C4T #3

Larry Ferlazzo

I was assigned to Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day for this C4T assignment - he posts a lot and he rarely approves comments. Sad day. He's been blogging more about the Colorado Fires, the upcoming elections and the health care reform. The first blog I was going to post on was part three of a series, so I decided to go back to the original blog, The Best Resources on The Summer Slide", because that is how I roll. It was very informative and creative. He offered some demographics on the 'summer slide'. If you aren't familiar with the term, it is the academic losses that many young people, especially in low-income communities, experience during the time they’re out of school. He discussed how he was going to create a lesson that was student-directed about 'summer slide', and he already presents them with demographics on the effects of the process. He also encourages students to read more over the summer and maybe seek out extra credit with their teachers before the end of the school year. Some of the resources he suggests for teachers are (and the one's I found most informative):

Free Books Block Summer Slide in Low-Income Students from USA Today

Summer Must Read for Kids. Any Book. from the New York Times

A Primer on Summer Reading Loss

Overall, I like his idea of turning this into a lesson for his students! I think students want to learn more when they know they might be the weakest link.

In How I am Helping My Students Try to Avoid the Summer Slide posted a few days later, Mr. Ferlazzo discusses his concerns with recent budget cuts limiting the number of students allowed to take summer school. Apparently, they have a lot of lower income students that view summer school as a advantage and not a disadvantage (I can't relate because all the summer school students I have taught have had to be there), but I am sure there are some students out there (especially ESL students). Because of the cuts, he's decided to create virtual classrooms to allow his students to avoid the 'summer slide'. I think this is wonderful - he's had to personally create these classrooms - there aren't a lot of teachers out there that would do this. He's even offering extra credit for students he's going to have next year to participate. He's also offered his colleagues a chance to be part of this. One of the coolest sites he's going to use is Zondle. It has a ton of learning games. It’s easy to set-up the class and have students enroll on their own. The only negative to it is that you have to either create or identify the learning activities you want them to use. It’s not that big of a deal — he just searched for things like “EFL,” “vocabulary,” etc. and found a bunch.

I think Mr. Ferlazzo is really using technology to it's fullest advantage, but I am seriously worried about this man's social life.

I also looked at his class blog, United States History Classes - it's very interesting.