TheDigitalArtist / Pixabay

I’ve previously posted The Best Videos Illustrating Qualities Of A Successful Language Learner, but have never published a specific “Best” list about what elements might make up a good language learner teacher.

Today’s post is the beginning of one:

Video Of Our ELL Student Panel & Downloadable Hand-Out They Used For Preparation

Three Videos Of English Language Learners Giving Advice To Teachers

What language learners really value in their teachers — the top five qualities – and why is from The Language Gym.

Also, I’ve done a multi-year series at my Education Week column where students – ELLs and English-proficient ones – share their thoughts about good teaching.  See Student Voices.

The point-guard mentality didn’t just make Sam Darnold better. It’s a useful mental trick is an excellent New York Times article.

It reviews evidence showing the advantages of focusing on helping others look good, instead of just yourself – in athletics and in other parts of life.

I see it often on the basketball court.  The guys who are most highly thought of and who everyone wants to play with are the ones with that attitude.

This article could be the basis of a very important classroom lesson, with students sharing their own related experiences.

I’m adding it to The Dangers Of “Zero Sum Thinking” In The World, Including In Schools.

Ten years ago, in another somewhat futile attempt to reduce the backlog of resources I want to share, I began this occasional “Ed Tech Digest” post where I share three or four links I think are particularly useful and related to…ed tech, including some Web 2.0 apps.

You might also be interested in checking out all my edtech resources.

Here are this week’s choices:

Podcast Magic looks like a pretty cool tool.

ScreenFlow Pro is yet another free screen recording tool. I’m adding it to The Best Tools For Making Screencasts.

DeepTime Home is an impressive interactive site telling stories of the Australian aboriginal peoples.  I’m adding it to The Best Sites To Learn About Australia.

I’m adding this video to The Best Resources For Teacher & Student Podcasting:

This is interesting, from Web Curios:

Fairytale Hunt: Ooh, this is fun! A small digital toy made by Lynn Cherny, this is basically a way to explore fairytales by exploring thematic similarities and commonalities between texts; the webpage presents you with a selection of text drawn from a fairy story, and highlighting a part of said text will cause the engine to search for a similar text elsewhere within the fairytale corpus, and take you to it; there’s a light ludic layer applied to this where you can win points and (not real) prizes for finding specific things – mentions of monsters, say, or fruits or animals – and it’s a really nice way both of exploring tropes and themes that occur and recur in fairytale writing, but also of exploring how text embeddings and relational meaning networks, er, work. BONUS FAIRYTALES! Would you like a link to a huge database of classic folklore and mythology texts, with links to more stories and myths from around the world than you could shake a stick at? YES YOU WOULD!

Tama66 / Pixabay

Today is Arbor Day in the United States.

You might be interested in The Best Sites To Learn About Trees.

geralt / Pixabay

I thought readers might, or might not, find this new regular post useful.

Each week, I highlight several sentences, with links to their sources, that I find interesting/concerning/useful.  And they may, or may not, be directly connected to education.  I may also include my own comments or related links.

This regular post will join my other regular ones on teaching ELLs, education policy, Artificial Intelligence, infographics, and Pinterest highlights, not to mention sharing of my regular Education Week posts.

Here are this week’s sentences:

But among public school parents, more than half (57%) said schools are headed in the right direction.

Researchers at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and the University of Arizona estimated that the amount of speaking is declining by about 300 daily words per year.

Tennessee is one of three states where policymakers are currently proposing action to limit undocumented students’ access to a free, public education by challenging tenets of the 1982 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Plyler v. Doe, which granted these students that right.

In an era of misinformation, the brain’s urge to resolve questions as soon as possible can lead us towards flawed conclusions unless we actively engage our critical thinking.

“McMahon has played the role,” he writes, “of a friendly grandmother wielding a hatchet.”

We found only 7% of parents thought their teens were using AI for schoolwork multiple times a week or more, but 27% of teens said they were (itself surely an undercount).

