Congratulations on making it through hump-day! Please post an Internet resource that you find valuable and a brief summary of the resource (2-3 sentences). The resource can be related to professional development or classroom activities.
Example:
Kelly Gallagher - Building Deeper Readers and Writers
http://www.kellygallagher.org/
Today I showed you a professional resource: "Teaching Adolescent Writers" by Kelly Gallagher. His website lists other helpful books he has written such as "Readicide" which provides lesson ideas for teaching reluctant readers. I like the resources link on this website that connects the user to his picks for "article of the week" for students and "food for thought," contemporary issues in education.
I love Jane Schaffer, especially for struggling students. Many high school teachers would argue that she is too formulaic and does not give the students the freedom to be creative and grow in their writing. I agree that you do not want to curb students creativity, however if students do not know how to organize their ideas or thoughts they will not be able to express their creativity either. I find this to be a very valuable resource to help scaffold students writing from the very beginning of the year.
ReplyDeleteI love me some Jane Schaffer!!!!!
http://www.janeschaffer.com/
I actually have two resources to share...sorry!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.intel.com/about/corporateresponsibility/education/k12/tools.htm
http://voicethread.com/about/features/commenting/
The Intel Education tool has four tools that can be use in the classroom to organize thoughts. In the visual ranking tool you can have students rank different items and then correlate them with other people in the classroom. The showing evidence tool can be used to help students not only collect evidence but also rank the value of the evidence. Seeing reason tool is a interactive visual web map.
In the Voice Thread website you can have your student comment about topics by computer microphone, telephone, text, audio file (MP3/WAV), and web cam. It is a great site that can serve the needs the all students because it has so many ways to demonstrate not only understanding but application of knowledge.
Also this is great too!!!!
ReplyDeletehttp://edsitement.neh.gov/
Great lesson plan ideas for humanities K-12.
http://www.readwritethink.org/parent-afterschool-resources/games-tools/comic-creator-a-30237.html
ReplyDeleteThis is a comic creator from Readwritethink.org. You can choose the number of panels, put titles and captions, drag figures and objects into the panels (and arrange them), put in speech bubbles, and print your comic. For comics with very specific themes, it might be a bit limited (you may not find the objects you would want to put in the comic or figures with the posture you are looking for). This being said, for many comics, especially those that are more dialog driven, it would be an excellent resource.
This site has many other resources for the classroom (if you go up to the tabs at the top, you can browse that way). This one actually comes from the "Parent and After School Resources", but I think that the potential classroom applications are many.
Gotta share starfall. This site is great for preschool and beginning readers in elementary school. It has stories and letter-sound practice and even workbooks you can buy for cheap.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.starfall.com/
One Stop English
ReplyDeletehttp://www.onestopenglish.com/
This is a great resource site. You have to register but it is free. Also, during the school year they send you a lesson plan a week, alternating between levels each week of the month. The lesson plan includes worksheets too. I've used many of the lessons and they work pretty well.
Another good resource is
http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/
This site takes current news articles and develops lesson plans out of them. It is geared towards jr. high/high school and I would say is more for intermediate and above students.
One last website
http://iteslj.org/questions/
This is actually a page from The Internet TESL journal and there are links to more lesson plans, activities, and professional articles. This page has conversation questions for different topics.
Okay, just one more. :)
http://www.eslflow.com/index.html
This site basically has links to all sorts of lesson plans and activities. It is divided up by levels, ages, topics, grammar points, etc. It is a bit confusing to navigate on but once you start to play around on it you can see that their are endless possibilities.
That's all for now.
and Brainpop. http://www.brainpop.com/ This site has animated movies, games, and quizzes and info about all kinds of topics for students, young to old. It has a special area made for esl learners as well: http://www.brainpopesl.com/
ReplyDeletethere are always some free movies and games (and you can get a free movie a day with the app) but you would want to subscribe to get full access to everything.
http://www.pbs.org/teachers is a cool website I discovered recently. It is completely funded by donations and grants (obviously -- PBS) which means there are hardly any advertisements or product placements on the website. There are drop down categories for each age group and within these you can choose lesson plans, potential activities, and games to explore with your students. Enjoy!
ReplyDeleteWOW…these are some great resources.
ReplyDeleteKelly, yes, onestopenglish is cool.
OK….I loved the jazz chants, sooooo
Here is a link from teaching village, (which looks pretty interesting in itself.)
http://www.teachingvillage.org/2010/05/23/how-to-create-a-jazz-chant-by-carolyn-graham/
This link features Carolyn Graham rockin’ out and gives the instructions on how to create your own hits.
I also found www.creativewritingprompts.com. Just click on a number and it gives an idea for a creative writing exercise. Pretty nice when your creative juices have run dry.
In addition to these web resources I must put in a selling spot for
Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg ( has website, of course) and Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird.
These are wonderful books on writing.
Here are 2 websites that I like. You have to sign up for them, but it's kind of like getting a free mini inservice each week, as they will send you a weekly email with ideas in the form of articles, podcasts, videos and websites. Both of them have a free sign-up where you will get 2 to 5 weekly ideas, and they have a yearly subscription if you want more.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.choiceliteracy.com/ (sign up for "the Big Fresh")
http://www.the2sisters.com/ (sign up for the free emails, orange button)
Thanks everyone for the great resources!
Hi guys,
ReplyDeleteThank you for listing all of these great resources. Some of my favorites are on the Links & Resources sidebar - but after reading your ideas - I think I need to add a few to the list!
Here is a link to the Library of Congress "Read.Gov" website. When you click on "Read This Book Now" you can enjoy one of these classics and flip the pages just as you would a paper copy. This is a fun resource:
http://read.gov/books/index.html#teens
I found a few websites I thought would be helpful for everyone.
ReplyDeleteThis site can be helpful, I liked their section highlighting how to teach adjective clauses. The author provided a few helpful examples with the very thorough analysis.
http://www.eslbee.com/AdjClauses.htm
Although some of this content reiterates what our text has been saying this week, I thought this page had some great tips to consider. The last suggestion about including 'environmental print' in the classroom such as use of language found around town or that students would commonly come in contact with seemed so obvious or logical, but I think students would benefit from encountering more of that in assignments. Even if it means including or simply citing examples they see, I think it would be helpful to give the students connections between what they are learning to how they will use their developing language. http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=3749100
I like following people and organizations on www.twitter.com for ideas to incorporate technology into lessons. Some people I follow are: Larry Ferlazzo (also has a blog herehttp://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/larry-ferlazzos-english-website/), web20classroom, ESL-library, edublogs, rmbyrne, educationweek... so many resources! It can be a bit overwhelming, but it's awesome to browse for tips and ideas because they are all in one place. Downside (or maybe upside?) is that you have to sign up for twitter, but there is no need to post anything. You can just follow.
ReplyDeleteHere are the hyperlinks:
ReplyDeletehttp://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/larry-ferlazzos-english-website/
www.twitter.com