Instructify

Looking for a fun tool to use in your elementary reading instruction? Your students will enjoy learning the fundamentals of reading with Starfall.

Starfall is a free interactive reading phonics based web site. It targets grades Pre-K through second grade. On the site you can start at the very beginning with the alphabet and move onto word families and non-fiction reading with biographies. Starfall has games to provide meaningful practice with fundamental reading strategies. The site features activities appropriate for everyone from beginning readers to fluent readers.

In the Alphabet Section students click on the different letters of he alphabet to hear the sound the letter makes and are shown pictures that begin with that sound. The site then provides sorting and matching games to provide practice with the letters. When your students are ready to move on they can visit the Learn to Read section where they can read stories that are broken up into the different word families. In this section the site offers little rhythms students can listen to in order to learn vowel rules such as long vowels and r-controlled vowels. Students can have the site actually sound and blend words of a story as they read along.

As your students develop as readers they can visit the It’s Fun to Read and I’m Reading section for different types of genres of stories such as poems, biographies, tongue twisters, plays, nonfiction, fiction, folk tales, comics, Greek Myths, and Chinese Fables. In addition, your students can participate in interactive activities that correlate with the different holidays we observe throughout the year. In addition to using this site in your classroom, this is a great resource for parents and students to use at home, especially for your students with limited English proficiency. -MONIQUE ST.LOUIS

Starfall

Tired of teaching from the text book? Having a hard time fitting environmental science instruction into the school day? Well EcoKids can change all of that!

EcoKids is a Canadian interactive website created to engage students in environmental activities. This site is full of resources for teachers such as lesson plans, printable resources, and helpful links. It even has specifically designed lessons for ESL (English as a Second Language) students using the different environmental themes. Teachers can access information on Wildlife, Climate Change, Energy, The North, Waste, Land Use, and Earth Day to initiate any environmental or science lesson, or provided a great follow up to an end-of-unit study. This site even has a Fact of the Day that teachers can use to initiate classroom discussions or writing activities about the environment. Looking for an environmental project for your classroom or school? You can visit different links on the site that show different types of environmental projects students and schools are involved in for ideas.

Students can access the site and engage in games to practice what they have learned in the different areas of Wildlife, Climate Change, Energy, the North Pole, and Land Use. The games integrate the environmental themes with reading, math, science, problem solving, and social studies. Students can work on their writing skills by responding to questions posted periodically on the site, or commenting on the blog. -MONIQUE ST.LOUIS

EcoKids

Related Stuff:

EEK! – Environmental Education for Kids is Nothing to be Afraid of

Join the Environmental Kids Club

Environmental Arithmetic: Rainforest Maths

Crack The BioDaVersity Code

FEMA for Kids

Does Anybody Know Exactly Who Can Prevent Forest Fires?

When I was not sure which path my career would go, I very seriously considered teaching English in Japan. The salary seemed fine, but I was more interested in getting some exposure to a completely new world. Because of extenuating circumstances that aren’t worth getting into here, I opted to remain a patriot for the time being. Nonetheless, I scoured the Web and found plenty of resources available to answer my questions about where to begin planning my travels abroad to share my English skills.

First, here is a great series of posts by blogger NomadicMatt. He’s broken his knowledge and expertise of teaching abroad into five parts, which covers everything from job types to specific places to teach and what to expect in various countries. There is also plenty of information on what is required of teachers planning to go overseas to teach:

All countries require that you be a native speaker. This means from the UK, US, Canada, Australia, or New Zealand. While some countries will hire Filipinos, they typically prefer Western employees.You will also need a bachelor’s degree from a 4 year accredited university. It doesn’t matter what your degree is in. Whether you have a degree in biochemistry to English to yoga doesn’t matter so long as you have a university degree. A four year degree is a MUST in the higher end countries like Korea and Japan.

These posts have lots of great information if you’ve already talked yourself into going, but it might be helpful to hear another side of the story, too. Read this post, about “The Ugly” side of teaching in Japan. It sheds a little bit of light on some of the aspects of over-the-pond tutelage that they won’t tell you about in the brochure. Also, Mottekaero jDonuts begs the question Is English Teaching Worth It? - JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

Teaching English Abroad pt 1
Teaching English Abroad pt 2
Teaching English Abroad pt 3
Teaching English Abroad pt 4
Teaching English Abroad pt 5
Teaching English in Japan: The Ugly
Is English Teaching Worth It?

