely free, and registration took about twenty seconds.

It’s so good I’ve placed in on my website under Favorite Sites. In fact, if your students are a little intimidated by having 8,000 categorized sites to choose from on my site, going to Favorite Sites is a good place to start.

This is a simple and effective Food Chain Game that teaches…how the food chain works.  Students choose to put the appropriate number of rabbits and foxes, along with a quantity of grass, into the game to how many points they can score by achieving a balance.

I’ve placed the link on my Science page.

This game is just one of many Science related activities created by Caret, an organization in the United Kingdom.  I’ve placed a link to their other puzzles on the same page, but I think most of the others are probably accessible only to advanced English Language Learners.

However, they do have several other Social Studies related games that are probably more accessible.  I’ll be posting about those a little later.

I know a lot of money and effort has gone into the materials produced by the Annenberg Media Learner.org company, but I have to say I’ve generally been unimpressed with how accessible their materials have been — to either English Language Learners or mainstream students.

However, they do have two good online interactive activities I’ve recently added to my website and that I’d like to highlight here.

One is called Elements of a Story.  It has an audio and text version of Cinderalla, and presents a very accessible description of literary elements.  I’ve placed that link on my English For Beginners page under Reading.

The other is Spelling Bee.  This exercise provides text with audio support of simple passages, and then students have to type in the correct words that go into blanks.  I particularly like this interactive because there are various grade-levels to it, and, unlike in most online spelling activities, this one uses words in context.  I’ve placed it on the same English For Beginners page and under the Spelling section.

I hope Annenberg will produce similarly engaging online activities in the future.

Beat The Clock is a British Council game where the player has to complete a sentence by choosing the right word before the timer runs out.

The games are categorized by theme, and there are tons of them.  They are also labeled by the appropriate English level (beginner, early intermediate, etc.).

I’ve placed the link on my Intermediate English page under Word and Video Games.

Jackanory is a BBC site where beginning English Language Learners can create their own stories with audio, text, and image support.

I’ve placed the link on my English For Beginners page under Stories.

Poptropica is an online video game from Pearson Education which, according to the Poptropica webpage, is developing additional games, too.

There are some English language development opportunities in the game, primarily when the player has to interact with different characters and choose which questions to ask.  However, I would have expected more educational value in a game from Pearson.

I’ve placed the link on my Intermediate English page under Word and Video Games.

It’s Greek To Me is an online game from Scholastic.  You virtually compete in the ancient Greek games as an archer or discus thrower.  You are asked multiple choice questions on Greek influence on the English Language and, depending upon the correctness of your answer, your virtual athlete is successful or not.

It’s a fun little game that teaches a little about English and the Olympics.  The language is relatively simple, and is accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners.

I’ve placed the link on my World History page under Greece and Rome.

I know this “The Best…” list has a very awkward title, but I couldn’t think of a better one.

In our Family Literacy Project we provide home computers and Internet access to immigrant families. Eighty percent of household members spend at least one hour each day (many spend considerably more time) on our website. Three of these seven hours each week need to be spent on one of several websites that act as sort of “virtual classrooms” — students and their family members enter them with a password and we can check online to see how much time they have spent on them.

I thought readers might find it useful to see which ones we’ve determined to be the best for this kind of program. I don’t think there’s much need to use them in school with so many other options available, but they are excellent for homework. The sites we use are easy for the teacher to set-up, very easy for the English Language Learner student to sign-in, and provide a variety of engaging content suitable for all levels, including native-English speakers.

There are five sites we use, and which I think stand-out when compared to similar web applications:

Raz-Kids provides a large number of “talking books” at multiple levels that speak-the-text at the same time the words are highlighted. There’s a wide range of fiction and expository text, and is suitable for Beginning and Intermediate readers. It costs $60 annually for one classroom of students.

It’s worth looking at my previous post about English Movie Trailers. Students can watch movie trailers for popular films and then complete various language development activities related to them. It’s free.

I Know That has tons of engaging learning exercises and game. It costs $200 to sign-up for a classroom. Not only can you then monitor student progress, but they also can avoid all the annoying ads on the site.

English For All is a series of excellent captioned videos and follow-up activities related to life skills. It’s most appropriate to high school-age and above English Language Learners. This is available at no cost.

The final site I want to include on this list is the newest. Unfortunately, it’s only available to California students, though teachers in other areas might want to explore it and potentially replicate it in their own communities.

The California Community Colleges have developed a phenomenal website to specifically help English Language Learners prepare for the California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE), the test that all students have to pass in order to receive a high school diploma.

It’s interactive with image, text, and audio support, and is very accessible to Intermediate and Advanced English Language Learners.

Now, I don’t believe students should have to pass an exit exam to obtain a high school diploma. I think there are several other ways that are more fair and more effective in determining if a student has gained academic competency.

I also don’t believe in “teaching to the test.” I think that the fact we don’t follow that methodology and, instead, concentrate on developing life-long learners is the reason for our school’s success.

Despite those concerns, I think this program, directed by Pam Thompson and free to California students, is by far the best online program out there for reinforcing academic English and Math skills with Intermediate and Advanced English Language Learners.

Again, any and all feedback is welcome.

And, if you’ve found this post useful, you might want to consider subscribing to this blog for free.

Sara’s Quest is a very visual online game in simple English about drugs and drug abuse.  Most of it should be accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners.

I’ve placed the link on my English For Beginners page under Health.

The Canadian International Development Agency has an online around-the-world Balloon Race game accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners.

Players can move the balloon to different parts of the world by answering relatively simple questions about regions.

I’ve placed the link on my Geography page under Sites That Cover Many Areas.

Merriam-Webster’s Word Central has added new neat word games to their site — BigBot and Robobee.

They’re probably most accessible to Intermediate and Advanced English Language Learners.

I’ve placed links to both games on my Intermediate English page under Word and Video Games.

Sunsite is an interactive explanation of how solar power works.  The language is pretty simple, and should be accessible to Early Intermediate and above English Language Learners.

I’ve placed the link on my Science page.

I learned about a great site from France that teaches English idioms through the use of cartoons, audio, and games.   Because I couldn’t really figure out what to call the site in English, I settled on Cartoon Idioms.

I found this link through the Resources For The College site, which I’ve posted about before.

I’ve placed the link on my Intermediate English page under Idioms and Analogies.