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I am an English teacher from Ukraine. I have been teaching for more than 20 years already but I am always eager to learn something new, share ideas and teaching techniques and meet new friends. I am looking forward to starting this course as I am completely new to technoclil, though we have CLIL section in our English coursebooks. Besides, we are integrating STEM into our subject so I hope this course will help me a lot)))

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In ELT, forms of CLIL have previously been known as ' Content-based instruction', 'English across the curriculum' and 'Bilingual education'.

Why is CLIL important?
With the expansion of the European Union, diversity of language and the need for communication are seen as central issues.

Even with English as the main language, other languages are unlikely to disappear. Some countries have strong views regarding the use of other languages within their borders.

With increased contact between countries, there will be an increase in the need for communicative skills in a second or third language.

Knowledge of the language becomes the means of learning content

Language is integrated into the broad curriculum

Introduce the wider cultural context

Prepare for internationalisation

Access International Certification and enhance the school profile

Improve overall and specific language competence

Prepare for future studies and / or working life

Noticing of the language by the learners

Focus on lexis rather than grammar

Opposition to language teaching by subject teachers may come from language teachers themselves. Subject teachers may be unwilling to take on the responsibility.

Most current CLIL programmes are experimental. There are few sound research-based empirical studies, while CLIL-type bilingual programmes are mainly seen to be marketable products in the private sector.

In the UK the incentive comes from the Content and Language Integration Project (CLIP) hosted by CILT, (the National Centre for Languages) which is the UK government's centre of expertise on languages. CILT monitors a number of projects covering the 7-16 age range and involving innovations in language teaching such as the integration of French into the primary curriculum. Other research is based at the University of Nottingham, while teacher training and development courses in CLIL are available through NILE (the Norwich Institute for Language Education).

CLIL is based on language acquisition, but in monolingual situations, a good deal of conscious learning is involved, demanding skills from the subject teacher.
The BBC and British Council are not responsible for the content of external web sites, neither do we endorse them. These are the recommendations of the writer.
The lack of CLIL teacher-training programmes suggests that the majority of teachers working on bilingual programmes may be ill-equipped to do the job adequately.

There is little evidence to suggest that understanding of content is not reduced by lack of language competence. Current opinion seems to be that language ability can only be increased by content-based learning after a certain stage.

Some aspects of CLIL are unnatural; such as the appreciation of the literature and culture of the learner's own country through a second language.

Focus on language related to the subject. Level and grading are unimportant

Pre-, while- and post-reading tasks are as appropriate in the subject context as in the language context.

Develop multilingual interests and attitudes

Diversify methods & forms of classroom teaching and learning

Increase learner motivation.

Learning is improved through increased motivation and the study of natural language seen in context. When learners are interested in a topic they are motivated to acquire language to communicate

CLIL is based on language acquisition rather than enforced learning

Language is seen in real-life situations in which students can acquire the language. This is natural language development which builds on other forms of learning

CLIL is long-term learning. Students become academically proficient in English after 5-7 years in a good bilingual programme

Fluency is more important than accuracy and errors are a natural part of language learning. Learners develop fluency in English by using English to communicate for a variety of purposes

Reading is the essential skill.

Languages will play a key role in curricula across Europe. Attention needs to be given to the training of teachers and the development of frameworks and methods which will improve the quality of language education

The European Commission has been looking into the state of bilingualism and language education since the 1990s, and has a clear vision of a multilingual Europe in which people can function in two or three languages.

How does CLIL work?
The basis of CLIL is that content subjects are taught and learnt in a language which is not the mother tongue of the learners.

CLIL helps to:

CLIL in the classroom
CLIL assumes that subject teachers are able to exploit opportunities for language learning. The best and most common opportunities arise through reading texts. CLIL draws on the lexical approach, encouraging learners to notice language while reading. Here is a paragraph from a text on fashion:

The miniskirt is a skirt whose hemline is high above the knees (generally 200-300 mm above knee-level). Its existence is generally credited to the fashion designer Mary Quant, who was inspired by the Mini Cooper automobile, although André Courrèges is also often cited as its inventor, and there is disagreement as to who invented it first.

