Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites Of The Day For Teaching ELL, ESL, & EFL

The Sacramento area is rapidly becoming a center of the ESL  universe (well, that may be overstating things a bit). 

We have Marian Thacher, who heads up OTAN and all the incredible resources they provide. 

Now Darby Patterson is producing ESL World News Report, a weekly series of articles about current events geared towards English Language Learners.  I’m looking forward to using it with my students.

I’ve placed the link under News on my English Themes for Beginners page.

I’ve recently added three new links to the Citizenship section on my English Themes For Beginners page.

They are:

* The Constitution For Kids, which provides simple explanations of the U.S. Constitution based on students’ reading level.

* Electing A President, which provides a very simple explanation about…electing a President.

* A recent short article from Newsweek about the New Citizenship Test.

REMC Ramblings posted about a site called Color In Motion.  It’s an engaging site where English Language Learners can not only learn the words for colors, but also many words that the different colors symbolize (red for command, etc.).

I’ve placed the link on my Intermediate English page under Vocabulary.

It reminded me of the site I wrote about in my first post that is called Willing To Try.  It’s a really neat site to learn vocabulary.  Just be sure to turn-off your pop-up blocker.

Only2Clicks is a new bookmarking program I just learned about from the eHub blog.

There are obviously a ton of web applications where you can “bookmark” your favorite sites.   In the past I’ve had students in our after-school ESL computer lab bookmark their favorite links out of the 7,000 on my website and then they could share them with other students.  It was an opportunity for them to help build face-to-face relationships and to speak English explaining why they liked the ones they chose.

I like Only2Clicks for this purpose because with this site your page of bookmarks shows not only the names of the sites and their link, but screenshots.  This kind of visual support can be helpful to English Language Learners, and to many others.

I’ve placed the link on my Examples of Student Work page under Student Bookmarks.

WebBiographies is a new site that lets users write about their lives.   With the genealogical craze these days, there are quite a few web applications with similar goals.

However, WebBiographies seems to make it easier than most.  It could probably be used by English Language Learners as an ongoing project to write their autobiography or about an autobiographical incident.

There’s an easy way to make a family tree, and then numerous categories, like work, education, travel, holidays, etc.  You then get your own url.

Of course, with this site, as with many or most sites I highlight in this blog, students can use pen and paper to do as good a job, if not better, as they could do online.   Many of the links on my site just offer a change-of-pace and an opportunity to develop a few computer skills at the same time.

I have the link on my Examples of Student Work page under Student Biographies.

Here’s another link, accessible to English Language Learners, where students can calculate the impact that they have on the environment.  Ecologic Games, through the use of symbols, pictures, and words, is an excellent site.

I have the link on my Science page.  There are other similar activities on different pages.  I try to be somewhat consistent in my categorization, but, as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” 

The Shedd Aquarium has nice site on fish found on a Caribbean Reef.   It’s very visually attractive, and the explanations are in fairly simple English.

I’ve placed the link on my English Themes For Beginners page at the bottom of the Animals category.

I learned about this site through Techlearning, which also has an educational “site of the day” feature, though they aren’t necessarily accessible to English Language Learners.

Bloglines periodically seems to have problems with feeds from Edublogs.  If you subscribe to this blog via Bloglines, and you don’t see a new post each day, the odds are Bloglines is having trouble with the feed.

Then you might want to go directly to this blog (and other Edublogs you might subscribe to) to read the posts directly.

No other RSS readers seem to have this problem.

I don’t really “get” Second Life, and I’m perfectly content in my ignorance.  I do know, though, that some very good second language teachers have found it helpful and blogged about it.

A Movable Life is a new web application that allows you to explore Second Life just through your browser and without having to download anything.  You just don’t have the 3D graphics.

If your feelings about Second Life are like mine, but you find yourself with a little extra time someday,  it might be easy to check it out through this site.

MoodJam is sponsored by Carnegie Mellon University.  Users register, pick a color that they think reflects their mood, then label it and write some comments. 

All of it is compiled and an overall ongoing color graph can be seen on its home page.  You can add your own individual mood daily, and track that as well.  Your moods have their own unique urls that you can post on your blog or online journal.

It’s a little hard to explain, so you might want to check it out for yourself.  I think it might be a good project for English Language Learners to learn and use feelings vocabulary.

I’ve placed the link on my Examples of Student Work page under Student Moods.

I had some initial difficulty registering, but they seem to have fixed that glitch.

I’ve written before about Marvin Marshall’s classroom management system and his writings about it.  It’s a very positive one that is geared towards cultivating self-discipline among students.

He has just begun a blog that I think all classroom teachers would find useful.

