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

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How to Teach With No Resources is a great post from The Barefoot TEFL Teacher.

It’s so good, in fact, that if I was still teaching high school I’d print it out and have it handy on my desk.

It’s filled with simple, and effective, instructional ideas that require … no resources and next-to-no prep.

I’m adding it to THE BEST RESOURCES FOR ZERO-PREP ELL LESSONS.

     

There have been a variety of “ed in review” posts over the past couple of weeks.

Here are my choices for the best:

The Best and Worst Education News of 2025 is my own Ed Week post.

12 Charts That Defined Education in 2025 is from The 74.

The 10 Most Significant Education Studies of 2025 is from Edutopia.

The most popular TED Talks of 2025 — and what’s next for 2026 is from TED.

In a year that shook the foundations of education research, these 10 stories resonated in 2025 is from The Hechinger Report.

Jealousy List: A Shout-Out to 19 Education Stories We Admired in 2025 is from The 74.

Your year in teaching, wrapped is from The OER Project.

The 10 Most Commented-On Writing Prompts of 2025 is from The NY Times Learning Network.

The Opinions EdWeek Readers Care About: The Year’s 10 Most-Read is from Ed Week.

The Education Wisdom Our Readers Keep Revisiting: Top 10 is from Ed Week.  Six of these are posts from my Ed Week blog!

     

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New Year’s will be coming-up soon!

You might be interested in The Best Sites For Learning About New Year Celebrations.

     

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.

I just came back from taking my grandkids to see the new Disney movie “Zootopia.”

Though I agree with other reviewers who say the movie’s message on race and prejudice is a bit muddled, I also have to say that I think it provides an excellent perspective on “grit.”

At the beginning, he movie’s star, Judy the rabbit,  exemplifies the sterotypical belief in grit – she will try, try, try and succeed, and won’t let anything stop her. As the film goes on, however, she finds that her individual grit isn’t enough — she has to deal with additional challenges she faces from the attitudes and prejudices of society at large, and needs advice and assistance from others to ultimately succeed.

This story reflects what I wrote in my Education Week Teacher column titled ‘It’s Time to Change the Conversation About Grit’:

researchers David Yeager, Gregory Walton and Geoffrey L. Cohen have defined [it] as “the fuller formula for success: effort + strategies + help from others.”

The movie’s message is particularly timely in light of very recent cautions from Carol Dweck (Carol Dweck Makes Strongest Statement Yet On Growth Mindset Misuse) and Angela Duckworth (NY Times Reports On Social Emotional Learning Run Amok) about the dangers of viewing Social Emotional Learning as panaceas.

Even with those concerns, I have to admit I also did like the Shakira theme song for the movie, “Try Everything,” and see how that could be used as part of an SEL lesson.

Here are the lyrics to the song, along with four videos:

* The official music video to the movie

* A “lyrics video” of the song

* Two official trailers to the movie

You might also be interested in:

Video: “Better Call Saul” Scene Illustrates The Limitations Of Grit

The Best Video Clips Demonstrating “Grit” – Help Me Find More

 

 

 

     

The Best and Worst Education News of 2025 is the headline of one of my recent Education Week columns.

It’s my annual “round-up” of what happened in education during the year.