The language to be looked at in a passage like this falls into three categories - subject specific, academic and other lexis including fixed expressions and collocations:

The treatment of this lexis has the following features:

The future of CLIL
There is no doubt that learning a language and learning through a language are concurrent processes, but implementing CLIL requires a rethink of the traditional concepts of the language classroom and the language teacher. The immediate obstacles seem to be:

Until CLIL training for teachers and materials issues are resolved, the immediate future remains with parallel rather than integrated content and language learning. However, the need for language teaching reform in the face of Europeanisation may make CLIL a common feature of many European education systems in the future.

Where is CLIL happening?
CLIL has precedents in immersion programmes (North America) and education through a minority or a national language (Spain, Wales, France), and many variations on education through a 'foreign' language. Euro-funded projects show that CLIL or similar systems are being applied in some countries, but are not part of teacher-training programmes. There has been an increase in the number of schools offering 'alternative' bilingual curricula, and some research into training and methodology. Several major European organisations specialising in CLIL projects have emerged, including UNICOM, EuroCLIC and TIE-CLIL (see web references for details).

Further reading
Translanguage in Europe www.tieclil.org
Centre for Information on Language, Teaching and Research www.cilt.org.uk
Forum for Across the Curriculum Teaching www.factworld.info

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Content and Language Integrated Learning

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In ELT, forms of CLIL have previously been known as ' Content-based instruction', 'English across the curriculum' and 'Bilingual education'. Why is CLIL important? With the expansion of the European Union, diversity of language and the need for communication are seen as central issues.

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Do Coyle - What is the 4 Cs teaching framework? 4/7

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In the first of a new series of study skills for CLIL, Jean Brewster takes the very topical subject of thinking skills and looks at how CLIL teaching embraces many of the thinking skills principles and how this benefits the learner.

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The Journal of Teaching English with Technology

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Issuu is a digital publishing platform that makes it simple to publish magazines, catalogs, newspapers, books, and more online. Easily share your publications and get them in front of Issuu's millions of monthly readers.

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Web 2.0 is the current state of online technology as it compares to the early days of the Web, characterized by greater user interactivity and collaboration, more pervasive network connectivity and enhanced communication channels.

One of the most significant differences between Web 2.0 and the traditional World Wide Web ( WWW, retroactively referred to as Web 1.0) is greater collaboration among Internet users, content providers and enterprises. Originally, data was posted on Web sites, and users simply viewed or downloaded the content. Increasingly, users have more input into the nature and scope of Web content and in some cases exert real-time control over it.

The social nature of Web 2.0 is another major difference between it and the original, static Web. Increasingly, websites enable community-based input, interaction, content-sharing and collaboration. Types of social media sites and applications include forums, microblogging, social networking, social bookmarking, social curation, and wikis.
Elements of Web 2.0

Wikis: Websites that enable users to contribute, collaborate and edit site content. Wikipedia is one of the oldest and best-known wiki-based sites.

The increasing prevalence of Software as a Service (SaaS), web apps and cloud computing rather than locally-installed programs and services.

Mobile computing, also known as nomadicity, the trend toward users connecting from wherever they may be. That trend is enabled by the proliferation of smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices in conjunction with readily accessible Wi-Fi networks.

Mash-ups: Web pages or applications that integrate complementary elements from two or more sources.

Social networking: The practice of expanding the number of one's business and/or social contacts by making connections through individuals. Social networking sites include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+.

Collaborative efforts based on the ability to reach large numbers of participants and their collective resources, such as crowdsourcing, crowdfunding and crowdsource testing.

User-generated content (UGC): Writing, images, audio and video content -- among other possibilities -- made freely available online by the individuals who create it.

Unified communications (UC): The integration of multiple forms of call and multimedia/cross-media message-management functions controlled by an individual user for both business and social purposes.

Social curation: The collaborative sharing of content organized around one or more particular themes or topics. Social content curation sites include Reddit, Digg, Pinterest and Instagram.

The History of Web 2.0
The foundational components of Web 2.0 are the advances enabled by Ajax and other applications such as RSS and Eclipse and the user empowerment that they support.

Darcy DiNucci, an information architecture consultant, coined the term "Web 2.0 In her 1999 article, "Fragmented Future":
"The Web we know now, which loads into a browser window in essentially static screenfuls, is only an embryo of the Web to come. The first glimmerings of Web 2.0 are beginning to appear, and we are just starting to see how that embryo might develop. The Web will be understood not as screenfuls of text and graphics but as a transport mechanism, the ether through which interactivity happens."
Tim O'Reilly is generally credited with popularizing the term, following a conference dealing with next-generation Web concepts and issues held by O'Reilly Media and MediaLive International in 2004. O'Reilly Media has subsequently been energetic about trying to copyright "Web 2.0" and holds an annual conference of the same name.

