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"The Frayer Model is a vocabulary development tool. In contrast with a straight definition, the model helps to develop a better understanding of complex concepts by having students identify not just what something is, but what something is not." This is an example of a worksheet, which I wasn't able to download in the other citation. The sheet is quite straightforward, and looks useful, insofar as vocabulary can be taught through direct method. Good for important concepts, class discussion, and work with definitions.

"Many schools are currently using Forms as a way to easily and quickly record data from teacher observations. The advantage is of using a Google Form is that it compiles all the data into a spreadsheet which allows school leaders to quickly and easily see trends in the school's classrooms." Suggests that the administrator can also use the Google spreadsheet to collect data on what teachers are doing in the school as a whole. Video shows how to go to the Template and create your own by copying the document. Links to template, which has an auto-mail feature.

This looks like a cute app for the very young. You upload pictures and arrange them in a set, create one or more questions for each, which you record. The user taps to hear the questions and taps a place on the picture to answer it. TinyTap also has a market with free and purchaseable games already made. Lots of potential for ESL vocabulary practice, since once you get by the interface it doesn't look childish at all.

This looks like a great invention. as you are watching a video, take notes and the timeline codes will automatically link your notes to the portion of the video you were watching. The note tool will embed your video from YouTube, Khan academy, or any of a number of sites, with the note-taking apparatus beside the video. Students might take notes of you or another lecturer in a flipped environment, and then compare each other's notes for review. appears to be free so far.

This is a collection of texts and accompanying images created by users that you can use for ESL/EFL activities. Have students create and add their own digital stories connected to a theme or short story they have searched for and read. You can also search by a key word, such as a grammatical term they are studying (e.g., "used to"). Thanks to C. arena.

Offers songs in multiple European languages with text lyrics which you can manipulate as cloze activities. Lots of student control to repeat lines of a song, click on tab to show an answer to a missing lyric, etc. Students ign-up to keep a record of songs and the tasks completed. Provides 3 different levels of activity; e.g., "expert" is total cloze. R. Stannard has a training video on using this site at

This article has a nice video that shows a teacher in class explaining copyright and fair use to students using a document linked from the article. I tend to disagree that teachers making multiple copies for classroom use is a "fair use," however. always check what the author says, and use Creative Commons if you don't want your ideas ripped off without permission.

"Watch interesting, authentic videos. Learn the vocabulary that matters to you. Speak and get instant pronunciation feedback." Stills from videos with descriptive voice over, or clips, with captioning. Record your own voice and get a score. Users can also slow down the descriptive speech with a button click. Looks like a great practice device, with a wide variety of voices and accents.

A greAt plAce for students to reAd About And study cultures of the world. A contributor to the Blog is CArlA ArenA. This would Also be A good wAy for students to enter A project About their own region of the world. The site is orgAnized by Culture, Topics, And Blogs About culture.

Put in a Web address and lingro turns all the words into clickable links to a dictionary. You can hear the word read out. Further it remembers the words and lets you review and study them. So far 11 languages, including Dutch and Chinese. a fabulous tool for students--better than a dictionary. See Russell Stannard's training video at

Similar to Bubblr, but this app produces a book-lik presentation, rather than a comic strip format. You add two pictures per open book page, and add text as a subtitle. Good for projects with students' own photos uploaded to Flickr, or pictures found in a search. (See Russell Stannard's description and tutorial at http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/newBubblr/index.html.)

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.

R. Byrne: "Wideo is a nice tool for creating Common Craft-style videos. You can create animated videos on Wideo by dragging and dropping clipart and text in storyboard frames. You set the position and animation sequence for each element in each storyboard frame. When you have completed your storyboards Wideo generates a video for you. "This week Wideo added a new feature that allows you to build interactive buttons into each frame of your video. The buttons can be hyperlinked to any webpage that you like. When people are watching your video they can click the buttons to be taken to the webpage you want them to land on. For example, clicking the buttons in the video embedded below will take you to the website of my favorite animal rescue organizations." Older students could, of course, create videos themselves to instruct others. The new interactive button might also lead to a quiz on Quizlet or in Google Docs, for example.

This link gives you 3 sources including the title: Visual Writing Prompts, The Literacy Shed, and Video Writing Prompts. Some can be browsed by genre, grade, or subject area. and some have the prompts written directly on each image. The title site includes a prompt explanation, an explanation of any relevant vocabulary and language, and a convenient one-click download button. I always used a set of images, culled over years of browsing magazines and newpapers, as writing prompts for various types of writing. Sites with prompts built-in can be an advantage for the busy teacher, or a disadvantage if you don't want to search for something that precisely fits your assignment goals. You can also have students create their own portfolio of images and prompts to share with other writers. T/H to Nick LaFave.

"To summarize, then, we might say that (1) the skill of guessing from context may not be as helpful in the real world as previously imagined, (2) it may not be as useful in acquiring vocabulary items as previously imagined. When a teacher is asked by a student for the meaning of a word in a text, the reflex response of 'try to work it out from the context' may also not be as helpful as previously imagined. Translations and / or dictionary advice may well, at times, be more appropriate." an interesting view of an activity that has been considered significant by many reading teachers. More research is needed! article by Phillip J Kerr.

"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."

"Programming is magic. It's the ability to create things from pure imagination. We started CodeCombat to give learners the feeling of wizardly power at their fingertips by using typed code. "as it turns out, that enables them to learn faster too. WaY faster. It's like having a conversation instead of reading a manual. We want to bring that conversation to every school and to every student, because everyone should have the chance to learn the magic of programming. "CodeCombat is a community project,with hundreds of players volunteering to create levels, contribute to our code to add features, fix bugs, playtest, and even translate the game into 50 languages so far. Employees, contributors and the site gain by sharing ideas and pooling effort, as does the open source community in general. The site is built on numerous open source projects, and we are open sourced to give back to the community and provide code-curious players a familiar project to explore and experiment with. anyone can join the CodeCombat community! "

"Google added two fantastic new features to Google Slides. First, Google Slides now has a Q&a feature that lets your audience submit questions to you. Second, Google Slides now has a built-in laser pointer that you can use to call attention to parts of your slides. I've already received some questions about how to use these new features so I made the following short video." t/h R. Byrne This makes Google slides very versatile for online presentations. Check out the how-to video.

This chat room tool might be useful for your classes, or as a backchannel if several teachers are working on a presentation together. The interface can be mounted on your own website, ensuring that students don't wander off. You can easily save a transcript of the chat, and it lets students join from home or other classrooms. T/H to H. Dilatush who let us in EVO know about it.