EduTecher Reflections

EduTech

Something I haven’t looked into very much yet is ESL students. One website I found on EduTecher was Breaking News English. This provides simple articles each day that provide very in-depth lesson plans for ESL students. It provides pre-reading activities that deal with ideas and words. It help student understand words that might be more difficult and understand them better. It will also help prepare them to understand the article. It then has worksheets ands activities to fill out during/after reading. It gives suggestions for discussions among students. Then it gives options for homework and extension. It can be the lesson plan for the day or part of the day. They also have many lessons that are based on themes. The style of the lesson is very similar for all the articles, but there are so many options it should be easy to vary or alter.
Another resource I had heard of but not explored is Books Should Be Free. It is an excellent resource to find classic books free. This can be an excellent resource for people who simply enjoy audiobooks or for people who don’t have time to read. In the classroom this could be extremely helpful for students who need some help reading—for whatever reason. The website is easy to navigate and downloading is simple. The only draw back is the books available are older, but they have “the classics” that are often read in high school. Probably most of the books would be too difficult to use with elementary or middle school kids—though there are some suitable books. And for a website giving away books, they have a large selection.
FunnelBrain is a website that allows students and teachers to create flashcards about any subject. These can be used for the obvious study methods—vocab words, plot details, characters. Anyone with an account has access to the note cards created by others, so you might just have to add a few to an existing deck, instead of creating all new ones. Students and teachers can also create quizzes either for practice or for real testing. The cool part is all of this website is all these resources can be shared with a study group. Study groups can create flashcards, quizzes, slideshows and blogs. It is a resource that encourages cooperative learning and preparation.