TEACHING TOOLS RESOURCE LIST (as of 11.22.2011)
Contributors - NYU Graduate Teacher CandidatesSP11: Marie Bareille, Nikki Kowalski, Christopher Nazzaro, their Seminar Instructor, Laura Grulich, and other sources: , Elizabeth Hanson-Smith,Judy O'Loughlin..
BLOG & WIKI SITES
Box of Tricks
This is an educational technology blog, where Teachers share lesson plans and ideas for using internet-available materials.
Using Google to create your own web page (blog)
Non Native English Speakers in TESOL
PBS
PBS Wide Angle Blog
PBS Need to Know Blog
Teaching with TED
RSA Animes
There are fewer of them than the TED lectures, they are given in many cases by non-native speakers, and they often cover quite abstract topics (Zizek, first thing on a Monday morning, any takers? No?) But all of this can be either a good or bad thing depending on what class you're teaching. Best used with high-intermediate and advanced students.
A wiki of software for educators by educators
Wikispaces
CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT/ORGANIZATION
Edmodo
A gratis micro-blogging site that allows teachers and students to connect through a private class blog in which audio and video can be embedded in text. It can work as a homework site and instructional notes site and an individual class oriented social media site for students. Teachers can use it to maintain class materials and lesson plans, grade records, and, of course, rosters.
Schoolbinder
Another gratis class-organizer blogspot. It is more structured and elaborate than edmodo and provides and interface area for all aspects of a class to be “filed” and organized and presented electronically. These online organizers are particularly good for maintaining a daily record of what has been taught and retaining copies of tests, plans, handouts, etc.
CARTOONS, GAMES & QUIZZES
MakeBeliefsComix.com
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The site offers 80 different characters, blank talk and thought balloons to be filled in with text, story prompts and printables, and accepts text in English, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese and Latin. Comics created can be printed and emailed.
The educational online comic strip site also has added another feature that enables users to post their comic strips on their very own Facebook walls to share with friends and family.
Create your own cartoons—by teacher or by students. Good language practice and motivating to younger adults.
You have to subscribe to Ed Helper but it isn't too expensive particularly to get access to puzzle creation and worksheet templates that you can customize for your own lessons.
A site for creating flashcards--good for customized vocabulary, includes an audio file for each word. To make your own, I think you have to sign up and perhaps pay for a membership. But, freely available are wordlists that others have created.
GRAMMAR
Grammar and Writing
This is a good site for general academic writing advice that is bent toward ESL.
Maintained by Nik Peachey. His teacher blog entries contain lessons that really workin a classroom.
An online writing textbook fromfaculty at Capital Community College in Hartford CT. It also has interactive exercises and quizzes.
This is the UofIL writers workshop similar to Owl at Purdue; it has teacher as well as student resources and is suitable for ESL as well as ENS students.
ESL from the Ivy League.
University of Northern Iowa writers’ handbook with a "page" for ESL students.
Bergen Community College pages for ESL learners and Teachers.
MEDIA & TECHNOLOGY
Computers in Action!
Computers in Action! is an online guide to help adult ESOL teachers integrate the basics of computer use in their instruction. Teachers are offered a list of ready-made, stand-alone lessons that they can use to help learners develop computer skills while learning English. Lessons are listed with their computer skills focus (i.e., files and folders, hardware, manipulating font variables) and language objectives (i.e., sentence sequencing, writing dialogue, question formation) to facilitate selection. Computer and educational considerations and advice are discussed in an introduction to teachers. (This guide is the result of a Curriculum Frameworks Project funded by a grant from the Massachusetts Department of Education. Information on a print guide for learners, Learning Computers, Speaking English, is also available on the site.)
NYSED.gov Education Ed Tech Educational Design and Technology
Internet Safety Program Evaluation Rubric Acceptable Use Policies (AUP) Internet Safety Resources for Teachers
Film & Video
Flickr
Flickr is an image and video hostingwebsite, web services suite, and online community platform. The service is widely used by bloggers as a photo repository.[2] As of November 2008[update], it claims to host more than 3 billion images.[3][4][5]
Flickr – The Common Project
16 sets of photos including images from modern dance, 19th century, cinema, and pictures of New York. Including documention of the NYPL’s history “NYPL: Work with Schools”
Karin's ESL PartyLand Teaching with Film & Video
Netting the Net
YouTube
First-hand accounts of current events, hobbies and interests, as well as the quirky and unusual. No transcripts.
You Tube ESL Teaching Videos:
Teaching Tips- Keeping a JournalEFL - Teaching in Korea
Teaching Pronunciation
Culture Shock
Shaking Hands Video
What is American Culture?
Maintaining Classroom Discipline
Print (newspapers, magazines, direct mail, etc.)
Using Newspapers in the ESL Literacy Classroom. ERIC Digest.
English Club.com
Photography
Nations Illustrated has 8,000 images from around the world, and also provides an E-Card feature.
Smithsonian Images provides access to that incredible collection, and also allows you to use any of them as E-Cards.
