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"Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day…" - 5 new articles
Six Ways To Promote Student Engagement – NOT “Empowerment”(Editor’s note: Today’s post is the first of a few excerpts from our new book, The Better Teacher’s Toolbox, that I’ll be publishing here over the next two months. You can order the book here, and access more free resources from it here).
PEER TUTORING AND MENTORINGStudents teaching their classmates or younger students is an activity that has been key to our teaching. One way we’ve done this is in our English Language Learner classes where older students receive credit for working each day as peer tutors assisting new immigrants in their academic classes. Extensive research, and our own experience, documents how this kind of tutoring helps both the tutor and the person being tutored. But peer tutoring doesn’t have to be that formalized. If students complete their work early in our class, we often give them a choice—they can read, do extra credit, or help another student who is still working on the assignment. Nine times out of ten, students will choose to work as a tutor, and we emphasize that if they want to be able to continue being a tutor, they can’t just hang out with their buddy—they need to help someone who needs it. We monitor as best we can while circulating throughout the room, and have found that, at most, a very occasional reminder might be needed. Another version of peer tutoring is when an English Language Learner is in a class primarily composed of English-proficient students, a teacher might pair them with a classmate, sometimes referred to as a “buddy,” who might or might not speak the ELL student’s primary language. This combination, only done with the permission of both parties, can help everybody. Yet another kind of peer tutoring is a variation of the Dialogue Journal idea. Traditionally, dialogue journals are used as back-and-forth conversations between students and teachers. In English Language Learner classes, they’re often used for student writing practice. Instead of the teacher explicitly correcting the student’s incorrect grammar or spelling, they “recast” their mistakes. For example, if an ELL student writes, “We go to San Francisco last week,” the teacher might write, “It sounds exciting that you went to San Francisco last week” in their reply. The idea of direct corrections might make students feel more intimidated by the prospect of writing. The peer tutoring part of this comes into play when, instead of having the dialogue journals between ELL students and us, they are between them and another class of English-proficient students or more advanced ELLs. Then it’s the responsibility of those “sibling classes” to engage in dialogues and recasts with the ELL students. And, believe us, our ELL students tend to be much more motivated to write to an authentic audience of another student instead of us. And, once again, the students in the sibling class get grammar practice, too! Of course, in all of these situations, we provide training and guidance to students about tutoring expectations, including the difference between giving the answers and guiding their “tutees” to finding them on their own with assistance, the importance of positive affirmation over harsh critique, and technology-assisted and non-tech assisted strategies for communicating across languages. Demonstrating good examples and bad examples are very effective forms of training. In one situation, Larry used the good example of saying “How can we do this better?” and the bad example of saying, “You did this wrong.” It worked well for my students, but remember what we discussed in Chapter One and use examples that work with the relationship you have with your students. Peer mentoring, though somewhat similar to peer tutoring, is a different kettle of fish. In peer mentoring, older students are paired with younger ones to provide regular emotional support. For example, as mentioned earlier, Larry’s IB Theory of Knowledge classes would go to a different ninth-grade class once a week and walk around the school with them for ten minutes. Mentors received training on providing support, and each week asked their mentees about their highs and lows from the previous seven days (and was there anything they could have done to make their low a little better). In addition, they were given a focus question each time, like “What is your goal for the next month?” and “What is your biggest worry right now?” We also encourage students to do a home-based version of this kind of tutoring/mentoring. We offer extra credit to students who sit with younger siblings or cousins and read story books to them. They just have to write down the name of the book or story they read, how long it took, and how their sibling/cousin reacted to them. As with practically everything we do, we first provide an example of how to read to a child. TEACHING OTHERSThis “teaching others” strategy is different from the one-on-one or one-on-two peer tutoring and peer mentoring discussed in the previous section. In this context, “teaching others” means organized activities where the entire class is, in some way or form, teaching everybody else. In effect, everybody is a teacher. This could take several forms. One is the use of the well-known jigsaw technique. In this strategy, which education researcher John Hattie offers as one the most effective available to teachers, an individual student or a small group is tasked with teaching smaller parts of a bigger concept or story (different parts of a historical figure’s biography, separate sections of a larger article, certain elements of a scientific concept) to their classmates, either in small groups or to the entire class. Another is structured peer review. Research has shown that peer review tends to be very effective for enhancing student learning.We’ve used it primarily in student writing, with classmates providing structured (and supportive!) feedback, and when practicing for presentations. Here, as in most of our class activities, we often provide a written guide and share in writing and verbally both helpful and not-so-helpful peer feedback. And a third version is having individual students or small groups instruct the entire class. In this activity, usually done near the end of the school year, we let small student groups choose any topic within reason and they have to develop an instructional unit utilizing the primary teaching strategies we’ve used during the school year (inductive teaching [see Chapter 3: Differentiated Teaching], Read Alouds, games for reinforcement, etc.). Though they have to create a full unit, they usually just actually teach one lesson because of time constraints. Most teachers are familiar with the “Gradual Release of Responsibility” model—I do, We do, You do. We think that, when logistically possible, the more educators can add a fourth step, “Teach It,” the better for everyone.