Photo credit: jmurawski on Flickr)

Students with special needs or disabilities present a bevy of challenges for teachers. In the age of the interweb, though, you can find all sorts of resources for special needs education. The nice folks at Teaching Tips.com have assembled a big list of them in The Ultimate Guide to Special Needs Teaching. Here you’ll find more than a hundred sites and resources for students who are blind, deaf, autistic, physically handicapped, terminally ill, and most other afflictions imaginable. They also list ESL resources, as teaching special needs students who also don’t speak English can create a whole new set of challenges, but these can probably be used by anyone teaching students learning English as a second language. However special your students’ needs are, you can probably find a way to meet them on this list. -BILL FERRIS

The Ultimate Guide to Special Needs Teaching: 100+ Resources and Links

Related Stuff:

Free Stuff: Resources for SEN Teachers

Give your foreign language students some extra ammunition. No, I don’t mean teach them obscure French curse words. I’m talking about powerful lessons and practice that can supplement the great stuff you’re already teaching in class. They can get it with LingQ.

LingQ lets students sign up for free lessons in the language of their choice (language include Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Swedish). If you’re teaching ESL, they can also study English (or any other language) in their native tongue. In the assignments, if they see a word they don’t know, they can highlight it and hit the LingQ button. LingQ will define it and create a flashcard for later review.

Students will also get a progress snapshot, which keeps track of benchmarks like how many words they’ve learned, the number of hours spent listening to lessons or speaking, etc. They’ll also get a list of Priority LingQs, which are the 25 most important words they should learn at whatever skill level they’re at. Students can review Priority LingQs by clicking on the the word to view the definition, or display them as flash cards.The free account lets students have five active assignments at any given time.

You can pay extra for more active assignments at once, plus points you can use for personal tutoring, though if they heard about LingQ from you, they’ve already got a live-and-in-person language guru. Still, students can get an awful lot of LingQ for free. The only place with more free knowledge is in your classroom -BILL FERRIS

LingQ

Related Stuff:
Mango: Rhymes with Lingo (Sort Of)
Q’est Que C’est LiveMocha
¿Como se dice Podcast? ESL Pod
Escuchen la One Semester of Spanish Love Song

Welcome to your romantic and eerily educentric Valentine’s Day date. But will it end in love, tears, or possibly food poisoning from an undercooked Valentine’s dinner? These kind educators were gracious enough to share their Valentine’s Day experiences:

Dinner and a Movie: Benjamin Baxter at On the Tenure Track invites you to a live recreation of Saving Private Ryan in his own classroom.

Dining by Candlelight: Larry Ferlazzo at In Practice and Eric at Teachers Call say teachers should include more modern means of illuminating young minds.

Set the Mood with Music: Alvaro at SharpBrains says musical training stimulates the brain. Meanwhile, Creating Lifelong Learners tells you how to make the most of your iPod in class.

Send a Valentine’s Card: Ms. Cornelius says principals who care, trust and lead by example are sooo her type.

Like Romeo and Juliet, Minus the Suicide: The Bard Blog knows there’s no better way to woo someone than with poetry. Learn how to read Shakespearean verse like a true Romeo.

Even More Poetry: Eduwonkette has the same idea. Send your Valentine a funny poem.

On a Budget: American Consumer News has tips on how to get great books for cheap. Speaking of books, Money Blue Book talks about a few things you didn’t know your library could do.

On a Budget, Part II: Uncle Joe’s Leadership Blog tells parents and students how to get a free college education. And Thursday Bram at Wise Bread tells students where to shop when they have to start buying their own textbooks.

Propagating the Species: GrrlScientist at Living the Scientific Life has the skinny on a guide to teaching evolutionary theory.

Lovers’ Quarrel: Mr. Walker, The English Teacher, prompts a heated discussion on tracking.

Kiss and Make Up: Resolve conflicts with colleagues by employing these strategies, courtesy of Pat at Successful Teaching.

Share a Few Laughs: Scenes from The Battleground pokes fun at the idea of blaming the victim in education.

Spend Some Time with Your Kids: TutorFi’s Colleen Palat asks, “Does My Child Need a Tutor?“If so, not to worry. The kid can still excel in school.

Find a Special Someone where you Least Expect It: Joanne Jacobs dishes on Principal Shimon Waronker, a Hasidic Jew, ignoring potential culture shock to turn around a prominently black and Hispanic school.

Watch the Sunrise: Circle Time “Lead From The Start” discusses teaching with both sides of the brain to usher in a new tomorrow in student learning.

Remembering the Way We Were: The Tempered Radical’s Bill Ferriter asked beginning teachers to remind older colleagues they’re still learning how to do this job.

Stand by Your Man (or Woman): Nancy Flanagan, a Teacher in a Strange Land, sticks up for teachers in the face of claims that the professions isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Get Some Alone Time: Dana at Principled Discovery doesn’t like the idea of the federal government butting in and bossing around local schools.

