Group items tagged

"Students love to write fiction, and the short story is a good way to get them going. This page outlines a quickie lesson plan for writing a short story using the 5-way story starter, which plunges the reader (and the writer) into the action quickly."

A great example of a clearly defined lesson in guided reading and thinking in an historical context (Ghandi v. Ho Chi Minh as protest leaders). Ms. Duvoor models how to think like a historian as you read original documents.

This is a great site to teach adult and high school learners more about how to use the web and sift false info from true. Something like a WebQuest, but with varied levels of understanding implicit in the lesson plans and activities.

A helpful guide to using Wikipedia and other resources for beginning researcher-students. Also mentions EducationWorld and the use of search engines.

Includes a list of useful links to help teach students digital literacy search skills.

Webinar with dozens of ideas for using online tools to teach young learners writing. Offered at the 2012 EVO. Shelly Terrell offers free webinars every Friday at 21:00 GMT. go to tinyurl.com/ELTLinks to see a list of recent offerings. Recordings are also available for this free online professional development series.

This web resource is for teachers of high beginning and intermediate writing courses and intermediate ESL learners. The resource provides 8 units that 1) teach about paragraph structure and paragraph elements: topic sentence, supporting sentences, and concluding sentence 2) introduce transition words and coherence in a paragraph 3) provide the opportunity to learn about and practice basic writing skills such as making an outline and staying on topic. Clear explanations are supported by examples; therefore, teacher can use this resource for class preparation, and ESL learners can use it as additional material to learn about paragraph writing. Practice activities provided by the website are not interactive; however, most of the assessment tasks have answer keys. In addition, each unit provides lesson in a PDF format that can be used by a teacher as a handout. -- From Lena Shvidko For ESL K-12 learners, but would be useful for adults as well. Focuses on the paragraph, rather than the essay, so makes a good beginning set of lessons.

"Drawing and recording your voice is not an easy task. What I've discovered is that once you start drawing, and your focus shifts to the image, there are few barriers to speaking. "The tool I'd like to share today is EDUCREATIONS (http://www.educreastions.com). I haven't explored it to its full potential but what I've seen so far is good enough. The free tool allows you use your mouse or your finger (ipad) to draw stick figures while you record your voice. You can also upload an image and draw and record your voice at the same time. Once finished, look at the right side below the twitter and facebook buttons for the URL and the embed code which allows you publish the recording." This tutorial shows how to sign up and use the tool, and there is an example from an EVO participant.

Children create their own commic strip using characters provided from database. Not specifically for ESL/EFL, but is a nice writing activity, and can be in any of several European languages. William Zimmerman has created a page with his handouts from a workshop, "Creating Comic Strips Online to Encourage Writing, Reading and Storytelling," at the TESOL Denver 2009 conference, at http://www.makebeli efscomix. com/How-to- Play/Educators --EHS

"I have begun a new Maths Map in Adelaide focusing on addition ideas that can be seen or referred to on the map. It would be great to have your contributions it is very easy to do:" This doesn't have to be just in Adelaide--use Tom Barrett's ideas for a Google Maths Map in your local area. There are math activities for K-5--it's fun, too!

"iEARN (International Education and Resource Network) is the world's largest non-profit global network that enables teachers and youth to use the Internet and other technologies to collaborate on projects that enhance learning and make a difference in the world."

"Knowitall.org is ETV's educational Web portal, a collection of fun, interactive websites for K-12 students, teachers and parents." Has culture snapshots (eg, Gullah Net), how-tos, history-related features (Road Trip through Civil Rights History). jobs, health, career development resources, etc. K-12 with an emphasis on younger kids.

Called "A collaborative rubric toolkit," the search engine will help you find a pre-created rubric, and has K-6 rubric sam[les for assessing student writing as well.

I have no idea why the name, but the site seems to include dozens of short cartoons and videos about Internet safety, targeted at a range of learners, from grade school through high school. Topics include cyber-bullying, recognizing opinion and fact, and computer security. There are cartoons, self-tests, and interviews with real teens and pre-teens.

Targets readers 13 and up. A community that seeks to build an audience for audiobooks. Listeners can choose to join a conversation about titles. Also has downloadable posters, bookmarks, etc.

"Create a newspaper, ninja text, a clapper board, wizard text, talking squirrels, talking flowers, a cigarette packet, talking tomatoes, talking cats, talking owls" - Fun projects for younger learners or teens, with fairly simple interface. The final project can be downloaded and images placed on your own website or blog.

Link to other blogs that discuss ways to use Facebook--from Kindergarten to college.

Nice description of how to use this tool for education.

Teaching social bookmarking is the topic of this K-12 blog entry. Tells how and why to use Diigo educationally, but can be applied to other, similar applications.

Not well organized, but packed with fun-learning sites that kids can use on their own, or that teachers might want to incorporate into class projects. Not just for summer!