Fear may produce short-term compliance, but it rarely produces sustained excellence.

Immordino-Yang told me that the ultimate goal of any school assignment is not the finished project itself but the experience of having done it—an experience that A.I. tools are intended to abbreviate or obviate.

Majorities of educators indicated on the EdWeek Research Center survey that students’ use of technology for school-related purposes has a negative impact on their social-emotional skills, classroom behavior, and physical and mental health.

The problem there is that those [standardized] tests are anything but objective; the more colleges rely on them, the more the uncredited work of expensive tutors or test prep classes can distort the profile of the incoming class.

“If you ask tobacco companies to help write your school’s policy on cigarettes,” Garrett quipped, “you’re going to end up with guidance on how to smoke responsibly in school.”

But building strong relationships with students remains the most critical teaching skill for Smith, a veteran educator and basketball coach for more than 20 years.

Children from low-income families have roughly $80,000 less invested in their development, well-being, and education relative to their peers from high-income households, according to a new study.

But [AI] falls short of the experience that accompanies real patience: not just material support, but the feeling you are worth someone else’s while.

If policymakers truly want schools to operate more effectively, the conversation shouldn’t start with comparing them to businesses

The resolution asks teachers to “encourage the use of paper and pen assignments” and also contemplates banning student access to YouTube as well as the gaming platforms Roblox and “Fortnite.”

I am a critic of 2 much tech in Ed. However, having columnist begin w/private school vignette & focusing much of your critique on Kahoot like games which r super useful formative assessment tools is not way 2 go——You Can’t Game Your Way to a Real Education www.nytimes.com/2026/04/19/o… gift link

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— Larry Ferlazzo (@larryferlazzo.bsky.social) April 18, 2026 at 10:40 PM

lol in case you are wondering how much they genuinely care about “women’s sports” https://t.co/RzWQxNQLiL

— Catherine Rampell (@crampell) April 22, 2026

“The seemingly inevitable entry of A.I. into K-12 education strikes me as, potentially, another form of cognitive surrender.” —-What Will It Take to Get A.I. Out of Schools? www.newyorker.com/culture/prog…

— Larry Ferlazzo (@larryferlazzo.bsky.social) April 23, 2026 at 8:05 PM

Eight years ago I began this regular feature where I share a few posts and resources from around the Web related to ESL/EFL or to language in general that have caught my attention.

You might also be interested in all my Best lists on teaching ELLs.

Also, check out A Collection Of My Best Resources On Teaching English Language Learners.

In addition, look for our latest book on teaching ELLs, The ELL Teacher’s Toolbox 2.0.

Here are this week’s choices:

How do we integrate newcomers into the class & curriculum when they’re so far behind the language levels of peers who have been here all year? The answer is so simple & intuitive it almost feels too easy…& @EliseWhiteDiaz shares it on the #SeidlitzBlog. https://t.co/UWC8ikyg8m pic.twitter.com/fG1rYhWm7C

— Seidlitz Education (@Seidlitz_Ed) September 25, 2025

ELL students can watch this video and then talk/write about what they saw:

Teaching grammar through listening is from The Language Gym.

Here’s another video ELL students can talk/write about:

He did that on purpose

Wait for it …
pic.twitter.com/RCjCGzdaLe

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) September 28, 2025

Integrating Drama Techniques into Everyday Teaching is from TESL Blog. I’m adding it to The Best Resources On Using Drama In The Classroom.

How Much Is Too Much L1 Use? is from Reflections on Teaching Multilingual Learners. I’m adding it to The Best Resources Explaining Why We Need To Support The Home Language Of ELLs.

ELL students could watch this video and talk/write about what they saw, including what message they think the movie is trying to communicate:

Peer Victimization Among English Learners: The Protective Impact of Dual Language Programs journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3…

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— Paul Bruno (@paul-bruno.com) September 30, 2025 at 4:18 AM

These Maps Reveal Gaps in Special Education, English-Learner Teacher Supply is from Ed Week.

