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

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Several companies have recently brought out tools for providing simultaneous translation (see THE BEST RESOURCES TO HELP ELL STUDENTS WITH SIMULTANEOUS TRANSLATION IN THE CLASSROOM) and, today, Google joined the crowd.

They announced that they’re rolling out this capability to the Google Translate app on Pixel phones and doing the same next year on IOS.

 

The same announcement highlighted improvements in their “practice” feature but, as I said earlier, it still has a ways to go to better Duolingo.

But the simultaneous translation feature appears pretty impressive.  It’s also very timely because, with the drop in ELL Newcomer enrollment, it’s a safe bet that more Newcomers will be parachuted into regular content classes with little or no support.  This new simultaneous tool, or other new ones, will come in handy to both teachers and students alike.

Even though these translation developments are coming faster than I had expected, I still think most ELL classes above low Intermediate need to be restructured to emphasize speaking and listening (see Does Advanced Tech Mean That Secondary ELL Classes Should Be Radically Restructured?).  Students are still going to be very motivated to develop oral skills, and there are many other reasons and advantages to developing multilingual skills (see The Best Resources For Learning The Advantages To Being Bilingual).

     

OpenClipart-Vectors / Pixabay

This could be a useful video in World History:

 

     

geralt / Pixabay

I’ve somewhat skeptical of the way many so-called “gifted and talented” programs are set-up.

I love the way the International Baccalaureate program runs at my old high school.  Yes, we have IB Diploma candidates who take all IB classes.  But anyone else can opt into taking any IB class, and we specifically recruit students who are not taking any IB courses.

Here are some useful perspectives on these kinds of programs:

Why America’s Debate Over Which Children Are ‘Gifted’ Won’t Go Away www.nytimes.com/2025/10/27/n…

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— Larry Ferlazzo (@larryferlazzo.bsky.social) October 27, 2025 at 6:51 AM

Schools Grapple With a Hard Problem: Who Is Gifted? is from The NY Times.

Our Smartest Little Babies: The many ways we’ve tried to identify gifted 4-year-olds, and how they’ve failed. is from Slate.

I Was Enrolled In A “Gifted” Program As A Kid. Years Later, I Discovered A Dark Side I Never Knew About. is from BuzzFeed.

Public Attitudes Towards Gifted Education is from IAEP.

Young, Gifted, and Black: Inequitable Outcomes of Gifted and Talented Programs is from The Journal of Public and International Affairs.

US Schools Debate Gifted and Talented Programs is from Voice Of America.

Pros and Cons of Gifted Learning Programs in Schools is from Education Corner.

Should We Still Label Children as ‘Gifted’? is from The NY Times Learning Network.

     

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 2016.

As regular readers know, I’m a big fan of students teaching their classmates, and tons of research backs-up the value of that practice (see The Best Posts On Helping Students Teach Their Classmates — Help Me Find More).

This past week was the most recent time I applied this idea in my classes.

I simultaneously teach World History and U.S. History English Language Learner classes (fortunately, this year I have the help of a student teacher – it gets a bit hectic when one is not around). World History students learned about World War I a couple of weeks prior to the U.S. History class getting there. So the World History students divided into pairs to prepare a short unit made-up of a cloze (also known as a “gap-fill” or “fill-in-the-blank” – see The Best Tools For Creating Clozes (Gap-Fills)); a data set, which is a series of short texts that students categorize and supplement with more information they find (see The Best Resources About Inductive Learning & Teaching); and a “Make-and-Break,” a term coined by my friend and mentor Kelly Young to describe a simple sequencing activity.

Here is the entire prep and planning packet used by my World History students, which also included a requirement to prepare teaching “moves” and a lesson plan. The process is easily adaptable to just about any topic or subject area. It’s somewhat similar to a lesson you’ll find in one of my student motivation books.

I gave students four days to prepare the unit, including making a master packet and multiple copies of student hand-outs for when they taught. Here is an example of one of the master packets prepared by a group of students.

Fortunately, we were able to use the library for our three days of teaching. U.S. History students were divided into seven groups, as were the World History students. Each group was assigned to a table, and each day the World History group taught one of the three lessons. At the end of each day, the U.S. History students would do some reading in their textbook for a few minutes while I met with the World History class to review the lesson for the following day.

It all went very well. The U.S. History students are eager now to “turn-the-tables,” and both classes will be using the same process on a historical topic of their choice for part of their final “exam” – a “Genius Hour” version (see The Best Resources For Applying “Fed Ex Days” (Also Known As “Genius Hours”) To Schools).

Here are a few reflective comments by my World History students:

When I teach, I liked to tell what I learn and know about the lesson.

When I teach, I learned be a teacher was not easy so we have to be nice to our teacher.

I learned about to be more patient and pay attention to others.

I like about taught other people what I know. I like the way they focus and hard-working what I’m teaching.

What I liked about this project is that I could help my “students” understand what we were doing.

What I learned about teaching is that it could be hard work if the student does not focus.

Teaching is a responsible profession that you need to carry with you because the future of your students depends on you.

I learned how to explain something to the students.

     

Neal.Fun has been unveiling new, cool, and useful-for-the-classroom tools for years.

The newest project there is called Size Of Life.

It lets you compare the sizes of many different living things, with great non-AI illustrations.

I’m adding it to The Best Web Tools That Show You Objects To Scale.

You might also be interested in The Best Online Tools For Comparing The Physical Sizes Of Different Countries.