I just learned through Paul Hamilton about a Canadian middle school library that has a great collection of links.

One of the nice features of Courtenay Middle School’s links is that they are also labeled by reading level.

Over the next week I’ll be adding some direct links from their collection to the appropriate subject categories on my website.

It’s a very good collection, but be aware that some of them lead to dead links.

I’ve found that having students do science experiments in class are great opportunities to learn content and learn language.  Students can prepare lab sheets, plus have a fun time.  You can see pictures of students performing some of these experiments on various pages of my website.

On my Teacher’s Page I have links to several sites that provide good ideas and clear instructions about science experiments that you can have students do. They’re listed under Science Ideas.

I won’t highlight all of the links here, but I will point out a few I’ve found particularly helpful (especially since I haven’t taken a science class since I was a sophomore in high school!).

The best ones include Try Science, Zoom, Exploritorium Science Snacks, and a new one I’ve just added called Science Made Simple.

I also have a zillion online science activities appropriate for English Language Learners on my Science page.  These links include, but are not limited to, online science experiments.  Doing them in the classroom is hands down so much better but, obviously, it’s not necessarily realistic to do a science experiment everyday.  Having access to these links can be good pre-and-post live science activities, as well as providing opportunities for supported reading of expository text.

Road To Grammar and its companion site, Road to Grammar Jr. , are good places for students who want some reinforcement on English skills.  I never use “drill and kill” in class, and have serious reservations about spending much classtime doing explicit grammar instruction, but some students seem to like doing this kind of work on the computer.

The best part of the site, in my opinion, is a section called Rhyming Words.  It’s a game using audio and text where students have to pick the words that rhyme with a central word.

I’ve placed Road to Grammar on the bottom of the Grammar section on the Intermediate English page.  I’ve placed a direct link to Rhyming Words on the Grammar section of my English For Beginners page.

Today I learned through some ESL listservs about a site called Everyday Life.  It’s sponsored by a North Carolina-based organization called GCF Learn Free.

There are seventeen excellent interactive lessons with images, text, and audio that help English Language Learners with…everyday life.

These lessons include ones about ATMs, jobs applications,  reading a bus map, etc.

You have to register for it, but it only takes seconds.  If you have trouble getting the cursor to write in the boxes, just use the tab key to move down.  That seemed to do the trick.

I’ve placed the link on my English Themes For Beginners under both Favorite Sites and Life Skills.

Evolution…Not Just A Theory Anymore is host to the latest Carnival of Education, which is full of thoughtful posts.

These Carnivals are a great way to get a good overview of the education blogosphere.

Everyscape is a new site that is designing free 3D online tours of cities throughout the United States.  It’s just beginning, so the only city they have online now is San Francisco.

It’s very accessible to English Language Learners by using images and simple English.  I used it in my geography class and students liked the “guided” tour.

I’ve placed the link on my Geography page near the bottom of the Sites That Cover Many Areas section.

Blabberize allows you to upload a picture of a person or animal and record a message that the picture speaks.  The lips on the image move in an exaggerated way as your message is being played.

It’s just another fun way for English Language Learners to practice speaking, and hear what they say.

I’ve placed the link on my Examples of Student Work page under Student Talking Pictures.

It would be great if they add a feature allowing you to access pictures that are on the web, and not just ones that are on your computer.  I’ve sent an email asking if they are planning on adding that capability.  I’ll let readers know how they respond.

(Well, they responded to my question about two minutes after I emailed them.  Here is their response:

“Yes! We did have that in mind. Currently the way we use the site is to do an image search on google and save off the pictures we want to use. But we were thinking that we’d allow for people to search through flickr photos as well and import them in the site. Thanks so much for the suggestion! It’s interesting you mention you’re an ESL teacher because we had another ESL teacher in France who used the site with her students. She had her class read english compositions and give voice to animals. *smiles* Let us know how you use the site and if there are other ways we can make it a better utility for you.”

I can’t expect a better answer than that!)

I posted a couple of weeks ago about a field trip we were going to take to the Leonardo Da Vinci exhibition.  It showcased models of inventions created from his designs.

If you’re interested, I’ve placed a short slideshow of that visit on my World History page.

I’ve posted previously about many of the links I have for student activities related to health (Learning About Health and Brush Those Teeth!).

I also have some very helpful links to teachers if they want to plan health-related lessons.   You can find these on my Teacher’s Page under Health Lessons — ESL.

One link you’ll find there is to a series of Picture Stories around various health issues.  They’ve been developed by Kate Singleton in Virginia.  I’ve used them in my classes, and they’ve worked very well.

Another link is the Health and Literacy Special Collection from World Education.   This offers a series of excellent health education resources appropriate for English Language Learners.