Here’s another video ELL students can watch:

The Secret Ingredient in Listening We Never Teach: Prosody and Chunking is from The Language Gym.

Mohamed_hassan / Pixabay

I often write about research studies from various fields and how they can be applied to the classroom. I write individual posts about ones that I think are especially significant, and will continue to do so. However, so many studies are published that it’s hard to keep up. So I’ve started writing a “round-up” of some of them each week or every other week as a regular feature.

You can see all my “Best” lists related to education research here.

Here are some new useful studies (and related resources):

An example of a finding that I’m not sure we needed a study in order to know it

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— Larry Ferlazzo (@larryferlazzo.bsky.social) October 8, 2025 at 8:23 AM

PERCEPTIONS OF ESL STUDENTS ON THE INTEGRATION OF AI-POWERED TECHNOLOGIES FOR ENHANCING ENGLISH LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY is a study worth checking out.

“four-day school week adoption has an insignificant effect on teacher retention and increased four-day school week prevalence…leads to increased turnover. These overall effects, however, mask important effects on several key components of turnover” www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti…

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— Paul Bruno (@paul-bruno.com) October 12, 2025 at 5:32 AM

THE IMPACT OF TEACHER-STUDENT INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS ON LANGUAGE LEARNING ACHIEVEMENT is from ELTE Journal. I’m adding it to The Best Resources On The Importance Of Building Positive Relationships With Students.

Data from a large, ongoing study of adolescents shows a link between increasing social media use and lower cognition and memory in teens. n.pr/42BJyMB

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— NPR (@npr.org) October 13, 2025 at 8:17 AM

But this study shows that there can be academic spillover benefits from high-quality and well-implemented SEL lessons. A list of them is linked to in my story. (5/5) hechingerreport.org/proof-points…

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— Jill Barshay (@jillbarshay.bsky.social) October 13, 2025 at 8:33 AM

Results from TALIS 2024 The State of Teaching

A new study (not behind a paywall) has come out: Effectiveness of Interactive Teaching Methods in Improving Student Engagement with History and Social Studies.

It’s not a meta-analysis. Instead, it’s based on a “systematic literature review.”  Don’t ask me what the difference is…

The big issue is studies like this about interactive teaching or “active learning” is knowing how they define it.

Here’s the summary of the study, via ChatGPT and doublechecked by me, along with a one-page handout created by ChatGPT:

Based on a close review of the study Effectiveness of Interactive Teaching Methods in Improving Student Engagement with History and Social Studies (Lawal, 2025), here is a clean, study-grounded list of the interactive teaching methods it explicitly recommends and synthesizes evidence for.

I’m grouping them the way the article itself does across the literature review, methods, and results sections.

Interactive Teaching Methods Recommended in the Study

1. Role-Playing

Students take on the roles of historical figures or groups and make decisions within historical contexts.

Used to develop historical empathy, perspective-taking, and contextual understanding

Strong effects on student engagement and discussion quality

Particularly effective for disengaged and lower-achieving students

2. Simulations

Structured reenactments of historical events or processes where students experience consequences of decisions.

Often paired with role-playing

Improves reasoning skills, participation, and understanding of causation

Produces large gains in engagement when sustained over time

3. Structured Debates

Students research historical positions and argue claims using evidence.

Strong impact on critical thinking, argumentation, and historical writing

One of the few interactive methods that also showed gains in subject knowledge

Requires careful preparation and clear structure

4. Collaborative Learning / Group Work

Students work in pairs or small groups to analyze content, solve problems, or construct arguments.

Increases participation, especially for students anxious about whole-class discussion

Particularly beneficial for English language learners and mixed-ability classrooms

Effectiveness depends on task design and teacher guidance

5. Collaborative Argumentation

Students jointly build, critique, and refine historical arguments.

Promotes deeper conceptual understanding and reasoning

Learning often continues beyond the lesson as students reflect independently

Often paired with debate or inquiry activities

6. Inquiry-Based Learning

Students investigate historical questions by examining evidence rather than receiving information directly.

