Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

“Does ‘Counting Our Blessings’ Really Help?” is a report from Cognitive Daily sharing research that shows having students regularly list what they are grateful for helps them develop a more positive outlook.

Doing it daily generated the greatest benefit, but it appears that doing it weekly helped, too.

I don’t plan on trying this with my students anywhere that number of times, but it sounds like a good reflective question to ask now and then.

“Frenchfrog’s Little English Pond” is the name of a blog written by Laurence Haquet. She creates great interactive books that are exceptional learning tools.

I’ve added her book on Thanksgiving to The Best Sites To Learn & Teach About Thanksgiving.

And I’ve added her book on Halloween to The Best Websites For Learning About Halloween.

She’s created quite a few other similar interactives,too.

I learned about her from Michelle Henry’s site, which is on The Best Sites For Teachers Of English Language Learners — 2009 list.

Last week I posted about an experiment I was doing with my mainstream and English Language Learner students using visual imagery.

In that post, I included links to research done by Zoltán Dörnyei on using visual imagery specifically with English Language Learners.

Today, I learned about another article by him that’s available for PDF download. It’s called New Ways Of Motivating Foreign Language Learners: Generating Vision.

Thanks to Barbara Sakamoto and Dayle Major for the tip.

I read, hear, and even write a lot about “techniques” that are supposed to improve schools and classroom instruction. Often times, professional development books and workshops (and teacher hand-outs at staff meetings) are filled with zillions of them — how to use multiple intelligences, technology, specific instructional strategies with students that have special needs, etc.

These techniques are obviously important.

I wonder, though, if we teachers and our students, schools, and districts might be better off if we spent a little more time focusing on — for lack of being able to come up with better terms — our “cultural orientations” or basic “ways of thinking”?

What am I talking about?

Please bear with me as share my thinking on all this. Usually, I don’t post a piece like this which is more of a “process post” — I don’t necessarily have as much clarity as I would like, and, instead, am sharing my thoughts and hoping that feedback from readers will helping move my thinking along.

Last week marked the 100th anniversary of Peter Drucker’s birth. Drucker was the renowned business and management philosopher, writer, theorist, analyst. His thinking also says a lot to community organizing (my previous career) and teaching (my present one) Someone (and I’m sorry that I can’t remember who) wrote about National Public Radio’s coverage of this anniversary, which pointed out that his most important idea was:

the importance of a company having a sense of mission or a purpose, and that that’s not identical with its strategy, it’s not identical with its business model, it’s why it exists and what social good or greater good that it’s serving. That’s a very important Drucker idea.

When I’m talking about a “cultural orientation” or “way of thinking,” I think mean something like what Drucker meant. But something more than “whatever is good for kids.”

I’d like to give three examples of what I mean — in the classroom, in a school and, in the context of schools connecting with parents.

IN A CLASSROOM

In the first part of each school year, in most of my classes I lead a discussion with students asking what they want our class to be — “A Community of Learners” or a “Classroom of Students.” I write about this more extensively in my book “Teaching English Language Learners: Strategies That Work” (which will be out next summer), but I’ll give a short description here.

I write the two columns on the overhead and give some examples of the difference between the two. In a classroom of students, a teacher does most of the talking. In a Community Of Learners, students work in small groups and are co-teachers. In a “classroom” people laugh when others make mistakes, while in a “community” people are supported when they take risks. In a “classroom” the teacher has to be always be the one to keep people focused, while in a “community” students take responsibility to keep themselves focused.

Most students say their previous classes had been more like a “Classroom of Students.” I ask students to share what other differences they might see between the two types. Here are a couple of examples students said this year:

In a “classroom” “students start a fight and end up hurting each other.” In a “community” “they don’t start a fight, they talk it out.”

In a “classroom” “the only way to succeed is doing exactly what the teacher says.” In a “community” “you have more than one choice in succeeding.”

After adding to the list, students then decide which one they’d rather have. No one has every chosen a “classroom of students.”

