Another day, another mid-year “The Best…” list…..

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The Best Resources, Articles & Blog Posts For Teachers Of ELL’s In 2011 — Part Two

The Best Resources, Articles & Blog Posts For Teachers Of ELL’s In 2011 — Part One

The Best Resources, Articles & Blog Posts For Teachers Of ELL’s — 2010

The Best Sites For Teachers Of English Language Learners — 2009

Here are my choices for The Best Resources, Articles & Blog Posts For Teachers Of ELL’s In 2012 — So Far:

You can find a ton of free materials from my newest book, “The ESL/ELL Teacher’s Survival Guide: Ready-to-Use Strategies, Tools, and Activities for Teaching English Language Learners of All Levels,” (co-authored by Katie Hull Sypnieski) at this link.

Visuals For Foreign Language Instruction is from the University of Pittsburgh. Here is how it describes itself:

This site contains hundreds of visual aids (illustrations) that can be used to support instructional tasks such as describing objects and people (i.e., teaching vocabulary) or describing entire events and situations (i.e., teaching grammar).

They can be freely used with attribution for educational purposes.

David Deubelbeiss from EFL Classroom 2.0 has put together an extraordinary music resource — a collection of all EFL Clasroom 2.0 song + lyric sheet materials.

The Best Places For ESL/EFL/ELL Teachers To Get Online Professional Development

Thanks to the Latino Ed Beat, I learned that:

For the first time, the College Board has released a resource guide intended to help undocumented immigrant students seeking to pursue a college education.

You can find the guide at Repository of Resources for Undocumented Students.

How I’m Helping My Students Try To Avoid The “Summer Slide” — Part One

Part Two Of “How I’m Helping My Students Try To Avoid The “Summer Slide””

The National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition (NCELA) unveiled a newly-designed website.  Here’s how it describes the site:

NCELA is proud to present our newly designed website (still at www.ncela.gwu.edu) that combines high-quality and oft-requested information about the English learner population with new features to make navigation easier and more intuitive. The website has a distinctive new look, and a thorough restructuring of the front page, bringing up-to-the-minute information to the fore. Visitors will find it easier to access key online content areas including information on federal grants, EL data and demographics, professional development, promising practices in EL education, and the full suite of NCELA resources.

The Best Tools For Creating Clozes (Gap-Fills)

Here’s What Students Did On Our Field Trip To The Zoo

Stanford has launched an “Understanding Language” Initiative designed to help teachers integrated the new Common Core Standards into English Language Learner instruction. It’s got a lot of plans, and right now it has published a bunch of papers.

I encourage my students to encourage their academic career after high school. Some wonder why they should since they’re undocumented and question if going to college will really provide them with any better opportunities than they have now.  For those students, and for others, there’s now a great free book (available for download) titled “Life After College: A Guide For Undocumented Students.”

What Would This Animal Be Saying And/Or Thinking?

Get Organized Around Assets is the title of my article in the March issue of ASCD’s Educational Leadership. It’s subtitled:

The steps community organizers use to help change people’s lives can help teachers improve English language learners’ reading.

I’ve also written a short post about it at ASCD’s blog. The post is headlined Students Remember More When They Tell Stories.

Ana Maria Menezes, an English teacher in Brazil, has worked with teachers in other countries to create a neat An Image A Week project. Each week, students share a photo and write about it. You can learn all about it at Ana Maria’s blog post, PROJECT: An image a week (with EFL learners).

A Prime Example Of English Language Learner Assets

“clubEFL” Is A Fantastic Site For EFL/ESL Teachers & Students

Helping Long-Term ELL’s & Evaluating ELL Teachers Fairly is from Education Week Teacher.

Shelly Terrell has created an excellent slideshow called “Working With Images” that shares a number of ideas on how to use images with English Language Learners. I’m adding it to The Best Ways To Use Photos In Lessons:

Vocabulary Instruction Ideas From #ELLCHAT

My monthly New York Times posts on teaching ELLs could be useful.

The Best Resources On Using Improvisation In The ESL/EFL/ELL Classroom

The Best Resources On Using Drama In The Classroom

The Best English-Language News Sites With An “Ethnic” Focus

Feedback is welcome, including additional suggestions.

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You might also want to explore the 900 other “The Best…” lists I’ve compiled.