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

The New York Times has just published America, One Line At a Time:

The United States was written into being. Now, 250 years after the Declaration of Independence, we look at six sentences that shaped the American story — taken from a founding document, an incendiary speech, a classic autobiography, an inaugural address, a protest song and a baseball cap.

I think highlighting sentences and examining them can be very useful in the classroom – with both students and teachers choosing them.

And, as regular readers know, I also publish a regular “Sentences of the Week.”

I’m adding this info to:

The Best “Lists Of Lists” Of Influential People, Events & Ideas

The Best Resources For Helping Teach About The 250th Anniversary Of The American Revolution

     

Alexandra_Koch / Pixabay

The third Sunday in June is Father’s Day in the U.S.

You might be interested in The Best Father’s Day Sites.

     

Inside the latest global research on school cellphone bans from The Hechinger Report provides a good summary of recent research on the topic.

I do find it interesting that a fair number of people who don’t work in schools look at the research showing that it’s not a huge help, but then say it’s still a good thing.  I, and I’m sure practically all teachers, agree about it being a good thing no matter what the actual research says.

I wish all those people who don’t work in schools would also support other efforts that might have mixed research behind them, like smaller class sizes and teaching about a growth mindset, but that most teachers are also behind.

I also wish those same folks would acknowledge more often that most elements that affect student academic achievement are outside of school grounds, and do something about them, too….

I’m adding this info to The Best Posts On Student Cellphone Use In Class — Please Contribute More.

     

There’s no question that developing English conversational skills is critical for our ELL students.

However, for our Beginning Students who are being parachuted into predominantly English proficient content classes, being able to use increasingly sophisticated simultaneous translation tools so they can understand what their teachers and classmates are saying will be even more important now as schools are closing down Newcomers classes because of reduced numbers.   Yes, in an ideal world, content teachers will work hard at making their content more accessible because that helps everybody, but some won’t.

In addition, these translation tools make teacher/parent/guardian conversations more accessible.  For critical ones, schools still need to hire interpreters.  But for most run-of-the-mill talks, these tools work great.

Today, Google unveiled a huge upgrade to their Live Translate feature, including on their Google Translate app.  And it can be used for phone conversations, too!

I’m adding this info to THE BEST RESOURCES TO HELP ELL STUDENTS WITH SIMULTANEOUS TRANSLATION IN THE CLASSROOM.

     

TheDigitalArtist / Pixabay

Though I still think my favorite AI resistant strategy for essay writing is to have students do everything in class, I am impressed with how National History Day is dealing with it.

NHD is a national contest where students submit essays.

I first learned about their AI strategy from a post by Stephen Fitzpatrick, who examined several national writing competitions and how they handled AI.

Here is how he summarized what NHD does:

NHD built something practical – a process paper, an annotated bibliography, and an interview – a pedagogical methodology that was never designed for AI but turned out to be perfectly suited to it.

You can learn more about what they looks like in practice at Stephen’s blog post, and from NHD’s Get Started on Your Project.

They also have an excellent AI Guidance For Students infographic.

I’m adding this info to The “Best” Strategies For Creating AI-Resistant Assignments.