"Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day…" - 5 new articles

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Thanksgiving is coming up here in the United States.

You might be interested in The Best Sites To Teach and Learn About Thanksgiving (I just went through it and cleaned up a few dead links).

     

For the next several months, each week I’ll be republishing posts from the past that I think readers might still find useful. This post first appeared in 2018.

I previously published  Guest Post: What ELLs Taught Our School In A Week-Long Empathy Project written by my talented colleague, Pam Buric.

Pam shared about a project we did at our school where our Intermediate English Language Learner students wrote about their personal experiences and then other classes came to learn from them over a week’s time.

Those Intermediate ELLs then helped my Beginning ELL students to write their own stories.

Now, Pam and her Intermediate class have pulled together all of those stories into a downloadable PDF book, which I have permission to share here. The description of the process and all the downloadable materials in Pam’s original post, along with the Beginner and Intermediate models, should make it a lot easier for others who might want to do similar projects (‘ll also add this link to Pam’s original post).

Thanks to Pam and her students!

     

Teachers: Here’s How Your Students Say You Can Reach Them is the headline of one of my recent Education Week columns.

“Skip the rules lecture,” “root for us,” and other advice on classroom learning from young people.

Here are some excerpts:

     

For the next several months, each week I’ll be republishing posts from the past that I think readers might still find useful. This post first appeared in 2022.

geralt / Pixabay

Today’s post in the latest of a series that I’ve been writing about this past year.

The previous ones have been:

This School Year Is Almost Over – Here Are My Reflections About 12 Changes I Want To Make In The Fall

Here’s A New Writing “Twist” I Plan To Add To Peer Tutors’ Responsibilities Next Year When Working With ELLs

Anonymous Evaluation Results From My Intermediate ELL Students

The 14 Online Learning Tools I Used Most This School Year & 2 I Want To Try In The Fall

I’ve found that it’s critical for me to find the time to reflect on school year before it ends or immediately afterwards.  Having it all fresh in my mind maximizes the lessons I can take into the following year.

Here are a few key strategies that seemed to work, and that I want to make sure I continue – and expand on – next year (note that most of these specifically relate to my ELL classes – except for a few minor changes in my TOK classes that I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I pretty much stuck there to what I had done the previous year and it worked very well):

1. At least in my ELL classes, continue using a hard-copy textbooks and paper notebooks, and next year reduce even further other computer-based lesson activities.  Clearly, based on anonymous student evaluations and my own observations, students prefer the paper-based activities.  The laptop has its place (see my previous post about online learning tools), and students greatly benefit from using it for writing, but I suspect more learning would happen for at least some if I went back to printing out materials (like data sets) that I had students reading on Google Docs this year (not least because it would reduce the temptation to surf the web).  It seems to be less of an issue in my IB Theory of Knowledge classes.
2. Pre-teaching keywords prior to reading textbook chapters through having students create slideshows about them and having them “jigsaw” teaching their classmates.  These “Word Splashes” created opportunities for small group work and practicing presentation skills, and appeared to substantially enhance reading comprehension of the textbook (based on student evaluations and my observations).  Though I’ve obviously done some pre-teaching vocabulary in prior years, I had not devoted as much time to it, and it clearly was worth the effort.  Again, this is for my ELL classes.
3. Increasing the number and use of peer tutors was hugely beneficial to students, and I’ve previously written how I plan to expand their use further next year.
4. Generally ending each class – ELL and TOK – with a short online game (see my post on online learning tools) was an activity I carried over from distance learning, and was always a winner.  Not only was it a review of what we had done, and a formative assessment, but it always ended classes on a high note.  The “peak/end” rule finds that people usually remember how they feel at the end of an activity, and that informs how they might approach doing it again.  Ending with an online game, I believe, also helps students leave the class – and then enter the next day – in a more positive frame of mind.
5. Having students complete a weekly short online Google Form letting me know how they are feeling/doing has been invaluable.  I began doing this in distance learning and, though I’m always checking-in with students verbally, I’ve learned so much information from the online forms and have been able to intervene with students in crisis more immediately.

What has worked for you this year?

     

It continues to be time for end-of-year “Best” lists.

Now it’s time for the Best Videos For Educators.

You can see all my previous “Best” lists related to videos and movies (and there are a lot since I’ve doing this since 2007) here. Note that they’re also continually revised and updated.

Here are my picks from the second half of 2026:

I’ve made many videos over the years, including quite a few animated ones with Education Week on differentiated instruction, learning transfer, and student motivation. You can see thirty of them all here. I’ve also made about 80 more on TikTok, which you can see here. I’ve begun uploading those TikTok videos to my YouTube Channel, which you can access here.

NBA great and now-announced Reggie Miller made this commercial in the 1990s.

I’m adding it to The Best Videos & Articles Where Athletes Explain How Reading & Writing Well Has Helped Their Career – Help Me Find More.

Below the video, I have embedded a tweet where he talks now about making the video:

 

Overlooked reason for the literacy crisis is that media has stopped pushing reading entirely. As recently as the 1990s books were at the center of culture. As kids it was drilled into us that to be successful, you had to read. We need a national campaign to make kids read again. https://t.co/ycuMnWSowl

— Boze the Library Owl 😴🧙‍♀️ (@SketchesbyBoze) March 9, 2026

Jon Becker shared this video on BlueSky.

It’s truly amazing!

The whole contemporary AI debate was predicted in 4.5 minutes of a 1973 episode of Super Friends. (h/t to colleague not on Bluesky)
youtu.be/BLF1k_UXEGc?…

[image or embed]

— Jon Becker (@jonbecker.bsky.social) September 17, 2026 at 5:32 AM

 

This is certainly a timely video!

I’m adding it to The Best Sites For Learning Economics & Practical Money Skills.

 

I like this idea of “Waterfall Reading” and think it could support reading fluency for ELLs and English-proficient students alike.

You can read more about it at Edutopia, and I’ve embedded a short video about it below.

I’m adding this info to The Best Resources On Reading Fluency (Including How To Measure It).

 

I’m adding this video to The Best Sites For Learning About The History Of Technology:

 

I’m adding this video to THE BEST INFOGRAPHICS HIGHLIGHTING THE WORLD’S MOST POPULAR LANGUAGES:

 

I like the idea behind the instructional strategy explained in this Edutopia video.

Basically,  students have the elements of an essay they have to write printed out on papers that are laid on the floor, and student pairs discuss them as a planning step for their essay.

There are way too many steps, in my opinion, that students are discussing, but, as I said, it’s a good idea.

If you go to this Edutopia link, you can also download all the materials the teacher used in this exercise.

I’m adding this info to Best Posts On Writing Instruction.

 

This could be a good video for professional development – show it to teachers and discuss what Chiles remembers. Then ask, “What would former students remember about your classroom?”