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

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Bruce Springsteen teamed up with the ACLU to make this great add to support birthright citizenship.

I’m adding it to The Best Resources For Teaching & Learning About The 14th Amendment.

You might be interested in previous posts about Springsteen:

Amazing Bruce Springsteen Video On The Importance Of Practice

Springsteen Releases Song About Minneapolis That’s Great (For The Classroom, Too) – Here’s Audio & Lyrics

 

     

We recently finished reviewing the galley proofs for out upcoming book, The Better Teacher’s Toolbox, and that will be out in July.

And, now, we’ve just signed a contract to write a third edition of The ESL/ELL Teacher’s Survival Guide!

It’s going to be chockful of new and useful resources and ideas.  The second edition came out before Artificial Intelligence, so you can be sure we’ll have a lot to say about that in this edition,  and most of those who contributed guest chapters in that edition (some of the best minds in English Learner teaching today) have committed to revise them.

We’ll also certainly be talking about the impact of Trump administration policies, and what that means practically for schools, teachers, districts, and, of course, students going forward.  Of course, we’ll be talking about what the science of reading means for ELLs, too, along with lots of other things.

Over 35,000 copies of the first two editions have been purchased, so it’s been pretty popular.  We’re confident that educators will be pleased with the third edition!

     

Speak Free offers several new English speaking exercises each day, primarily, though not exclusively, focused on AI evaluation of pronunciation.

It can be a little wonky at times, but still works relatively well.

I’m adding it to:

THE BEST SITES FOR ONLINE PRONUNCIATION FEEDBACK – DO YOU KNOW OTHERS?

The Most Useful Free Or VERY Low Cost AI Tools For Supporting English Language Learners

     

There are quite a few sites where students can do authentic historical or science research – and learn at the same time.

You can find many of them at THE BEST SITES WHERE STUDENTS CAN PARTICIPATE IN CITIZEN SCIENCE PROJECTS and The Best Sites Where Students Can Transcribe Historical Texts.

I just learned about another one.  It’s called Star Sailors.

There, students can help scientists identify comets, asteroids and planets, among many other options.

     

The Power of Affirmation at Work is a Harvard Business Review article that has tons of applications to the classroom.

It offers lots of ideas on how to use affirmation though, interestingly, the author only describes how managers can use it.

In the classroom, teachers can use the same advice and be affirming to students.  But the author misses that an affirming culture can be created by providing a framework so that everyone can be more affirming.

I described how I did a version of this (borrowing it from another teacher) at I’M USING THIS GREAT NEW VIDEO TO INTRODUCE A CLOSING “APPRECIATION, APOLOGY, AHA!” ACTIVITY.

If I was still teaching, I’d take ideas from the HBR article and turn them into sentence-starters that students would use a couple of days each week near the end of the class, like:

_______ made a difference for me today by ___________________.

Today, I noticed that ____________________ did/helped ____________________.

When _______________ did __________________, they made me feel ________________.

But, before I did that, I’d probably take a short excerpt from the article and turn it into a class Read Aloud.

I’m adding this info to The Best Questions To Use For Class Closing Activities — What Are Yours?