Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... - 8 new articles

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Here are the latest updates for woowonenature@gmail.com "Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day..." - 8 new articles Vine Video: “History Of France In 6 Seconds” – Could Be A Model For Class Assignment “Initiative Fatigue,” High School Exit Exams & The Common Core Disappointing NY Times Article On Teachers & “A Sharing Economy” “Q & A Collections: Instructional Strategies” A Writing & Speaking Activity For Welcoming Back ELLs Video: “He knows no greater sadness than the end of a book” I’ve Been Busy! New Ed Week Columns, New Student Interactives, New BAM! Radio Shows & A New Book! Four Links About The World’s Different Cultures More Recent Articles Search Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... Prior Mailing Archive Vine Video: “History Of France In 6 Seconds” – Could Be A Model For Class Assignment Joe Dale shared this Vine video on Twitter this morning. It seems to me it’s a fun model for a potential Social Studies classroom assignment that could be done with animations (or not) and on Vine or Instagram or YouTube. These two lists could be useful if you want to give it a try: The Best Ways For Students To Create Online Animations The Best Resources For Learning To Use The Video Apps "Vine" & Instagram There may be problems with the embed code. If it’s not showing up, you can view it directly on Vine here.      • Email to a friend • Article Search • View comments • Track comments • “Initiative Fatigue,” High School Exit Exams & The Common Core © 2008 Tony Bowden, Flickr | CC-BY-SA | via Wylio Educator Douglas B. Reeves writes: The Law of Initiative Fatigue states that when the number of initiatives increases while time, resources, and emotional energy are constant, then each new initiative—no matter how well conceived or well intentioned—will receive fewer minutes, dollars, and ounces of emotional energy than its predecessors. I’ve only taught for twelve years, and I’ve seen lots of “initiatives” come-and-go in that time. I can only imagine how many much more veteran educators have seen! And I’m sure this kind of Initiative Fatigue is an additional reasons for this finding: Study Finds No Surprise: Only Between 30 & 40% Of Lessons Are Common Core-Aligned. But here’s what is really prompting me to write this post: I have been a long-time opponent of high school exit exams – especially for English Language Learners. California made a mistake of introducing them in 2006 and, as a result, thousands of students who passed all the other graduation requirements have had their lives made much more difficult because they didn’t pass one/the other/or both of the English and Math “CAHSEE” tests. A lot of teacher and student energy went into preparing students to pass the test, including a whole lot of test prep. And that is time that could have been much better spent in instruction designed to encourage life-long learning. I am very happy to see that the State of California is poised to eliminate that requirement. In fact, the state appears to be ready to recognize its original error and waive CAHSEE passage for all students retroactively. In other words, if any student didn’t receive a diploma only because they didn’t pass the tests, they would immediately be considered a high school graduate. I will be very happy if and when the state legislature approves this change next week. And it will bring much joy to thousands of students. And I’m very pleased that it appears that our lawmakers are willing to recognize their errors and try to make up for them. I just hope that that politicians (and private foundations!) here in California and elsewhere use this debacle as a lesson, and start engaging and consulting teachers working in the classroom – and our unions – before they create future new initiatives. Should I be hopeful, or am I being naive?      • Email to a friend • Article Search • View comments • Track comments • Disappointing NY Times Article On Teachers & “A Sharing Economy” © 2013 Rhys A., Flickr | CC-BY | via Wylio A Sharing Economy Where Teachers Win is the headline of a pretty disappointing article in The New York Times today. It takes an extremely narrow view of the idea of teacher sharing by focusing entirely on TeachersPayTeachers.com, and makes no mention of the thousands of teachers who share resources for free on social media and on sites listed at The Best Places To Find Free (And Good) Lesson Plans On The Internet. It then re-emphasized this focus on money by defining “teacherpreneur” as a teacher who is selling their lesson plans, instead of the teacher/leader definition that is used more broadly (see The Best Resources On Being A Teacherpreneur). I’ve got nothing against teachers selling their wares online (though it is disappointing to see sites like Teachers Pay Teachers not doing more to prevent plagiarized materials from being sold there) or through published books (of course, I’ve written eight of them). I just would have expected The Times to offer a less narrow view of the “teachers helping teachers” universe.      • Email to a friend • Article Search • View comments • Track comments • “Q & A Collections: Instructional Strategies” Q & A Collections: Instructional Strategies is the title of my latest Education Week Teacher column. It contains all my posts on Instructional Strategies from the past four years – in one place! Here’s an excerpt from one of them:      • Email to a friend • Article Search • View comments • Track comments • A Writing & Speaking Activity For Welcoming Back ELLs © 2012 Tax Credits, Flickr | CC-BY | via Wylio Last week, I shared a writing and speaking exercise I was going to use with my English Language Learners on the first day of school – see Here's A Cloze (Gap-Fill) Essay My ELL Students Will Complete On The First Day Of School. I used it and the activity went very well. In fact, I expanded it further and had some students pick a couple of sentences and they recorded what they wrote. Then, Zdenek Rotrekl, a English teacher in the Czech Republic, asked me if he could use the activity and expand it on his website, Engames. His site has lots of great multimedia activities for English Language Learners. Of course, I said yes, and I think you’ll be interested in seeing how he’s made it an even better exercise. And, while you’re there, be sure to check out his other creations!      • Email to a friend • Article Search • View comments • Track comments • Video: “He knows no greater sadness than the end of a book” I’m adding this video to The Best Fun Videos About Books & Reading:        • Email to a friend • Article Search • View comments • Track comments • I’ve Been Busy! New Ed Week Columns, New Student Interactives, New BAM! Radio Shows & A New Book! © 2014 Emilien ETIENNE, Flickr | CC-BY | via Wylio You can be looking for lots of new helpful resources I’ve been developing: I’m beginning my fifth year as an Education Week teacher advice columnist, and will be kicking-off the new school year with the first “question-of-the-week” in a few days. I’ve been posting thematic compilations of previous posts during the summer. I’ll also start taping new weekly BAM! Radio shows this week, and you can see lists and links to all my previous ones at All My BAM Radio Shows – Linked With Descriptions. New weekly student interactives, along with writing prompts, for English Language Learners will start appearing at The New York Times Learning Network in about eight days. This will be my fourth year there, and you can see my previous posts at All My NY Times Posts For English Language Learners – Linked With Descriptions. Thankfully, Katie Hull Sypnieski and I have just completed our 110,000 word opus on Navigating The Common Core With English Language Learners. It will be published by Jossey-Bass in March, 2016. If you’re interested, you can access a ton of free resources from my previous seven books here. The new school year began here last Thursday, so I’ll be writing lots of new posts over the next ten months about my ELL and IB TOK classes. In addition, it looks like I’ll be teaching a college class of students in a teacher credential program, so I suspect that will be a source of new reflections, too. All in all, it’s going to be a busy year!      • Email to a friend • Article Search • View comments • Track comments • Four Links About The World’s Different Cultures © 2008 ricardo, Flickr | CC-BY | via Wylio Here are three new additions to The Best Sites For Learning About The World's Different Cultures: Photos show the views from people's windows around the world is from The Washington Post.            • Email to a friend • Article Search • View comments • Track comments • More Recent Articles Classroom Instruction Resources Of The Week This Week's "Round-Up" Of Useful Posts & Articles On Ed Policy Issues

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