Remembering it’s the Thought that Counts: Like many parents reared on New Math, NYC Educator struggles to help his daughter at math. But he’s a dear for trying.

Fending off Suitors: Ms_Teacher isn’t interested in ETS’ insultingly low wages.

Dumped: To MasterPapers.com and CustomEssays.co.uk - We both knew this was coming. Selling essays to students is just wrong, wrong, wrong. And your advice on essay writing is pure fluff. I don’t think we should see each other anymore.

Photo Credit: Candy hearts at cryptogram.com.

Virtual Field Trips offers a bundle of web excursions - perfect if you want to break the ennui of concrete walls without actually having to go through the rigamarole of leaving school grounds. The trips are simply step-by-step web seminars designed to educate and fulfill the needs of taking an actual field trip without having to keep everyone in a single file line. There are several subject areas here to explore, including fine arts, science, foreign language, social studies and technology. Each subject has about thirty or so activities and lessons, complete with pictures and links to outside resources.

It’s no substitute for a real field trip, but if your class is tired of that trip to the farm where someone will inevitably lose a retainer or fall in the mud, you might stay indoors once in a while and get all the info from this site without any of the fuss. You can also suggest and create your own virtual field trip so that other teachers can benefit from your expertise. One of my favorite aspects of the site is that all of the lessons are consistent in design and flow, so there isn’t any need to re-program your brain to teach more than one of these lessons. The design isn’t the most aesthetically pleasing thing on the web, but hey, the content is great. –JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

Virtual Field Trips

I love my word processor. It’s fast, convenient, and comes with one of the great boons to mankind, the spell checker. Maybe my over-reliance on a computerized dictionary is why I never went farther in my Spanish classes. All that technology, and it still couldn’t tell me when I’d made a typo. But now, foreign language students can ensure their spelling is sublime with Orangoo.

Orangoo is simplicity itself. Just paste your text into the text box, select from one of two dozen supported languages like Spanish, English, Russian, Italian, Turkish, Danish, and lots more (sorry Latin). Then hit the “Check spelling” link. Misspelled words will be highlighted, and Orangoo will suggest words from its dictionary. Pretty much like your standard spell-check, except a lot more versatile. If you’re technically inclined, Orangoo’s code is open-source, so feel free to install it in your own Web applications.

Aren’t you glad you now know about Orangoo? For that matter, aren’t you glad I didn’t write, “Orangoo glad”? –BILL FERRIS

Every so often, the Instructify staff combs through all the discussions on ask.metafilter.com looking for topics relevant to teachers, so you don’t have to. Here are some of the most interesting questions we’ve found recently:

1. A fairly new (2 years experience) teacher now teaching 1st-graders finds that kids are lethargic, often barely able to keep awake, and hardly respond to her. Are there any great books/articles she should be reading?
2. How do I control a crowd of unruly teenagers?
3. What are some wacky, interesting, ambitious, and unique science projects for 6-to-8-year-olds?
4. Which online tools best simulate reading aloud to a young ESL student?

Got a question that you’d like to ask the metafilter community? Leave us a comment and we’ll ask for you.

I’ve always loved hearing the rich tones of people speaking their native tongue. Probably because my high school Spanish class was so full of students (myself included) torturing words and botching the accent. Back then, they equipped us with a cassette tape so we could hear the language spoken correctly.

It’s too bad sites like Mango weren’t around then. Mango is a site featuring several free language learning courses, each loaded with digital audio and flash animation that highlights the pronunciation of every word. Select from languages such as Spanish, French, Italian, Greek, Russian, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Brazilian Portuguese, and German. There are also courses in English for speakers of these other languages, so it could be very helpful if you’re an ESL teacher. –BILL FERRIS

Mango

Why read when you can be read to? You’ll think Stephen Hawking is your personal assistant when you download ReadPlease, a free program that reads text on your computer to you in a (somewhat) realistic human voice.

A text-to-speech reader can be invaluable to you and your students. Struggling readers can follow along as ReadPlease highlights words as it speaks. Use ReadPlease as a proofreading tool–writing mistakes are never so glaring as when you hear them out loud. Have your English as a Second Language students use ReadPlease to help them comprehend a lesson, or download a Spanish voice to help you finally get through Don Quixote in the original Spanish. You can even multitask by having ReadPlease read your favorite blog (say, this one) to you while you spruce up your classroom.

ReadPlease has an adjustable speaking rate, and is fully compatible with all Microsoft voices. You can pay more for more voices, customizable pronunciations, and the ability to save text to an .mp3 file, but the free version should be useful enough for most users.

Unfortunately, ReadPlease won’t work with coveted voice fonts for Bobcat Goldthwait, Gilbert Gottfried and Fran Drescher. –BILL FERRIS

ReadPlease