By starting with this basic “cultural orientation” or “way of thinking,” students developed their own ways of approaching (I guess you could almost call it their own “techniques”) how the class would operate. It provided a framework for looking at numerous issues throughout the whole school year, and respected their judgment and wants.

IN A SCHOOL:

Ted Appel has done a tremendous job working with teachers over the past few years at our school to develop a “cultural orientation” or “way of thinking.”  Basically, it’s not acceptable for students to not do well — everybody succeeds.  That way of thinking operates almost universally among the faculty, and is amazingly prevalent among students as well.

Our tutoring project, where students hire (and fire) teachers of their choice, is an example of this way of thinking. We didn’t set-up an after-school tutoring center and then blame the students for not showing-up. Ted and our staff began with the thinking that some students needed help, and looked at what were the barriers to them getting the most effective assistance they could get so they could do well and thought outside the box.

IN A PARENT ENGAGEMENT STRATEGY

In my book, Building Parent Engagement In Schools, I highlight the differences between parent involvement and parent engagement.  Some of those differences include the primary “involvement” tool schools use is their mouths to talk, while the primary “engagement” tool is their ears to listen.  Involvement is often about one-way communication, while engagement can be about two-way conversation.   The invitation to involvement is often “irritating” — challenging parents to do something the schools want them to do, while with engagement it’s often “agitation” — challenging parents to do something that they say they want to do.

Obviously a few examples are useful to illustrate each of those parent engagement elements, but if schools are committed to that kind of criteria, they can judge their own possible actions against them.  They don’t necessarily need a long laundry list of what they should or shouldn’t do.

I guess all I’m wondering is how many schools and districts are skipping looking  these big kinds of cultural orientations or ways of thinking?

I wonder if there should be more of an investment in developing our compasses instead of giving us road maps?

What do you think?

Singing songs is a great way to help English Language Learners get past their understandable reluctance to speak in a new language, and a good vocabulary-building activity.  In addition, you can create clozes (fill-in-the-gaps) with the lyrics, use them to teach grammar, and have students use the real lyrics as models while they write their own.

It’s easy always been easy to find lyrics on the Internet, though often there are inaccuracies and so many lyrics sites have tons of annoying pop-up ads. I thought I’d create a “The Best…” list that shares places where there appear to be correct lyrics and no pop-ups.

You might also be interested in these other “The Best…” lists:

The Best Music Websites For Learning English
The Best Online Sites For Creating Music
The Best Online Karaoke Sites For English Language Learners

Here are my choices for The Best Places To Find Lyrics On The Web:

Lyrster is a search engine that appears to search only collections of lyrics to songs. Just type in a few words and your results show links to the complete lyrics.  It performed quite well in my tests. The sites it searches include some, but I don’t believe all, of the other sites on this list.

Lyrics Fly is one of the best sites out there for finding song lyrics. You can also use it to find music audio and videos, but I’m primarily interested in the lyrics. The Make Use Of blog calls it “lyric search on steroids.”

Lyrics On Call

Lyrics Mode

Just Lyrics

E Lyrics

I’d certainly be interested in hearing other suggestions, so please feel free to leave them in the comments section.

I’d certainly be interested in hearing other suggestions, so please feel free to leave them in the comments section.

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.

A teacher and the organization he began has just been recognized by the Cable News Network. I’m “copying-and-pasting” some paragraphs about him from CNN since they describe the project so well. I’m also including some links to some nice videos and text.

Efren Peñaflorida, who started a “pushcart classroom” in the Philippines to bring education to poor children as an alternative to gang membership, has been named the 2009 CNN Hero of the Year.

For the past 12 years, Peñaflorida and his team of teen volunteers have taught basic reading and writing to children living on the streets. Their main tool: A pushcart classroom.

Stocked with books, pens, tables and chairs, his Dynamic Teen Company recreates a school setting in unconventional locations such as the cemetery and municipal trash dump.

The New York Times Book Review printed a very short interview with author Steven Pinker a week last week. It was same issue in which Pinker had written a review of Malcolm Gladwell’s newest book.

Here’s an excerpt from that interview:

“…Pinker, the author of “How the Mind Works” and “The Blank Slate,” acknowledges that academic explainers have their own faults. “Academics lack perspective. In a debate on whether the world is round, they would argue ‘no,’ because it’s an oblate spheroid,” he said. “They suffer from ‘the curse of knowledge’: the inability to imagine what it’s like not to know something that they know. That makes them underestimate the sophistication of readers and write in motherese rather than explaining concepts from the ground up.”

That sounds like a great quality a teacher should have:

The ability to imagine what it’s like not to know something that they know.

Our school places a heavy emphasis on working with our ninth-graders. As regular readers know, I teach a lot of students in that grade.

Stuck in 9th Grade: The Bulge in the Education Pipeline is a report from Education Week which shares recent research showing why that kind of focus is just so important.

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.

I felt honored yesterday when Alice Mercer, my exceptional colleague who also teaches in the Sacramento School District (she’s at an elementary school), came by to observe one of my classes. I felt doubly honored that she wrote a post about it. You can read it at her blog. It’s titled Dear Theory of Knowledge Students.

She happened to come by to see my International Baccalaureate Theory of Knowledge class (I have a wide-ranging class schedule including IB, mainstream ninth-grade English, and Intermediate English).

Alice framed her post as a letter to my students and included several thoughtful questions (she also included photos). Tomorrow, my students will be responding to them. I’ll be very interested in seeing the comments they leave at her blog.

Thanks, Alice!

TEFL.net, which is on The Best Ways ESL/EFL/ELL Teachers Can Develop Personal Learning Networks list, just interviewed me, and you can read it here.

It was fun to do, and Tara Benwell asked some great questions. If you’re interested, you can read about why I became a high school teacher, what qualities I look for in the sites I post about it, and who and what I blame when my class lessons go wrong…

While you’re there, check out all the free resources they have, too.

The British Council’s “Learn English Kids” website just unveiled a new design. I’ve posted about many of their resources, and a bunch of them are on various “The Best…” lists.

It seems to look pretty nice, and is worth a visit.

Practicowl is a new site that lets teachers easily create tests (fill-in-the-blank and multiple choice) for students who are “enrolled” in the class to take. Teachers can then see the test results.

It seems fairly easy-to-use, though I haven’t spent a whole lot of time checking it out.

If you do, let me know what you think.

If you’ve gone through the trouble of creating and maintaining a website or blog, you probably want to make sure that it’s working, and you might also want to monitor it to see if it’s reaching your intended audience.

I thought I’d put together a “The Best…” list that would provide some tools that do just that.

Of course, one key task you want to do is to back it up in case something goes wrong. You can find those tools at one of my previous lists –  The Best Ways To Back-Up Your Computer And Online Work.

Here are a few other applications that I’ve found helpful:

VERIFYING LINKS:

If you have a lot of links to other sites on your blog or website, it’s pretty de-energizing to students and others if lots of them are “dead” — no longer connecting to a site that exists.  I use two different free and automatic link verifiers.

One is the Any Browser Link Checker. It works easily and quickly to verify links on a page once you type-in the web address of the page you want it to check. Sometimes, though, it can’t handle a page if you have a ton of links on one, like I do on some of the pages on my website.

If you run into the same problem, then Dead Links is the tool to use. That always works, though sometimes you’ll get a fair number of “false negatives” — it’ll say a link is dead if it takes awhile to load when it really is still active.  You just have to double-check them.

BEING NOTIFIED IF YOUR BLOG OR WEBSITE IS DOWN:

Two free tools work well for monitoring your sites and then notifying you if they go down for some reason.

One is Observu and the other is Ding It’s Up. Observu will tell you when it’s down. Ding It’s Up will tell you when it’s down, but it also has the nice feature of letting you know when it’s up again, too. Are My Sites Up? is a similar service, as is Montastic.

KEEPING TRACK OF YOUR SITE STATISTICS:

There are obviously lots of different tools to keep track of your site’s statistics to see who is visiting your site, and how that compares with others. There are two in particular I like.

