Group items tagged

This page shows how a student website can be created and maintained. The topic is "digital health and wellness" or "digital citizenship" but can be revised and improvised on for other topics. The plan shows how teams are created, expectations for individuals within the team, grading, tasks, etc. Great lesson planning for a problem-based learning experience. T/H to J. Brueck on Diigo in Education.

"Succeeding with Science is a website built around fun and interactive educational games, activities, and videos to help students learn and love science. The student activities are sorted by age range from 4-7 years up to 16+ and there is also a teachers section. Each activity come with PDF lesson plans and support materials as well. Science teachers at all levels should find this site to be useful way to support their curriculum." Thanks to Sam Sheridan

You can put a question up on the website and then students reply with their webcam. It's a nice tool for oral language practice, digital storytelling, debates, etc. R. Stannard shows how to use the tool and suggestions for lesson plans. He notes that you will need a fairly fast internet connection. The site allows you to keep statistics on who answered.

Great resources for planned and executing project-based learning in your school: "According to Edutopia, studies have shown that students who use project-based learning remember the material much longer and have healthier attitudes toward education. "Project-based learning is based on the idea that students learn best by tackling and solving real world problems. Students are much more engaged with the subject matter and look to the teacher as more of a coach who guides them through their own reflections and ideas. Project-based learning often involves students working in pairs or groups, thus facilitating a deeper understanding of cooperation and communication in solving problems."

Kids may be inspired to learn more -- reading, writing, planning, creativity -- when inspired by lessons in how to make games. The site has a weekly "feature" and lots of tutorials.

A short lesson plan -- how to do a role-play in class. This is a nice model that can be revised and used for other situational learning role-plays.

A lesson plan for writing dialogue/short play online at a cartoon creation site.\n\n"Lesser controlled computer room writing activity. This activity can be adapted to the level and grammar area of your choice.\n\nLevel: Intermediate & above\n\nLocation: Computer room\n\nTopic: Writing direct speech in a cartoon\n\nLanguage Focus: Direct speech, present tenses etc\n\nTime: 30 minutes"

" Mind maps are content- and purpose-agnostic. Use them for anything that requires thinking, planning, organizing, or writing." This is the third of three articles (linked here) ab out using mind-mapping productively. Great article for teaching writing. It's not all about "outlines."

"HP Teacher Experience Exchange, is a free site providing teacher discussion forums, lesson plans and many other teacher resources. Learn more." Sponsored by Hewlett-Packard.

If you want to write an awesome descriptive essay, the worst thing you could do is get straight to the writing process. This is not an easy assignment to undertake; you need to go through a lot of planning and research before you can settle for a topic and tackle it from a unique perspective.

"Providing your students with a public audience is not only a critical part of the project-based learning process, but it's also a great strategy for building authenticity into assignments to create work that matters. We often leverage our students' parents and guardians in this process because 1) they are easily accessible, and 2) they are our partners in their children's learning plans. Why not then continue and build this partnership in PBL? John Larmer wrote a great blog about how to build parent support for PBL, and one of the best ways he mentions is to keep them involved in the PBL project you launch in your classroom. Here are some strategies to consider as you leverage parents for your next PBL project."

The Quizlet Blog is a good source, not just for using Quizlet, but for lesson plan ideas like this one for Black History Month -- or any time of the year that race might come up as a topic. And when doesn't it?

Conversation starters

Conversation starters and short reading passages for efl/esl classes

This has great videos on how to teach a wide variety of subjects, as well as how to manage students' behavior in class, set up collaborations, assessment, and esp. for US teachers, the common core standards. Very useful for teacher training, though not specifically oriented toward ESL/EFL.