It’s still a bit advanced, but, nevertheless, I’m adding it to The Best Resources For Learning Research & Citation Skills.

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.

In the future, once there are many entries, it might be a great source of information for English Language Learners. Now, however, it’s an excellent opportunity for students to identify topics, develop their own 140 character answer or description about the topic, and then post it to the site.

I’m adding it to The Best Places Where Students Can Write For An “Authentic Audience.”

Other “The Best…” lists that we use during this unit include:

The Best Sites To Learn About Street Gangs

The Best Sites For ELL’s To Learn About The Dangers Of Smoking

The Best Sites To Learn About Advertising

The Best Online Interactive Exercises For Writing That Are Not Related To Literary Analysis

Here are my choices for The Best Online Resources For Helping Students Learn To Write Persuasive Essays:

Here’s a Fact and Opinion game.

Try another Fact and Opinion Game.

Here are lots of fact and opinion activities.

PBS’ Arthur has a simple Facts and Opinions game.

It’s A Fact! is an online activity from Scholastic.

Making Connections is another exercise from Scholastic.

Argument is an activity from the BBC. Other activities connected to it are:

Read

Watch

Quiz

The BBC has another activity called Argue, Persuade, and Advise. Revise is a connected exercise.

Earthlings, Unite! is an interactive sample persuasive essay.

The Joystick of Learning is another interactive sample essay.

Hungry Students Can’t Study is one more sample essay, though it’s not interactive.

Here’s an accessible tutorial on writing a persuasive essay from Great Source.

Students can quickly and easily create a “map” of their persuasive essay here and post its url on a student or teacher website.

I like this persuasive essay outline generator a lot.

Persuasion Map is from Read Write Think, but it can only be printed-out, not saved.

ESL Bee has a number of sample persuasive essays written by ESL students.

“Seeing The Forest Through The Trees” is a post I wrote about teaching the Persuasive Essay that teachers might find useful.

As always, feedback is welcome.

If you found this post useful, you might want to explore the other 350 “The Best…” lists and consider subscribing to this blog for free.

It has links to short, accessible biographies of over 30,000 people. My English Language Learner students have found it very helpful.

I’ve placed the link on my website under Biographical Essay.

I’ve been exploring what possible sites might be out there students can use. I’m narrowing them down but, since I haven’t actually had them do this activity yet, I can’t say positively which one is best. But I thought I’d share the conclusions I’ve reached after my initial experiments, and invite readers to share their experiences with these sites and others.

So, given that caveat, here are my choices for The Best Sites For Students To Create & Participate In Online Debates:

I like Create Debate a lot. One of its key advantages is that it appears to allow the creator of the debate to moderate the discussion. I’m imagining that a student can create the debate and that I then add it to the site under my name and within the initial prompt indicate which student started it. Then, they and others can contribute, but I can check regularly and delete any inappropriate comments made by others.

Heads Up seems to be an ideal site, and is specifically designed for students and teachers to use. However, it’s designed for use in the United Kingdom. I haven’t contacted them yet (but will soon) to see if non-UK schools can participate.

Opposing Views highlights key questions (political, scientific, etc). It then, in a fairly succinct “bullet” format, has an “expert” share pro and con arguments. Users of the site can also leave their own comments.  The language and lay-out of the site is fairly accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners.  After reading the arguments, users can easily leave their own comments on the issue.

Two other sites – Riled Up and For And Against — appear to have some potential, but moderation of discussions on both sites seems very limited so I’d be concerned about using it in class.

Procon is not a site to participate in debates but, instead, offers what seems to be very well-researched pro and con positions on multiple controversial issues. It could serve as a good model for students to use as they craft their own positions.

Debategraph is in a category all its own. It looks like a cool way to visualize arguments, but I can’t quite figure it out.

Additional suggestions and feedback 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.

Thanks to Angela Maiers for the tip.

Here are my choices for The Best Sites To Learn About Robots:

The Boston Globe’s Big Picture has a nice series of photos of Robots.

The Big Picture also has another series of similar images called More Robots.

The Tech Museum has a nice group of robot-related activities.

LIFE has a slideshow on Japanese Robotics.

LIFE also has a slideshow of famous robots from television and the movies.

Robots, Robots Everywhere is an online CBS News video on Japanese robots.

Here’s another CBS News video — this one on soccer games between robotic dogs.

Robots can help when disaster strikes, according to this video news report.

The Robot Hall of Fame has a slideshow.

ABC News has a slideshow on robots replacing human teachers in the classroom.

CNN has several interesting videos, including ones on:

A Home Robot

A Robotics Competition

The First Robotics Championship

Robotic Suits To Help The Disabled

The Robo-Penguin is a slideshow from TIME Magazine.

Curious Robotic Animals is a slideshow from LIFE about robots designed to look and act like animals.

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.

Announcing The Winners Of The “Share your tips–and win BIG!” Competition! is a great source of advice, and I’m adding the link to The Best Sources For Advice On Student Blogging.

I’m adding it to The Best Online Resources To Teach About Plagiarism.

Thanks to Tara Benwell from English Club for the tip. I also think she created the resource.