Emphasizes questioning, evidence evaluation, and interpretation

Produces strong gains in historical thinking skills

Moderate but consistent effects on engagement

7. Use of Primary Historical Sources

Students analyze original documents, artifacts, images, or records.

Improves source evaluation, contextualization, and critical analysis

Most effective when embedded in inquiry-based lessons

Helps students understand how historical knowledge is constructed

8. Project-Based Learning (PBL)

Extended projects requiring research, collaboration, and presentation.

Supports sustained engagement over longer periods

Outcomes depend heavily on duration and teacher training

Often combined with inquiry and collaborative work

9. Class Discussions (Structured & Whole-Class)

Guided discussions that follow small-group or inquiry activities.

Reinforces learning through reflection and synthesis

Improves quality of student responses and historical reasoning

Most effective after students have prepared ideas collaboratively

10. Problem-Based Learning

Students work through historical or civic problems requiring analysis and decision-making.

Encourages application of knowledge rather than memorization

Supports autonomy and motivation

Benefits increase when used consistently over time

Big Takeaway from the Study

The review concludes that interactive teaching is most effective when:

Used consistently for 8+ weeks

Supported by teacher training and coaching

Aligned with historical thinking goals, not just engagement

MemoryCatcher / Pixabay

Believe it or not, it’s World Penguin Day.

You’ll find learning resources, including some great videos, at The Best Sites For Learning About Penguins.

OpenClipart-Vectors / Pixabay

The United Nations has declared April 29th to be the “Day of Remembrance for all Victims of Chemical Warfare.”

You might be interested in The Best Resources For Learning & Teaching About About The Dangers & History Of Chemical Weapons.

In Teaching By Science, a post reviewed 44 meta-analyses on math instruction.

You can see all of its results here.

The image above shows the strategies it suggests showed a “very large effect.”

I didn’t even understand what two of them were – use of heuristics and 7E Instructional Model NS.

So I looked them up.

Here’s what I found about heuristics:

At its most basic, a heuristic is “a short cut in problem solving; it is a rule for reducing the number of mental operations (or information-processing steps) taken to solve a problem” (Gray, 1994, p. 395).

Sometimes heuristics are taught by teachers, sometimes students come across them on their own. It is important to note that heuristics are general strategies that a student can use on their own to help identify and solve a math problem (Gersten et al., 2009).

Peer tutoring, a simplification of the problem by the teacher, or the use of math implements (such as a calculator or ruler) are not considered heuristics. Neither are algorithms – for example, the slope intercept equation (y = mx+b) is not considered a heuristic (Siew, Hedberg, & Lioe, 2005).

A general heuristic might be something like (Gersten et al., 2009):

Read the problem.
Highlight the key words.
Solve the problems.
Check your work.
Other examples might include using a rule of thumb, an educated guess, an intuitive judgement, stereotyping, or common sense. The most basic heuristic is considered to be trial and error (“Heuristics”, 2014).

Here’s what I learned about the 7E Instructional Model NS:

The 7 Es stand for the following. Elicit, Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, Extend and Evaluate. The following explanation is my take on the 7Es that has been adapted from the BSCS 5E Engage, explore, explain, elaborate, evaluate.

There are some concerns about the use of meta-analyses, but they can still be very useful.  If I was a math instructor, I’d carefully review the entire list.

Education Week has just published two articles summarizing results of their survey on English Language Learner teaching in the United States:

How Schools Serve English Learners Today, in Charts

What Educators Say English Learners Need Most

And every ELL educator in the U.S. will want to read them.

Not because it will share any information that will be new to them.

None of the results will be any surprise at all to any ELL teacher.

But they will certainly feel like their perspectives are being validated. And, more importantly, their sharing the articles with administrators and colleagues might prompt them to make some changes in how they look at and work with ELLs.

