© 2009 Joe Shlabotnik, Flickr | CC-BY | via Wylio Here are a number of new resources I’m adding to The Best Social Emotional Learning (SEL) Resources (some of the links are going to other lists, and I indicate that): Social-Emotional Learning Review Aims to Help Secondary Schools Select Programs is from Ed Week. Nonacademic Skills Are Key To Success. But What Should We Call Them? is from NPR. Viewpoint: How do you instil good character? is from The BBC. Quiz Yourself: Do You Lead with Emotional Intelligence? is from the Harvard Business Review. New background questions on social-emotional issues being tested to add context to NAEP results. http://t.co/zFQLM1RDH9 — Sarah Sparks (@SarahDSparks) June 4, 2015 Character Lab has unveiled a free goal-setting program and materials called WHOOP. I think the process they recommend — teachers doing it one-on-one with students for twenty-minutes each — is wildly unrealistic for most teachers, but the downloadable packet is useful and I think could be used class-wide. I’m adding it to The Best Posts On Students Setting Goals. Talking To Students About Testing is from The Growth Mindset Blog. I’m adding it to The Best Posts On How To Prepare For Standardized Tests (And Why They’re Bad).

I use short, funny video clips a lot when I’m teaching ELLs, and you can read in detail about how I use them in The Best Popular Movies/TV Shows For ESL/EFL (& How To Use Them). In short, there are many ways to use them that promote speaking, listening, writing and reading. I’ve posted quite a few of them during the first six months of this year, and I thought it would be useful to readers — and to me — if I brought them together in one post. I’ve also published quite a few during the previous seven years of this blog. You can find those in these lists: The Best Fun Videos For English Language Learners In 2014 - Part Two The Best Fun Videos For English Language Learners In 2014 - Part One The Best Videos For Educators In 2014 - So Far The Best Fun Videos For English Language Learners In 2013 - Part Two The Best Fun Videos For English Language Learners In 2013 — So Far The "All-Time" Best Videos For Educators The Best "Fun" Sites You Can Use For Learning, Too — 2012 (Part Two) The Best "Fun" Sites You Can Use For Learning, Too — 2012 (Part One) The Best "Fun" Sites You Can Use For Learning, Too — 2011 The Best "Fun" Sites You Can Use For Learning, Too — 2010 Part Two Of The Best "Fun" Sites You Can Use For Learning, Too — 2009 The Best "Fun" Sites You Can Use For Learning, Too — 2009 The Best "Fun" Sites You Can Use For Learning, Too — 2008 The Best Movie Scenes To Use For English-Language Development The Best Funny Videos Showing The Importance Of Being Bilingual Or Multilingual — Part One The Best Pink Panther Fight Scenes For English Language Learners The Best Videos Illustrating Qualities Of A Successful Language Learner The Best Sports Videos To Use With English Language Learners The Best Video Clips Of Sneaky Critters The Best Videos Showing "Thinking Outside The Box" — Help Me Find More The Best Fun Videos To Teach Language Conventions — Help Me Find More The Best Funny Videos To Help Teach Grammar - Help Me Find More The Best Movie Scenes For Halloween The Best Christmas Videos For English Language Learners - Help Me Find More Okay, now here are my choices for The Best Fun Videos For English Language Learners In 2015 — So Far: I Think The Amazing Card Trick Shown In This Video Could Be Modified Into A Fun ELL Writing Activity This video has a surprise ending: "Mr. Line" is a character is a long series of short Italian video animations featuring a long, unbroken, drawn line. Open Culture blogged about the series, and, except for one (and maybe a few more) that are clearly not appropriate for the classroom, they would be great to show English Language Learners and have them write and talk about what they saw. The character primarily just talks gibberish, and the drawings speak for themselves. Here’s an example of one (you can access all of them here): Artoo in Love would be a good video to show English Language Learners and then have them write and talk about what happens in the film: I’ve previously posted about Simon’s Cat videos and how they’re perfect for English Language Learners. Here’s a new one: This would be a fun video to show to English Language Learners and have them describe what they see. It’s in French with with English subtitles, but it’s fun even if you understand the words. One activity I do with English Language Learners is teach several idioms; then have students use them in sentences of their own creation; and, finally, create literal posters illustrating what they have written. So, let’s say they write "Please, keep it a secret - don’t let the cat out of the bag!" (note that they use the idiom correctly and include its meaning in the sentence). They would then draw a picture of a cat in a bag with someone talking to another person, along with their caption. Then, they show it and share it verbally to the class. It can be a lot of fun. Now, in addition to my drawing a simple model to show to students, I’ll be showing them this wonderful short video called "Confessions Of An Idiom." I’ll be adding this post to The Best Sites To Help ELL’s Learn Idioms & Slang. Confessions of an Idiom from Amanda Koh on Vimeo. I’ve previously published several posts about having English Language Learners use photos and videos as fun opportunities to invent "thought bubbles" or dialogues. I’ve also published a similar idea in a post titled What Are People In This Painting Thinking? TED Talks shared a number of short videos they shared at their conference. Some were new, some I had seen and published here, and several would be useful in English Language Learner classes. Two of those useful for ELLs were from a YouTube channel by Chris Cohen that he calls Animal Translations, where he puts his voice to animal thoughts. The accent is a bit thick, so it might be difficult for ELLs to hear everything, but they’d certainly get the idea. Then, students could create their own internal dialogue they could perform while the video was shown on a screen without sound. Here the two samples: A regular feature on this blog has been highlighting all the games that Jimmy Fallon plays on his show that are great ones for English Language Learners. He recently played another one that most teachers are familiar with — Pictionary. Show him playing it with several other stars could be a fun model for students prior to playing the game. When I do it, I model a game in front, and then divide the class into groups of three. Then, in the small groups, everyone gets a chance to be the decider/drawer of the word while they play it three times.