Web 2.0 controversy
Critics of Web 2.0 maintain that it makes it too easy for the average person to affect online content, which can impact the credibility, ethics and even legality of web content. The extent of data sharing and gathering also raises concerns about privacy and security. Defenders of Web 2.0 point out that these problems have existed ever since the infancy of the medium and that the alternative -- widespread censorship based on ill-defined elitism -- would be far worse. The final judgment concerning any web content, say the defenders, should be made by end users alone. Web 2.0 reflects evolution in that direction.

Web 2.0 technologies
Most of the technologies used in delivering web 2.0 are rich Web technologies, such as Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight and JavaScript (in addition to Ajax, RSS and Eclipse). Web 2.0 applications are often based on the decentralized download methodology that made BitTorrent so successful, in which each downloader of content is also a server, sharing the workload and making heavily demanded content more accessible that it would be in the centralized model where demand can lead to overwhelmed servers and pages.

Manufacturing 2.0
The integration of Web 2.0 communication and collaboration applications into traditional manufacturing practices and processes has been dubbed Manufacturing 2.0. Manufacturing 2.0 takes typical Web 2.0 apps and services and incorporates them into every stage of development and production. The use of these technologies and tools facilitates greater collaboration and sharing and referencing of information in a business, ideally leading to better thought out design and more efficient production.

Enterprise 2.0
Similarly, the inclusion of Web 2.0 technologies into an enterprise's business processes, intranet and extranet is sometimes referred to as Enterprise 2.0. Most enterprise 2.0 followers use a combination of blogs, social networking and social collaborative tools as well as free, paid and homegrown technologies. The term Enterprise 2.0 was coined by Harvard Business School Associate Professor Andrew McAfee in an MIT Sloan Management Review he named "Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration."

Web 2.0 suicide
So synonymous with Web 2.0 is social networking that the deletion of one's social networking presences throughout the Internet is referred to as Web 2.0 suicide. There are web applications designed to facilitate the process, such as the free service Web 2.0 suicide machine. The application attempts to purge user info on some of the most common social networking presence points: Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and Twitter before adding the user to the Social Network Suiciders group on Facebook and signing them out.

The future of Web 2:0: Web 3.0
Some industry pundits are already claiming that Web 2.0 is merely a transitional phase between the early days of the World Wide Web's existence and a more established phase they're calling Web 3.0, also known as the Semantic Web.

The creator of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, suggests that the Web as a whole can be designed more intelligently to be more intuitive about how to serve a user's needs. Berners-Lee observes that although search engines index much of the Web's content, they have little ability to select the pages that a user really wants or needs. He suggests developers and authors, singly or in collaboration, can use self-descriptions or similar techniques so that new context-aware programs can better classify the information that might be relevant to a user. Web 3.0 will involve the publishing of web resources in languages intended for data (such as XML, RDF, OWL and XHTML) to supplement them with metadata that will allow software to analyze, classify and deliver content for more personal relevance. The Semantic Annotations for Web Services group at W3C is defining the specifications for the Web 3.0.

Ubiquitous Computing
The model of Web 3.0's machine-classified, data sharing world creates a basis for ubiquitous computing. Ubiquitous computing, also known as pervasive computing, is a scenario in which embedded processing in everyday objects enables intercommunication and unobtrusive data sharing throughout the user's environment. The concept overlaps with that of the Internet of Things ( IoT), in which almost any entity or object imaginable can be outfitted with a unique identifier (UID) and the ability to exchange data automatically. A modest example of this concept is a fridge that sends a grocery lists to one's smartphone.
See Sir Tim's Ted Talk on the future of the Web:

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Web 2.0 is the current state of online technology as it compares to the early days of the Web, characterized by greater user interactivity and collaboration, more pervasive network connectivity and enhanced communication channels.

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Other stuff (Delicious+CLIL, Slideshare+CLIL, serching tools for kids, etc.)

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Top 10 graphic organizers

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Graphic Organizers & Choice Boards

This collection of ready-to-use graphic organizers will help children classify ideas and communicate more effectively. All of our printable graphic organizers are designed to facilitate understanding of key concepts by allowing students to visually identify key points and ideas. By using graphic organizers across all subject areas, you will be empowering your students to master subject-matter faster and more efficiently. We have graphic organizers for reading, science, writing, math, and for general classroom use. You'll also find blank printable templates like graph paper, dot arrays, and other useful tools.