I’m adding this info to:

The Best Ways To Keep-Up With Current ELL/ESL/EFL News & Research

The Best Posts On Looking At Our Students Through The Lens Of Assets & Not Deficits (because of the quote at the top of the post)

LubosHouska / Pixabay

The UN and UNESCO say today is both “World Book & Copyright Day” and “UN English Language Day.” It’s also celebrated in some countries, particularly in the UK, as “World Book Night.”

Here’s an explanation from My English Club about UN English Language Day:

English, along with French, is one of the two working languages of the United Nations, and one of the Organization’s six official languages.

Because it is so widely spoken, English is often referred to as a “world language”, or the lingua franca of the modern era.

English Language Day at the UN is celebrated on 23 April, the date traditionally observed as the birthday of William Shakespeare. The Day is the result of a 2010 initiative by the Department of Public Information, establishing language days for each of the Organization’s six official languages. The purpose of the UN’s language days is to celebrate multilingualism and cultural diversity as well as to promote equal use of all six official languages throughout the Organization.

Under the initiative, UN duty stations around the world celebrate six separate days, each dedicated to one of the Organization’s six official languages.

The days are as follows:

Arabic (18 December)
Chinese (20 April)
English
French (20 March)
Russian (6 June)
Spanish (12 October)

Here are some resources on both of these days:

World Book Night: Leading authors line up for ‘sacred’ celebration is from The Guardian, which also has a whole collection of resources.

Southern Californians ready for latest chapter of World Book Night is from The LA Times.

What Is World Book Night?

The Best Videos Documenting The History Of The English Language

UN English Language Day

Here’s the UN’s official announcement of language days.

“Best” Lists Of The Week: Resources For Reading Instruction

The Joy of Books is from Film English.

Additional suggestions are welcome.

Each week, I publish a post or two containing three or four particularly useful resources on classroom instruction, and you can see them all here.

You can also see all my “Best” lists on instructional strategies here.

Here are this week’s picks:

Native Words, Native Warriors is from The National Museum of the American Indian. I’m adding it to The Best Resources For Learning About The Code Talkers.

How to study using the Production Effect is from InnerDrive. I’m adding it to The Best Resources For Helping Students Learn How Best To Study.

Staff meeting idea: Model this strategy for pushing student thinking, via leader @mrshowell24.

Here, she models it for you: https://t.co/h5obGE6E0x pic.twitter.com/iArQaqXxMq

— Principal Project (@PrincipalProj) September 30, 2025

The visual rubrics discussed in this video seem very interesting, but it also appears like it would be a lot of work for the teacher:

I’m adding it to The Best Rubric Sites (And A Beginning Discussion About Their Use).

Overcoming Student Fears Surrounding Class Discussions is from Edutopia. I’m adding it to The Best Resources Sharing The Best Practices For Fruitful Classroom Discussions.

🏆 Technique of the Week: Concept Cartoonshttps://t.co/nH201jBN9F

A technique to encourage students to think about specific things, in specific ways, and tease out misconceptions.

✅ Active learning
✅ Collaborative learning
✅ Responsive teaching@PowerUps_Teach pic.twitter.com/v0a81zfcfh

— Bruce Robertson (@BruceNextLevel) October 5, 2025

Tan Huynh recently shared an infographic he created with AI help on English Language Learners in Virginia.

It inspired me to see if I could do one for California.

Here’s the prompt I used to create the above infographic:

Can you create an infographic displaying information about English Language Learners in California? Include total numbers, how many are long term English Language Learners, and how many are in urban and rural areas.

Caution: I did not double check the numbers on this infographic.  In fact, this is the second version it created.  In the first one, it used numbers saying the ELL population was continuing to increase.  I knew it had recently gone down, so I asked it to double-check.

Duolingo is great, and students love it to practice on their own. Duolingo is now giving free users access to advanced learning content.

Unfortunately, most teachers still can’t incorporate using it in their classroom since the company won’t sign Student Data Privacy Agreements.  That’s a deal-breaker for most districts in the United States.

