Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

…For Teaching ELL, ESL, & EFL

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February 10, 2014
by Larry Ferlazzo
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The New “Connect With English” Site Has Got To Be One Of This Year’s Best New Sites For ELLs

connect

“Connect With English” was produced by Annenberg a number of years ago, and is a great video series for English Language Learners. The series has been free to watch via the web, but you’ve had to purchase student exercise books. I’ve previously our own “worksheet” that we developed for students to use.

Though the videos are just beginning to show their age a bit, they’re still wonderful resources.

What’s even better, though, is that Annenberg has just unveiled a new free Connect With English site with tons of interactive exercises for students to use. My students will love it, and I’m sure they won’t be alone.

I’m adding info to The Best Popular Movies/TV Shows For ESL/EFL (& How To Use Them).

Thanks to InterCom for the tip.

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February 7, 2014
by Larry Ferlazzo
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This Is A Neat Video On Literacy — Too Bad It’s A Commercial For Whiskey

Amy Erin Borovoy, the amazing video blogger at Edutopia, shared this commercial on Twitter today.

It has a neat focus on literacy, and reminded me a bit of a clip from The Color Purple you’ll find on The Best Videos Illustrating Qualities Of A Successful Language Learner.

I’d add this video to that list (to help illustrate perseverance), if it wasn’t a commercial for a whiskey. So I won’t show it to students, but I thought readers of this blog might still want to watch it:

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February 7, 2014
by Larry Ferlazzo
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If You’re Looking For Videos About The Olympics, Here Are The Best Places To Find Them…

'Olympic Rings George Abbot School' photo (c) 2011, Surrey County Council News - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/

If you’re looking for online videos about the Sochi Olympics — and, in fact, for previous Olympics — here are what look like the two best places to find them:

Of course, the NBC Olympics site has the exclusive rights to most of the best clips.

And then there’s “The Official YouTube Olympic Channel,” which I assume is controlled by NBC, but I’m not sure. There, you can find many clips about past Olympics, and other videos like these two:

I’ll be adding these to The Best Sites For Learning About The Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games.

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February 3, 2014
by Larry Ferlazzo
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Video: “Sophie’s Choice”

I’m sure most IB Theory of Knowledge teachers use this famous and terrible scene from Sophie’s Choice when discussing ethics and moral dilemmas. However, I realized I never posted it on this blog, and thought it might be useful to others (and to me) to have it here:

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February 2, 2014
by Larry Ferlazzo
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Disney Online Video Series: “The American Presidents”

'White House' photo (c) 2005, Chris Christner - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

Thanks to Michelle Henry, I learned that Disney has produced a series of short online videos about the U.S. Presidents. The narration isn’t speeded-up, like in many history videos, so they are accessible to English Language Learners.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find them all online, and have included the ones I could locate in this post. I’m adding this info to The Best Sites To Learn About U.S. Presidents.

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January 29, 2014
by Larry Ferlazzo
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Video: “Puppy Love” – The First Of Many Super Bowl Commercials That Might Be Useful For Language-Learning

There are lots of great Super Bowl commercials from past years that are great for English Language Learners to watch and describe, and you can see all of them at The Best Sites Where ELL’s Can Learn About The Super Bowl.

The first ones for the game on Sunday are coming out, and this one from Budweiser called “Puppy Love” tells a neat story. I don’t use beer commercials in my class (there are plenty of good ones that don’t advertise alcoholic beverages), but this one could certainly be used with adults or in classes that don’t have the same rule as I do (it’s not like students haven’t seen beer commercials before — I just don’t want them to see them in my classroom).

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January 28, 2014
by Larry Ferlazzo
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The Best Fun Sesame Street Songs — Contribute Your Own!

'Sesame Street characters delight children of all ages' photo (c) 2010, USAG- Humphreys - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

I thought it would be fun to bring together the fun Sesame Street videos of songs I’ve sometimes posted here. I’m not including any of the ones designed to teach social emotional skills — just the ones I would more characterize as primarily pure fun (you can see the SEL message ones here).

Feel free to suggest your own!

next one was suggested by Travis True:

This next one was recommended by Bryan:

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January 28, 2014
by Larry Ferlazzo
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Creating Instagram Video “Book Trailers” With English Language Learners

'Books behind the bed' photo (c) 2006, rjp - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

I’ve written a lot in the past, and shared student work, about using Instagram and Vine videos with English Language Learners to learn academic vocabulary.

Last week, I shared how I was going to try to do a similar project with my English Language Learners — this time, having them create fifteen second video “book trailers” — in other words, mini-book reviews. In that same post, I shared a number of resources about this idea of “book trailers.”

We tried it out today, and it went very well. In fact, our class is teaching other classes how to create them on Friday. I showed my model video (the one at the bottom of this post), and asked students to create a storyboard with five components:

1. The book itself, with students saying the title and the author

2. A drawing of an illustration representing what the book is about, along with one sentence that they would say as a summary

3. Their favorite quote from the book

4. How many “stars” they would give it, with three as the highest rating.

5. Some kind of “action”

You can see them all at our class blog. Here are three student examples, plus my model:

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January 26, 2014
by Larry Ferlazzo
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The Latest Videos From Our Sister Class Geography Project — This Time, From Spain!

I’ve been posting about the short-and-sweet video exchanges my English Language Learner Geography classes have been doing with English classes from around the world — we videotape questions about their countries and they respond.

Here are a few of my past posts on the project:

More Video Responses From Sister Classes — Time From Latvia!

Terrific New Videos: Using English “Sister Classes” From Throughout The World In Our ELL Geography Class (from Brazil)

Great Video Response From English Class In Italy To Our Questions

We’ve connected with other countries, too, though they have asked to keep their videos private.

The latest response we’ve received has been from the English class taught by Mireia Xorto Prados in Catalonia. I’ve embedded one of their great videos below, and you can see the rest of them at their class blog.

You can see the video questions at our class blog.

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January 24, 2014
by Larry Ferlazzo
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Here’s My Teacher Model For Instagram Video “Book Trailers” Students Will Be Making

I’ve previously posted about having students create video “Book Trailers” (basically book reviews) about the books they’ve been reading.

Here are links to those specific posts, though you can see all of them — and more — at My Best Posts On Books: Why They’re Important & How To Help Students Select, Read, Write & Discuss Them:

Making Book Trailers With Fotobabble

Book Trailers From My Class

Students Making Video “Book Trailers”

Book Trailers

I’ve also shared the videos my ELL students have made with both Instagram and Vine on academic vocabulary.

Prompted by a discussion we had among ninth-grade English teachers earlier this week, I’ve decided to bring the two concepts together and have students try creating “book trailers” using Instagram videos.

Here’s the model (made in five minutes) I’ll be using:

Ideas on how to make it all go better are welcome!

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