The University of Victoria Teaching Clipart Gallery has three thousand images specifically designed for language-teaching.
Radio
BBC Radio
An extremely rich cite for learning English. It is constantly updated. It is especially useful if you are looking for lesson ideas on topical subjects. It is also very strong on grammar.
Voice of America Special English
VOA Special English broadcasts
World English - The one-stop resource for the English language and more ...
Television (cable, network, satellite, etc.)
ColorinColorado.org
Using Children's Television to Learn Literacy and Language
PBS.ORG
Scholastic
LESSON WRITING
Lesson Planning and Support
The Internet TESOL Journal is an electronic monthly journal website consisting of practitioner contributions: scholarly articles of theory and observation; lesson plans and materials. It is Well-organized by topic.
This fellow has prepared stories and playlet scripts for doing reading and role-playing. I have found some interesting things for adult classes here.
The granddaddy of 'em all: Dave's ESL Café with lessons as well as practice activities and interactives.
A website with materials for teachers and learners of ESL. Some stuff is gratis, some may require registration, and some, payment.
LISTENING AND SPEAKING
Julian Treasure, 5 Ways to Listen better
Phonetics, Univ of Ohio
Pronunciation Skills and Activities
For ELLs at the University of Ohio, pages offer a variety of activities and links to activities targeting basic pronunciation issues. Although highly de-contextualized, the activities do provide targeted practice with production of specific sounds and with listening discrimination, as well as traditional exercises such as minimal pairs. Most of the activities require plug- ins that enable audio, but the plug- ins tend to be free downloads, and links for them are provided.
Voxpop.com
This is a voice-recording site, which hosts discussion groups. A teacher can establish a class discussion site with a private link for only her/his own students. It’s great for letting Ss hear themselves and for practicing pronunciation and speaking at home and allows for a genuine linear “discussion.”
Students can use this similar site to create dialogs:
English Listening Lounge
Thirty recordings of ordinary English speakers, accompanied by questions, are available at no charge. For a monthly fee, learners can register and have access to many more files and an e- mail discussion feature. RealAudio Player® (a free download) is needed to use this site. Although the pages do not have graphics of speakers or topics, they do provide a good opportunity to hear short recorded passages.
READING AND WRITING
Reading
Read Write and Think
This is the reading and writing segment of Nat. Council of Teachers of English. It has good theory matter and lessons for HS and for ESL students that can be adjusted up for adults.
Vocabulary/Reading
This is only one site by Dr. Robert Marzano
Student practice exercises in vocabulary.
Good worksheets here for basic phoneme and morpheme teaching.
Linguistic Data Consortium. Technical site, for corpora analysis.
THE corpus of American English by Davies at BYU. Complex to use, but very rich in sentences, sources, collates, and frequency ranking by a variety of criteria.
The Vocabulary-Rich Classroom: Modeling Sophisticated Word
Use to Promote Word Consciousness and Vocabulary Growth, Judy O'Loughlin
Top 5K words, POSs. Can be used to choose appropriate academic teaching vocabulary.
A good resource for concordances, collations, frequency lists, text-to-speech programs and reading resources on a page created at St. Michael’s College, Colchester, VT
Just the best overall content and last-minute lesson planning source.
Good for high intermediate and advanced content.
Educational game site. Very cool. Accessible to intermediate reading skill level and up.
Writing
sentence-levelwriting. The exercises on run-on sentences and fragments, for example,have lots of challenging vocabulary and funny situations. The exercisesprovide immediate feedback with cool (or yucky) "cyber prizes."One caution: exercises are only useful for advanced-level studentswho can understand the vocabulary and appreciate the humor.
targeted audience - teachers and intermediate and advanced ESL students.This rich website has a variety ofresourcesfor writing students, covering the following topics (to name a few):
General writing process, Grammar, punctuation, and spelling, Rhetoric, ESLresources, Business writing and resume, Subject specific writing, Creative writing, Research, citation, and documentation
resource from the University of Victoria offers a set of advisory files primarily on writing about literature.It has basic information about types of essays, essay organization, basic steps in writing process, types and function of paragraphs.The website also offers guidelines on writing clear sentences, and introduces rhetorical and literary terms.
targeted audience - high intermediate and advanced ESL learners, and in particular TOEFL test takers.This website focuses on teaching how to write an argumentative and opinion essay.It provides information on argumentative essay structure, teaches about two different essay layouts and supports them with examples, explicitly describes steps of argumentative essay writing process, gives a number of model argumentative essays, demonstrates two sides of an argument, and has 70 argumentative essay topics, and 155 TOEFL writing topics.
targeted audience - teachers of academic writing courses and college students, but it can also be used by advanced ESL learners to improve their academic writing skills.The website provides rich information on academic writing including types of academic writing (i.e. book reports, annotated bibliography, academic proposals, admission letters), academic writing techniques (i.e. paraphrasing, summarizing), style and editing, using sources, researching techniques, and some common ESL writing issues.Most sections are supported by PDF versions that teachers can use as handouts.