But it does open up greater learning possibilities for the most motivated students who’ll use it on their own time.

I’ve previously posted about many online games that challenge you to put historical events in the correct chronological order.

Those can be a lot of fun to play in class, and reinforce memorization of events and dates.

The game Ripple, though, challenges players to think.

Its instructions shown in the above image tell you how it works.

It seems to me it could be projected on a front whiteboard, and then students could play in teams with mini-whiteboards.

I saw a post on LinkedIn by Olivia Odileke about the idea of beginning lessons with what she called “micro inquiries.”

My impression is that they might be similar to interactive “Do Nows” that are assigned by experienced teachers (The Best Resources For “Do Now” Activities To Begin A Class), as opposed to just ‘one-and-out” questions students have to answer as warm-ups. Some might disagree with that characterization, though.

I was especially impressed, though, with a free AI tool she created that is supposed to come up with these micro-inquiries.

Spark Curiosity Coach is a good piece of work.

I have generally been unimpressed with what AI tools generate as lessons, but I appreciated what this AI came up with as I experimented with it.  The questions it asks teachers to answer in preparation were good ones.

I wonder if part of the difference in quality might lie in the fact that it’s just generating a very short mini-lesson/do now with narrow parameters instead of being asked to create an entire lesson?

If I was still teaching in the classroom, I’d definitely use it now-and-then to get ideas.  And I’d recommend that any new or newer teacher try using it regularly.

Eight years ago I began this regular feature where I share a few posts and resources from around the Web related to ESL/EFL or to language in general that have caught my attention.

You might also be interested in all my Best lists on teaching ELLs.

Also, check out A Collection Of My Best Resources On Teaching English Language Learners.

In addition, look for our latest book on teaching ELLs, The ELL Teacher’s Toolbox 2.0.

Here are this week’s choices:

How to Teach Vocabulary, Step-by-Step is from The Barefoot TEFL Teacher.

What Makes an Aural Text Challenging? – The Eight buckets of listening difficulty and their implications for listening instruction is from The Language Gym.

How the ‘Science of Reading’ Can Support English Learners is from Ed Week. I’m adding it to The Best Resources For Learning About Balanced Literacy & The “Reading Wars”

What does research say about training language teacher trainee to conduct secondary research? ⁰ ⁰This infographic summarises evidence from 1560 studies.

👨‍🏫 Exposing language teacher trainees to diverse & underused review types and supported by hands-on task such as… https://t.co/JCKukgaWjs pic.twitter.com/F9TesMV0XS

— TESOLgraphics (@tesolgraphics) September 23, 2025

ELL students could watch this video and then talk/write about what they saw:

When your dog is home alone.. 😂 pic.twitter.com/vSEEDA7LJu

— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) September 23, 2025

DRAWING WITH WORDS…LITERALLY is from ELTcation.

Do separate language classes help refugee children succeed in school? is a blog post at From Experience To Meaning about a new German study questioning the effectiveness of separate classes for refugees. It suggests that those classes end up negatively affecting their acquisition of the target language because they miss out on opportunities to talk with native speakers. The study is focused on early elementary students. I believe some studies in the US have had similar findings for that age group though, of course, some pullout times would make sense for newcomers. I don’t think the findings are applicable to high schools, though. There, schools are under a legal obligation to have ELLs on a graduation track, and there’s a lot to catch students up in a very short period of time, especially if they are SLIFEs and have missed schooling in their home countries.

From Teacher-Led to Learner-Driven: 6 Ways to Strengthen Student Voice is by Maria Theologidou. I’m adding it to The Best Resources On Student Agency & How To Encourage It.

Highlight Translator lets you “Turn any webpage into your personal language classroom. Highlight text for instant translations, then review as interactive flashcards.’

Investing in Teachers of Newcomer Students: Making the Optimal Possible is from The Internationals Network.

Teachers reveal what drives them from the field and what leaders can do to improve teachers’ lives.

Here are some excerpts: