Group items tagged

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

Free book (pdf) from the British Council, written by Gary Motteram. Probably published early 2012. Has sections on primary education, secondary, and general adult language education, ESP and Business English, EAP, and assessment. Nice examples from real classrooms.

Intriguing interactive image with links to specific articles and ways to create/use materials to meet Common Core Standards for ELA/Literacy.

" The printables encourage writing and thinking in a quick and fun way. A student's efforts to complete the printable can then become the first step in writing longer essays, poems or stories on the same subject. The printables also can be used with students enrolled in literacy and English-As-Second Language (ESL, ESOL) programs and provide an educational resource for teaching language arts." Over 250 printables that can be used for writing prompts.

Links to Nik Peachey's "Developing materials and practices for the digital generation," a webinar presentation for the IATEFL Young Learner SIG. Nik focses on how teacher can combine online tools to encourage students' digital literacy and linguistic skills more autonomously. Both a recording of the presentation (Adobe Connect) and the slides are linked, as well as links to some of his recent informative blog posts.

This is a simple programing language to get very young children into programing without knowing how to read. Might be interesting to experiement with the tool.Directions, lessons, and resources at this site. "ScratchJr will have three components: 1) a developmentally appropriate interface; 2) an embedded library of curricular modules with STEM, math, and literacy content to meet federal and state mandates in early childhood education; and 3) an online resource and community for early childhood educators and parents. "

Haiku Deck is a simple-to-use presentation program that works with both mobile technologies and the Web. R. Byrne gives some example in this blog entry from first and second graders. Related articles talk about how to use Haiku Deck for literacy instruction.

"The Council of the Great City Schools' parent roadmaps in English language arts/literacy provide guidance to parents about what their children will be learning and how they can support that learning in grades K-8. These parent roadmaps for each grade level also provide three-year snapshots showing how selected standards progress from year to year so that students will be college and career ready upon their graduation from high school." These roadmaps should be very useful for teachers as well as parents. Also available at the site in Spanish. Roadmaps are for math and language arts, K-12.

Offers ESL educators ready to use media-rich lesson plans from Northern California Public Broadcasting on a range of useful themes: health, eco-litereacy, immigration, the green economy, financial literacy etc.

"The purpose of this site is to take an extensive list of websites that are considered high quality, reliable, and valuable and organize them in a way that even "non-techy" teachers can utilize them. It took around 10 years to collect these resources, but new ones are found every day. All of these websites have been recommended by other teachers and educational organizations and qualify as "the best". You'll find support for all core curriculum areas. In addition, you will find lesson plans, multimedia, and primary sources to enhance your students' learning environment." by Nadine Norris, a tech specialist for elementary schools near Chicago, IL. Has a wide variety of explanatory pages: tools to use with core content areas, project-based units, rethinking Powerpoint and classroom presentations, a blog highlighting social media, and advice about using digital literacy skills and research skills on the Internet.

"Shawnee High School Language Arts Literacy teacher Kristin Giles came to the ETTC recently to seek out websites to support her research paper unit. Here are some of the places she visited on the World Wide Web:" A list of links to info/advice/help with research skills. Nice way for a teacher to get herself prepped for teaching the research paper.

The Olympic Museum of Heroes is structured around fourt types of hero from different historical periods. Nice for a content-based project on the upcoming games, or generally, to give students an idea of the concept of "the hero" (literature) or how to present information through media (techno-literacy).

"What2Learn is a national award-winning interactive learning solution which provides effective educational resources and revision games. A great tool for students with literacy and learning difficulties such as ADHD. It is also a great resource for high achieving students keen to work independently to get ahead." Teachers can also create games and activities for ESOL.

Education site to promote digital literacy. Allows kids to see how various media work and to try them out. High school oriented, not necessarily ESL/EFL

From the About page:\n\nMy Pop Studio is a creative play experience that strengthens critical thinking skills about television, music, magazines and online media directed at girls. Users select from four behind-the-scenes opportunities to learn more about mass media:\n\n Looks like fun for high school students, and was created by a team at Temple University, School of Communication. Focus is media literacy.\n--EHS

Mark Warschauer's blog has replaced the old emailed Papyrus Newsletter. He now has a team of contributors. Focus is on digital learning and literacy, with an emphasis on the digital divide, new tools, ruminations about the nature of life online.

This site is filled with stories of interest to Adult ESL learners at many levels. Each story has a pre-reading, timed reading and audio component.

This project was designed to create leveled reading selections that are appropriate for and valued by adult learners. These materials, combined with the research-proven strategies of repeated reading and guided oral reading, aid in building learners' fluency and comprehension skills. The materials correspond to Casas 200 - 235. This project helps adults become better readers and more informed consumers, parents, employees, citizens and community members. The focus of these reading selections will be on topics such us: Civics, Employment, Housing, Health, School, Money, and Government. This project is funded in part through an EL/Civics Grant from the MN Dept. of Ed - ABE Division and mini-grant from the Minnesota Literacy Council.

Literacy Partners is a strategy to help students better understand a text, whether in literature, science or social science topics. Reading in pairs with teacher-directed questions and discussing those questions as they answer them together fosters respect among students and helps both partners gain in knowledge. (Sign-in for the Teaching Channel may be required, but it's free and well worth it.)

"Create beautiful page-flipping e-books in minutes. Add text and images. Embed video, audio, ThingLink and more. Share your books with friends and the world."