Popular Graphic Organizer Collections

Self-assessment Graphic Organizers

Growth Mindset Graphic Organizers

Graphic Organizers (PreK-2)

Help students, grades pre-K-2, with their reading comprehension, main idea organization, and more using our graphic organizers.

Graphic Organizers (Grades 3-5)

Help your grade 3-5 students with their organization by using our graphic organizers and reading webs.

Graphic Organizers (Grades 9-12)

These graphic organizers for grades 9-12 will aid students in reading comprehension, writing abilities, and sequencing.

Writing Graphic Organizers

Help students organize their writing with these sequence charts, reading organizers, outlines, webs, and more!

Research Graphic Organizers

Support students to practice and develop essential research skills.

Science Graphic Organizers

Use our venn diagrams, graphic organizer worksheets, and instructions to help your students organize their scientific thought.

Timelines and Sequence Charts

Sequence stories and picture orders with these timeline and sequence charts.

Reading Comprehension

Enhance your student's reading comprehension with these webs, main idea charts, plot summaries and more with our reading comprehension graphic organizers!

Concept Maps and Idea Webs

These concept maps and idea webs will help students organize their thoughts, whether they are history, science, or language arts related.

Math Graphic Organizers

Help your students enhance their math skills and stay on track with these homework checklists, KWL charts, column charts and more.

Galleries

These galleries provide you the best graphic organizers for every occasion. Whether it be writing, science, literature, or animal related, we have a slideshow for it all!

Customizable Graphic Organizers

Use our customizable graphic organizers to tailor each one to the specific lesson of the day.

KWL Charts

Help students organize what they know, what they want to know, and what they have learned with these KWL charts relating to all subjects.

Venn Diagrams

Venn Diagrams are a great way for students to compare and contrast two (or three) concepts. Use our venn diagrams to accompany your lesson for any subject.

Cause and Effect

Each effect has a cause. Help students identify the two in their readings, writing, and more with our cause and effect printable worksheets.

Main Idea and Supporting Details

It is important for students to distinguish main ideas and supporting details in order to comprehend their readings. We have provided printable graphic organizers, such as a stair step organizer, to help students organize the main idea from the supporting details.

Choice Boards

Choice Boards are similar to graphic organizers because they can be downloaded, printed, and given to students. What sets Choice Boards apart is that they provide students with the opportunity for choice. Rather than a graphic organizer that has one assignment, a choice board provides multiple ways that students can explore a topic or skill and demonstrate their learning. Choice boards also help you differentiate your instruction, as you can support students to make a choice that best aligns with their learning needs and learning preferences. Access our library of choice boards below.

Holiday Choice Boards

Math Choice Boards

English Language Arts Choice Boards

Social Studies Choice Boards

Science Choice Boards

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Graphic organizers for teachers grades K-12.

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Repository of Graphic Oganizers Generators

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Help your students classify ideas and communicate more effectively with these free graphic organizer templates, available for download. They can be used to structure writing projects and help in problem solving, decision making, studying, planning research, and brainstorming.

Printable Graphic Organizers

Select a blank graphic organizer from the following categories depending on your curriculum needs.

Sequence of Events

Main Topic and Key Details

Compare/Contrast

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Free Downloadable Graphic Organizer Templates

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Use these graphic organizer templates to help your students classify ideas and communicate more effectively, structure writing projects, and more.

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Teacher collaboration in CLIL

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Team Teaching

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CLIL planning tools

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Extensive reading

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The reading skill is most often taught by close study of short passages followed by analysis of language.

Extensive reading: An alternative approach

Aims of extensive reading

The characteristics of an extensive reading approach

The value of this intensive reading procedure, with its focus on the teaching of discrete reading skills has been questioned by some, who claim that teaching students reading strategies does not necessarily make them better readers. It is widely believed that people become good readers through reading, and that learning how to read should mean a focus of attention on the meaning rather than the language of the text.

Extensive reading: An alternative approach
Another model for teaching reading exists. This is an 'extensive reading approach' and involves students reading long texts or large quantities for general understanding, with the intention of enjoying the texts.

Students are allowed to choose the books they read depending on their interests, and there is not always a follow-up discussion or work in class. In this way students are encouraged to read for pleasure and should become better readers.