     U.S. Constitution Day Is On September 17th – Here Are Teaching & Learning Resources
Federal legislation requires schools in the United States to offer lessons related to the U.S. Constitution on U.S. Constitution Day — September 17th of each year. You might be interested in The Best Sites For Learning About The Constitution Of The United States.  Google Now Makes It Easier To Create Songs With AI – Here’s How I Might Use It With ELLs Pexels / Pixabay
Google just announced that you can use its AI Gemin tool to create music. This is different from its Flow Music tool, which I wrote about when they were calling it something else (see Google Just Created A New AI Tool That Is Perfect For Teachers Of ELL Newcomers). I, like many others, have periodically had fun playing with Suno, the AI app for making songs. It seems to me that Google’s new integration is likely to stomp on their business. I think Google’s new feature might be helpful to ELL teachers who, like me, are not musically-inclined, but would like to create songs to help our students learn English. It could also be used by learners themselves who want to create their own songs. I asked Gemini to create a song teaching the differences between have, has and had for English Language Learners. In seconds in came up with this: Not great, but not bad for a few seconds of work. Here are the lyrics: 🎵 “Has, Have, and Had” (The Grammar Song)(Verse 1 – Present Tense: Have) When we talk about right now, For I, you, we, and they, We use the word have Every single day!
(Chorus)
(Verse 2 – Present Tense: Has) When it’s he, she, or it, Or a single person’s name, Switch have to has— It’s the present tense game!
(Verse 3 – Past Tense: Had) Now look to the past, Yesterday or last year, For every single pronoun, The rule is simple and clear! Just use had for I, you, he, or they, When action is finished and washed away!
(Outro)
I’m adding this info to: The Best Music Websites For Learning English The Best Online Sites For Creating Music THE BEST POSTS ABOUT USING ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE WITH ELLS ADDENDUM: You are far more ambitious than I am, you can also look at this example of how an instructor used an AI tool as much part of a much more involved lesson.  Google Translate Announced Improvements Today – It Just Keeps Getting Better
Here’s today’s announcement from Google: Google Translate’s live translate brings natural, near-real time audio translations to 70+ languages. Today, we’re introducing two updates to make translations even more seamless. First, because more than a third of live translation sessions now last longer than five minutes, Android users can now keep live translations running in the background. This is perfect for longer sessions where you need to multitask or want to lock your phone screen. iOS support is coming soon. Second, iOS users worldwide can now get live translations directly through their phone’s earpiece. (The feature is already available on Android.) When you don’t have headphones handy, just hold your phone to your ear. It’s great for catching announcements at noisy airports or following along on crowded tours.
I’m adding this info to THE BEST RESOURCES TO HELP ELL STUDENTS WITH SIMULTANEOUS TRANSLATION IN THE CLASSROOM.  Classroom Instruction Resources Of The Week
Each week, I publish a post or two containing three or four particularly useful resources on classroom instruction, and you can see them all here. You can also see all my “Best” lists on instructional strategies here. Here are this week’s picks:
I’m adding these next two posts to The Best Posts & Articles About Providing Students With Choices:
How to Really Prepare Students for State Tests is from Edutopia. I’m adding it to Best Posts On How To Prepare For Standardized Tests (And Why They’re Bad).
Are We Teaching Too Much Phonics? is from Timothy Shanahan.  More Recent Articles
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