© 2005 Jeramey Jannene, Flickr | CC-BY | via Wylio Today, NPR published an impressive multi-state series on high school graduation rates. You can see all of their grad stories here. Four that I found particularly interesting were: The Truth Behind Your State’s High School Grad Rate, which is an interactive. In Oakland, Struggling For Years To Learn English Thousands Of High School Students Getting Lost In Texas, which is interesting since that state’s supposedly high graduation rate is being used by some reformers to criticize California’s school system. Are High School Exit Exams An Unnecessary Barrier To Graduation? Coincidentally, this vote occurred last week here in California: State Senate votes to end California high school exit test http://t.co/oLIxiTUwHk pic.twitter.com/SVg96Y7YrD — LA School Report (@LASchoolReport) June 3, 2015 I’m adding these last two links to The Best Posts & Articles About Why High School Exit Exams Might Not Be A Good Idea.

© 2014 Dana, Flickr | CC-BY-ND | via Wylio Along with students in my other classes, my TOK class evaluated the course and me (you can see the forms I used here). As usual, both the course and my teaching was evaluated generally quite highly. And, as usual, though the vast majority of students didn’t share many suggestions on how to make it better (the most common statement was along the lines of "keep it exactly the way it is"), one critique was explicitly mentioned several times, and another typical shortcoming was clearly apparent to me. A few students said I let some take advantage of me by being too flexible. As I mentioned, this always come up in my TOK evaluations. I’m sure there is some truth to these comments, and there are clearly areas where I can "tighten-up." However, I also attribute at least some of this critique to the fact that I heavily recruit students who are not taking any other IB classes, and I think a few others might not have that much experience being in a class with so many others without the same academic background and habits. The other shortcoming I always notice is that when I ask students how they can apply what they have learned in TOK to their lives, the responses — apart from just about everybody saying the presentation and writing skills they learned were useful — are generally pretty shallow. I have tried a number of different strategies to make this kind of "transfer" more effective, but nothing has seemed to work over the years. Next year, I’ve decided that, when we are studying each Way of Knowing and Area of Knowledge, I’m going to be very explicit about connecting them to current events and encouraging students to do the same. One great resources is the free monthly newsletter from Theory of Knowledge.net, which shares current news articles, Knowledge Questions connected to them, and lesson ideas. You can see their archive here, and you can subscribe there also. I can’t imagine why a TOK teacher would not want to receive it! In addition, for a fee, you can subscribe to their premium newsletter. I’d also love to hear other ideas about how teachers have been successful helping students apply TOK concepts to their outside-of-school lives….

A shortage of teachers hits home is an Op-Ed in yesterday’s Sacramento Bee. Here’s the "money quote":

Teachers: What we want everyone to know about working in our high-needs school is the headline of a guest column three of my colleagues - Katie Hull, Dana Dusbiber, Lara Hoekstra - and I wrote for The Washington Post today. It describes what it’s like to work in our high school…

© 2011 Takver, Flickr | CC-BY-SA | via Wylio World Refugee Day takes place on June 20th. Here are new additions to The Best Sites For Learning About World Refugee Day: The Global Struggle to Respond to the Worst Refugee Crisis in Generations is an impressive interactive from The New York Times. Migrants Journey from Syria to Sweden is a Guardian interactive. Fleeing by the Millions: Migration Crises Around the World is as photo gallery from The Atlantic. An Interactive Map Of Every Refugee In The World is from Fast Company. Mapping Displaced People Around the World is from National Geographic.

© 2013 George Redgrave, Flickr | CC-BY-ND | via Wylio In addition to the thousands of posts I’ve written in this blog (and in my parent engagement blog) over the past eight years,  my seven books, my weekly posts for Education Week Teacher, and my monthly posts for The New York Times and the British Council, I’ve also written well over one-hundred-and-twenty articles for different publications. You can access all of them here. You can also see what I think are The Fifteen Best Articles I’ve Written About Education. Here are The Best Articles I’ve Written In 2014 — So Far: Nine education predictions for 2015 Help Your Students Get Into the Learning Flow What Motivates A Student’s Interest in Reading and Writing Creating the Conditions for Student Motivation Strategies for Helping Students Motivate Themselves The real stuff of schooling: How to teach students to apply knowledge Why Viewing Classroom Management as a Mystery Can Be a Good Thing Apps, Apps Everywhere: Are Any Good, You Think? Teachers: What we want everyone to know about working in our high-needs school

Duolingo, the amazing language-learning app/site that I’ve written about many times, has just raised $45 million to expand its presence in schools. Here’s an excerpt from TechCrunch’s post, Duolingo Raises $45 Million Series D Round Led By Google Capital, Now Valued At $470M:

How Can We Encourage Colleagues To Support ELLs? is the latest "question-of-the-week" at my Education Week Teacher column. Feel free to leave a response in the comments there or here…