There’s the obvious one — Google Analytics. Sue Waters’ post on The Basics Of Using Google Analytics is the place to go to learn what all that data means.

Another tool you can use to obtain data about your site, and doesn’t require any installation of code onto your site, is called Dataopedia. A post at Read Write Web describes some of its useful features.

Also, check-out the Blog Grader for data.

CHECKING TO SEE WHAT YOUR READERS SEE:

One never knows what your blog posts look like in an RSS Reader or to email subscribers, or how your website or blog looks in different browsers….unless you check.

Read Sue Waters’ post on What Do Your Readers Really SEE? to get more suggestions on this topic, including information on a site which will give you screenshots of how your blog or website will look in a zillion different browsers.

OTHER USEFUL TOOLS

Website Grader will give you a lot of helpful information about your site. All you have to do is type in your address and it will immediately give you a report with recommendations on how to make it more accessible.

Spyder Mate, Examine URL and Link Voodoo will also provide you with free overall reports on your site with similar information.

These final tools don’t quite fit into this list, but they are related.

Copy Gator, Copyscape, Fair Share and Copyright Spot all are free and easy ways to monitor if your blog content is being copied by someone else who is then billing it as their own. Nik Peachey has written a good post about them.

As always, feedback is 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.

(Cross-posted at TechLearning)

Many years ago I helped operate a soup kitchen on San Jose’s (CA) Skid Row. We were well-meaning, but not the most responsible neighbors. On day I was sweeping around the passed-out men and women on our front porch when a police car drove-up. An officer got out and started yelling me, saying that we couldn’t control thing and they received many complaints about us. As the officer continued, one of the men on the porch pulled himself up on the railing and yelled out, “Officer, Larry tries. He tries hard. We just don’t listen to him!”

I’ve often thought about that incident during my nineteen year career as a community organizer and six years as a public school teacher. I’ve framed the lesson I learned that day as a question, “Do I want to be right? Or do I want to be effective?”

The issue of educational technology is, I believe, no different. Judgmental, frustrated, and angry comments can often be found in the education “blogosphere” as people share their often unsuccessful efforts at integrating ed tech into the learning and teaching culture of their schools.

In my community organizing career, I learned that a key to engaging people to move beyond their comfort zone is to first build a relationship — a reciprocal one. A relationship entails eliciting from others their hopes and dreams, along with sharing your own. It involves finding learning the frustrations and challenges that people are experiencing. It involves looking for ways to help the other person realize those hopes and dreams and get beyond those challenges. And, if educational technology can genuinely help in those ways, then building a relationship means framing the invitation to try it in a way that speaks to what the other person wants, which may not be the way you would prefer to frame it. It is the difference between “being right” and “being effective.”

Based on the conversations I’ve had with many teachers, here are some of the simple ways I’ve introduced using educational technology as tool reluctant colleagues might want to consider — after I’ve developed or deepened relationships with them.  I’ve framed the invitations based on what they’ve said they wanted, which might or might not be similar to what you learn.  Even if they are different, these “A Few Simple Ways To Introduce Reluctant Colleagues To Technology” might provide a useful template for you to develop others.

When talking about using ed tech, I’ve found it important to stress two points — how it helps meet the immediate and direct self-interest of the individual teacher by making things easy and simple, and how it provides added value to the students’ learning experience.  I’ll discuss each of these “Few Ways” in that context.

1) Using a Computer Projector. One simple benefit for teachers is being able to easily show video clips without having to deal a VCR/DVD Projector, or the small size of a TV screen. It vastly increases the number of easily accessible video clips for all subject areas, even if you eliminate YouTube because it’s blocked by most school content filters. Yes, there are ways to access even those, but this post is about the easiest ways to introduce people to tech who might not be comfortable with it.

2) Using a Document Camera. Eliminating the need to make transparencies is every teachers’ dream if they’ve been using an overhead projector, and a document camera does the trick. Being able to have students bring their work up to easily show the class models is a great teaching tool.

3) Easily Creating A More Authentic Audience For Student Work. Students can be much more engaged in, and committed to, what they’re writing/creating for class if they know the audience is for more than just one person — the teacher. Here are some easy ways to make this happen:

To Make It Easily Viewable By Other Classmates:

Any document, including one in Microsoft Word, can be quickly uploaded to the Internet with File2.ws. All you do is click on your file and seconds letter you’re given an url address for it. Once you have that, though, what do you do with it to make it accessible?

There are two options, I think, that make it most feasible to a “reluctant” colleague.

One is by simply creating a free blog from Edublogs (since that is the blog host that is least likely to be blocked by school content filters) and having students past the url addresses of their own creations to the blog as a comment. Other students can leave comments in the same area making observations about their classmate’s posts. Or they can just write them on a piece of paper to share.

Another way is by having each student email their creation’s url address to the teacher. The teacher can then easily copy and paste them to something like Dinky Page, a super-easy website creation tool that doesn’t even require registration. Another option is using sites like Posterous or Moomeo, which both allow you to email what you want to appear on your website without even having to go set it up.

To Make It Easily Viewable By Others Beyond The Classroom:

There are plenty of places where students can easily copy and paste what they’ve created for class so that others throughout the world can read it.  They can also get the url addresses of what they create and post it in one of the ways just mentioned so that classmates, and the teacher, can easily see it. Students can be pretty excited at the possibility, and their level of commitment can increase.  Potential places for students to place what they write (with no added work required from the teacher) include:

Timelines is a neat tool that lets users contribute towards making “timelines” of historical events with text, photos, and videos. People can then vote on which ones they like best, though everyone’s contributions appear to remain displayed.  It’s extremely easy to contribute — much, much easier than to something like Wikipedia. Google’s Knol is also another easy place to use for the same purpose.

Students can write book reviews at Shelfari, Library Thing, and Book Army.

They can decide a question they want to learn the answer to, post it (or have another classmate post it) on one of numerous question/answer sites) and reearch and write the answer.  Good sites for this activity include Yahoo Answers, WikiAnswers, and Wikianswers (yes, the last two are indeed different sites).

They can create their own online books at Tikatok or Tar Heel Reader.

There are numerous other options, but these are the best ones.  Readers can find more at The Best Places Where Students Can Create Online Learning/Teaching Objects For An “Authentic Audience” and at The Best Places Where Students Can Write For An “Authentic Audience.”

Yes, these are all small steps. In fact, community organizers call these kinds of things “fixed-fights.” These are the small actions that have an extremely high probability of success that serve as confidence boosters to people trying something new.

The next time you’re feeling frustrated at a colleague who might be resistant to some educational technology you’re trying to introduce him/her to, why not try some relationship-building and simple confidence-boosters instead?

Angela Maiers has written a great post about the power our language has as teachers. She talks particularly about using the phrase “I notice…” with students. I would very strongly recommend you read her entire post, titled “Two Powerful Words: I Notice.”

One quote she includes is something said by Susan Sarandon in the movie “How We Dance”:

“We need a witness to our lives. There’s a billion people on the planet… I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you’re promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things… all of it, all of the time, every day. You’re saying ‘Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness’.”

The idea of “Personal Learning Networks,” a group of colleagues with whom you can gain and give support and professional advice, is certainly not a new idea. These kinds of connections have long been used by people in all kinds of professions, including among educators.

Now, however, the Web offers incredible opportunities to expand these PLN’s. Just today I realized that, though I have written about ways ELS/EFL/ELL teachers can develop these global connections in various “The Best…” lists, I’ve never collected them into one — until today.

I hope you’ll provide additional suggestions in the comments section of this post.

Here are my choices for The Best Ways ESLL/EFL/ELL Teachers Can Develop Personal Learning Networks:

My first recommendation is that you read what Sue Waters has written about PLN’s. Sue isn’t an ESL/EFL/ELL teacher, but she provides an essential step-by-step guide for how any educator can get started.

One of my favorites is EFL Classroom 2.0. Begun by David Deubelbeiss, it’s an extraordinary collection of every imaginable ESL/EFL resource, and helps connect teachers from all over the world.

Learning With Computers is an exceptional group of ESL/EFL teachers from around the world that was begun by Gladys Baya. It’s part of Webheads In Action, which has helped start several similar collaborations. Learning With Computers has a very helpful Wiki and an equally helpful, and active, listserv. Another great Webheads group and listserv is called evonline.

Two more listservs worth joining are The Computer-Assisted Language Learning listserv from TESL and the National Institute For Literacy’s Technology Discussion List.

EFL Teaching Recipes is 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!

Burcu Akyol has put together an excellent list of ESL/EFL teachers you can follow on Twitter and Shelly Terrell has done the same.

TEFL.net is a worldwide forum with discussion boards, jobs listings, and a ton of other resources.

If you have a blog, you might want to consider connecting with “Bloggers in ELT, freelancers.” It’s a group begun by Karenne Sylvester, and you can read all about it here.

Of course, TESOL, the association of Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, is a huge international organization with lots of resources. It is also one of two resources on this list that costs to join, but it does offer reduced rates depending on your situation.

The other organization in this post that costs to join is IATEFL, the International Association of Teachers of English As A Foreign Language. TESOL seem similar to me, though TESOL seems more based in the Americas while IATFL in Europe, but that might not be an accurate description of the differences. Please correct me if I’m wrong. IATEFL does have a good listserv for K-12 teachers teachers that is free to join — it’s called Young Learners.

You might also find The Best ESL/EFL Blogs list useful.

Again, feel free to offer feedback and suggestions.

I thought readers might find it useful for me to list in one post some useful (at least in mind ) pieces I’ve written about my own teaching practice over the past year. It was certainly a helpful exercise for me to review them.

There are some posts that could have been included here, but, instead, I’ve decided to add them to a future post titled “The Best Articles (And Blog Posts) Offering Practical Advice To Teachers — 2009.”

I have not included any additional description where the titles are self-explanatory.

Here are my choices for The Best Reflective Posts I’ve Written About My Teaching Practice — 2009:

“Data-Driven” Versus “Data-Informed” talks about my principal’s perspective on the use of data and my own response to lower standardized test scores in one of my classes.

What Do Pit Bulls & Cockroaches Have To Do With Learning & Teaching? shares my thoughts on what I view as my “teaching metaphor.”

Why I Support The Cellphone Ban At Our School

Results From Student Evaluation Of My Class And Me

Results From Student Evaluation Of My Class And Me (Part Two)

Have You Ever Taught A Class That Got “Out Of Control”?

“I’ll Work If You Give Me Candy” shares my response to a student who said that to me.

Writing Letters To Students

Results From My Year-Long U.S. History Tech Experiment is where I shared the assessment results and my reflections from teaching two U.S. History classes — one entirely in the computer lab and one in my classroom with my typical curriculum.

The Best Part Of The President’s Speech & How I’ll Use It shares how I use a different type of goal-setting lesson regularly with students  in class.

In “Seeing The Forest Through The Trees” I write about my amazing ability to not see things that are so obvious.

I wonder about the Hopes and Dreams that my students share in a beginning-of-the-year exercise in The Hopes And Dreams Of My Students.

Reading Logs — Part Two (or “How Students Can Grow Their Brains”) shares some lessons I was planning to use with students to help them see that they could literally make their brains “stronger.” “Now I Know My Brain Is Growing When I Read Every Night” describes what happened when I tried them in the classroom. “This Is Your Brain On Learning” shares a follow-up lesson I did. “I Know My Brain Is Growing…” Slideshow Of Student Work displays work that came out of the lesson.

Helping Students Develop Self-Control shares another lesson in the same vein as the one on the brain.

“I Like This Lesson Because It Make Me Have a Longer Temper” (Part One) shares the actual lesson on I did on self-control.

“I Was Disappointed With What Happened Yesterday…” talks about some class management issues.

“I Made My Agreement With Mr. Ferlazzo And Kept It…” talks about about the importance of making individual “deals” with students.

Getting Our Students & Their Families Thinking About College

“Lean-In” is about a short lesson to help students become more attentive.

A Few Simple Ways To Introduce Reluctant Colleagues To Technology

The Best Piece Of Classroom Management Advice I’ve Ever Read

Helping Students Visualize Success

Feedback , as always, is 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.

As I did in last year’sThe “Best” Articles About Education — 2008 and in the previous year’s The “Best” Articles About Education — 2007, I’ve put quotes around the word “Best” in the title of this list since I’m sure there are many, many articles about education I have not read and posted about this year. I’m particularly interested in hearing people’s suggestions for additions to this list.   This list, as the title says,  focuses on education policy issues.  I’ll have another one coming-up titled “The Best Articles (And Blog Posts) Offering Practical Advice To Teachers — 2009.”  I’ll also be writing “The Best Reflective Posts I’ve Written About My Teaching Practice — 2009.”

Unlike in previous year’s, though, I could not bring myself to rank them in order of preference — they all were just too good.

Where the titles of the articles or blog posts are self-explanatory, I haven’t included any additional description.

Here are my choices for The “Best” Articles (And Blog Posts) About Education — 2009:

Diane Ravitch wrote an excellent post titled What’s Wrong With Merit Pay.

Crazy Talk is the title of a great piece Doug Noon wrote for Change.Org a few months ago. It offers an excellent critique of Secretary Duncan’s plans.

Slate Magazine published what I think is an exceptionally insightful critique of KIPP Schools written by Sara Mosle.  It’s called The Educational Experiment We Really Need: What the Knowledge Is Power Program has yet to prove.

Claus von Zastrow has wrote great blog post titled Taking the Easy Way Out. He talks about the recent tendency of journalists (who really should know better) to claim there are easy answers to some of the challenges facing our schools.

The Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning’s blog shared the results of two pretty interesting surveys. In one, 500 recent drop outs were asked about the reasons they decided to drop out of school. The other survey collected data from over 23,000 3-5 minute visits around the country.

How can we close the achievement gap? You can read the answer to that question from my favorite writer on education reform issues, Richard Rothstein.

Does Slow and Steady Win the Race? A Conversation with Top Researcher Russ Whitehurst offers an exceptionally well-balanced perspective on school reform — one that’s well-worth reading.

Anthony Cody wrote an excellent post titled National Standards A Wild Goose Chase.

Poverty and Potential: Out-of-School Factors and School Success is a study released by The Great Lakes Center For Education Research and Practice. It details “out-of-school” factors that affect learning success.

A Textbook Example of What’s Wrong with Education is an excellent article by a former textbook editor. It tells, in horrifying detail, how publishers develop the textbooks our school districts buy.

Alice Mercer wrote an absolutely great post at our group blog, In Practice. It’s titled “Why Not Cure Poverty Instead?” and is outgrowth of a conversation about Ruby Payne.

The National Journal ran a piece  on paying students for increased test scores.  I was pleased to see a number of thoughtful responses criticizing the idea, and disappointed to see what people said in support.  I was particularly pleased with the response by Bob Peterson (from one of my favorite magazines, Rethinking Schools).

Extreme School Makeover: Creating the Conditions for Success is a blog post by Claus von Zastrow that is one of the best, and most reasonable, descriptions of what it might take to “turnaround” a troubled school.  He highlights the key elements of a successful strategy and makes it clear that there is no one single answer that will provide a solution — no matter what some “expert” school reformers might think.

David Cohen, a teacher from Palo Alto whom I know through the Teacher Leaders Network, co-wrote a great op ed piece in the  Sacramento Bee. It’s called “Test scores poor tool for teacher evaluation.”

Earlier in the year, there was quite a bit of commentary in the educational blogosphere about a not particularly helpful or insightful op-ed piece in the New York TImes by Nicholas Kristof.  In it, he touts the mythical figure that:

A Los Angeles study suggested that four consecutive years of having a teacher from the top 25 percent of the pool would erase the black-white testing gap.

There are three posts about Kristof’s column that I think are particularly thoughtful that I want to include here:

In Search Of The Top 25 Percent Teacher from Public School Insights

The Miracle Teacher, Revisited by Diane Ravitch at Bridging The Differences

We Need Schools That ‘Train’ Our Judgment by Deborah Meier, also at Bridging The Differences.

Larry Cuban wrote Fixing Urban Schools: Sprinters or Marathoners?. It’s about superintendents, and I shared it with our new one here.

State’s exit exams deserve a failing grade is an op ed piece by the late education researcher/author Gerald Bracey that appeared in the Sacramento Bee.

Education researcher David Berliner wrote an excellent guest post in The Answer Sheet, a Washington Post education blog. It’s called Why Rising Test Scores May Not Mean Increased Learning.

Blinded by Reform is an exceptionally well-balanced and reasonable critique of some of the questionable strategies Education Secretary Duncan and the Obama administration is pushing on schools. It’s written by Mike Rose, who is on the faculty of the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies and the author of “Why School?: Reclaiming Education for All of Us.”

Do You Want To “Build Influence”? is not specifically about education policy, but does provide some ideas for those who want to change it.

The late education researcher Gerald Bracey published his last “Bracey Report on the Condition of Public Education.”

And, lastly, I’m going to include the piece I wrote at Public School Insights titled Parent Involvement or Parent Engagement? It’s an excerpt from my recent book, Building Parent Engagement In Schools.”

I’m also adding a short post I wrote about federal funding for literacy programs titled “I just thought it would end differently this time.”

Compasses Or Road Maps?

Suggestions and feedback, as always, are 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.

This is a new annual “The Best…” list. In the past, I’ve posted:

The Best Internet sites for English Language Learners 2007

The Best Web 2.0 Applications for ESL/EFL Learners — 2007

The Best Internet Sites For English Language Learners — 2008

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:

The Best Online Learning Games — 2009

The Best Ways To Create Online Content Easily & Quickly — 2009

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.

Help For Lesson Planning: Tools For ESL Lesson Planning: A Book of Techniques, Lesson Plans, Activities and Resources For Teaching ESL is the name of a free downloadable book in PDF form. It was compiled by the ESL and Citizenship Programs of the Los Angeles Unified School District. It looks pretty good.

Listening Activities: David Deubelbeiss has posted a very good document for ESL/EFL teachers sharing ideas for listening activities to do in the classroom.

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.

News Lessons: Sean Banville is the creator of several excellent websites for English Language Learners and their teachers. Most of them are on various “The Best…” lists, including Famous People Lessons.com (which is on The Best Resources For Researching & Writing Biographies), ESL Holiday Lessons.com (lessons from that site are on many of my holiday lists), and Breaking New English (which is on The Best news/current events websites for English Language Learners).Sean has begun another site called News English Lessons. He describes it this way: “FREE Handouts, Listening & Quizzes in Simple English – Read About the Latest News and Learn English – It’s Easy.” It appears to me that it has current news materials that are even more accessible to English Language Learners than on his Breaking News site.

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.

ESL/EFL Teachers On Twitter: Burcu Akyol has put together an excellent list of ESL/EFL teachers you can follow on Twitter and Shelly Terrell has done the same.

ESL/EFL Blogs: I posted my choices for The Best ESL/EFL Blogs.

Teaching English With Music: I did an interview about this topic with a music education site that people might find helpful.

Writing Activities: David Deubelbeiss has written a nice post sharing quite a few good writing activities to use in class.

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.

Getting A Laugh: If you teach English, and if you have a sense of humor, you must go to David Deubelbeiss’ post Funniest videos about teaching / learning English and watch the videos.

You might also be particularly interested in two other lists I posted this year:

The Best Sites For K-12 Beginning English Language Learners

The Best Sites For K-12 Intermediate English Language Learners

Feel free to contribute additional suggestions in the comments section.

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You might also want to explore over 300 other “The Best…” lists I’ve compiled.