Web resource for teachers of high beginning and intermediate writing courses and intermediate ESL learners.Resource provides 8 units:1) teach 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, staying on topic.Clear explanations 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.
This software helps learners develop their basic paragraph writing skills. Students learn how to write an effective paragraph -- developed by reason, detail, sequence, example, and cause and effect. The full version of the software provides 15 interactive writing activities on a variety of topics.Choosing from a menu of topics, students are guided to generate ideas, write a topic sentence, body of a paragraph, and a conclusion.Each interactive activity includes the following steps: pre-writing, writing, organizing, revising, rewriting, and publishing. The software is a great tool for assessment and self-assessment, for individual practice, and may be especially useful in classes where a teacher is not able to provide personal attention to individual student.
some nice worksheets for essay planning and organization.
Email for ESL Students
This is a tool for creating word clouds from text supplied. Type text into a box and the software will create the clouds in a variety of shapes and fonts. This is a good way to establish visual interest in a text and students can be urged to do it with their own writing.
STANDARDS
NYSED Adult Standards
nysed.gov
Adult Education Resource Guide and Learning Standards
NYSTESOL Standards
ELA Standards Shifting the Focus to the Common Core
TESOL – Standards for ESL/EFL Teachers of Adults Framework (2008)
SOFTWARE RESOURCES
Call.org
Select >Resources from the tabs at the top, and choose >Software Resources.
Diigo
A virtual software list for CALL IS at Diigo. You can explore the links there, and online programs include all you have mentioned. Check out the tag "online_lessons":
Deborah Healy, Univ of Oregon
A set of references that I put together for the US Department of State about creating a computer lab, with software and logistical suggestions, as well as links to other sites with information.
STUDENT PRACTICE
This is an excellent site for students to practice with interactive worksheets.
THE best free place to study vocabulary words as flashcards--see them and hear them--the setup is computer adjusted for difficulty--gets easier or harder as you do the words.
Another great place to sent students to practice grammar on interactive worksheets.
More student practice activities.
Well-known site with worksheets, lesson plans, interactives. Materials available for both teachers and students and indexed or tagged for level, age group and topics.
TEACHER EDUCATION AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Education Week
edweek.org
TESOL
Non Native English Speakers in TESOL
New York State TESOL
The Center for Applied Linguistics
The Center for Adult English Language Acquisition.
Course evaluation suggestions
Teacher Magazine
teachermagazine.org
University of Oregon
USEFUL TEXTS
Beers, Kylene.( 2003). When Kids Can’t Read: What Teachers Can Do. Heinemann.
Excellent practical text for interventions.
Orion, G. (1997) Pronouncing American English, 2d ed. Heinle & Heinle. Good for high intermediates and up.
Dale, P. and Poms, L. (2005) English Pronunciation Made Simple. Useful for introductory through intermediate; good basic text.
Ur, P. (2005). Grammar Practice Activities. CambridgeUniversity Press.
Azar, B. (2003). Fundamentals of English Grammar. Pearson.
Camhi. P. (2004) Getting it Right: An Editing Text for ESL/EFL Students, 2d ed. Kendall/Hunt.
WORLD WIDE WEB RESOURCES
About.com's Guide to English as a Second Language
Hosted by an English teacher in Tuscany, the site includes quizzes, vocabulary study pages, interactive polls, chat rooms, pen pal information, and a weekly e- mail newsletter. It also has pages of resources for Spanish speakers learning English and for teachers of English. Recommended for intermediate to advanced English language learners.
Activities for ESL Students
Numerous quizzes and puzzles for learners to complete and check on their own. Learners
can choose from a variety of activities dealing with vocabulary building, phrasal verbs,
slang, idioms, homonyms, and specific grammar points, such as articles and prepositions.
The site was developed by the The Internet TESL Journal.
CAELA/Center for Adult English Language Acquisition
Instructional tools
City Family Magazine Online
Originally a print publication targeting immigrants learning English, City Family Magazine is now online. Readers will find articles on a diversity of topics of interest to adults such as health, employment, money, fashion, travel, recipes, and relationships. There are links to translation tools and a dictionary available, as well as opportunities to post comments and engage in discussions with other readers. Most text tends to be at high beginning to intermediate reading levels.
Dave's ESL Cafe
Has many resources for ESL learners (as well as for teachers). In addition to chat rooms,
discussion forums, and message boards, there are pages devoted to idioms, phrasal verbs,
and grammar and other hints for the day, English language programs worldwide, and
quizzes on a variety of topics.
Ello English
(demo)
What is elllo? ELLLO is a free online listening resource of over 1,000 listening activities designed especially for ESL and EFL students and teachers. Most listening activities include images, an interactive quiz, transcript of the audio and downloadable MP3. Learn more about elllo...
English For All
Funded by the United States Department of Education, English For All is a free Web-based multimedia system for adults learning English as a second language. Adult learners may use this online or CD-based program in conjunction with a class or independently. Learners view videos and work with supplementary language learning materials available from the Web site. Some of the language used on the Web site may be challenging for beginning and low-intermediate learners.