Aims of extensive reading
The principal objective of undertaking an extensive reading approach is to get students reading in English and liking it. An increase in reading fluency should be another objective. Because of this, reading should be a pleasurable activity for the student, promoted as much as possible by the teacher.

The characteristics of an extensive reading approach

Reading material
Reading for pleasure requires a large selection of books be available for students to choose from at their level. Here, teachers can make good use of graded readers (books which have been written specifically for EFL/ESL students or which have been adapted from authentic texts).

Setting up a class library is a good way to provide material for students, and because the books are kept in the actual classroom, there is a greater chance that they will be borrowed, and teachers also have more opportunities to refer to them during class.

Motivation
One of the key factors to the success (or not) of an extensive reading programme is motivation. Capturing student interest is the key. If the materials available are interesting to the students, then they will be far more likely to want to read them. These books should also be at a level appropriate to their reading ability. As mentioned earlier, the texts should not be too difficult so students experience the frustration of not being able to understand the books.

Getting the extensive reading programme off to a good start is also vital. The aim is for an initial successful experience so that students discover they can read in English and that they enjoy it. This positive experience should stimulate them to read more, increasing motivation, enjoyment and a desire to read.The teacher's roleConclusion

The teacher encourages and assists the students with their reading, which the students undertake during and /or after class. Occasional summaries (oral or written) can help with this as they show both that the students are reading and also that they understand what their books are about. The activities can also help students improve their writing or speaking ability. Another activity teachers can become involved in is individual counselling - this gives the teacher an opportunity to ask students about their reading experiences and can be done by the teacher while the rest of the class are silent reading. Above all, however, extensive reading should be a student-centred and a student-managed activity.

Day & Bamford (1998) highlight the benefits that have been gained by the undertaking of extensive reading programmes. These include gains in reading and writing proficiency, oral skills and vocabulary, an increase in motivation and positive affect.

Setting up an extensive reading programme should not only lead your students to improve their reading proficiency and other language skills, but will hopefully enable them to take pleasure in reading for its own sake. Further reading

Susser B & TN Robb (1990) 'EFL Extensive Reading Instruction: Research and Procedure' JALT Journal Vol No.2 http://www.kyoto-su.ac.jp/~trobb/sussrobb.html
Day RR & J Bamford (1998) 'Extensive Reading in the Second Language Classroom' Cambridge:CUP
Barnett, M.A. (1988). Reading through context: How real and perceived strategy use affects L2 comprehension. The Modern language Journal, 72, 150-162.

The BBC and British Council are not responsible for the content of external web sites.

Graham Stanley, British Council, Barcelona

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The reading skill is most often taught by close study of short passages followed by analysis of language. Extensive reading: An alternative approach Aims of extensive reading The characteristics of an extensive reading approach Motivation The teacher's role Conclusion

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Why is extensive reading important? - Fremmedspråksenteret - Høgskolen i Østfold

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Dette er nettsidene til Fremmedspråksenteret ved Høgskolen i Østfold.

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To celebrate the launch of Project fourth edition, Domino author, Nina Prentice explores the relevance of extensive reading in the upper primary classroom.
School is generally about hierarchies and rules. The teacher is the authority on and dispenser of the syllabus. Students are novices. Their purpose is to consume and learn the year's programme of study and satisfy the requirements of the examination system.

But, if we believe that learning is not just about passing exams, our classrooms need not follow this pattern. We can break the traditional roles of 'teacher' and 'student' following our set tasks and duties quite easily. All we need is a library of graded readers and the enthusiasm and passion to read extensively alongside our class.

The transformation is astonishing. Discussion and debate become the norm. Students, even those who are less able or confident, participate enthusiastically because when people respond to personal reading there is no right or wrong answer. Everyone has a voice and a right to have it heard.

Extensive reading is the opposite of the obligatory 'intensive reading' we practice in school, crawling like snails over texts and leaving inky slime trails of annotation over every page. Reading extensively is about consuming large amounts of texts greedily to know the end of the story, not to dissect the author's style. It is about choice, freedom and pleasure.

When we read extensively, we forget our dictionaries because we are reading well within our comfort zone. Choosing freely what we read (and rejecting it if we don't like it) for our personal enjoyment and interest is liberating, motivating and empowering.

Extensive reading also frees us from daily textbook routines. The class library not only allows us to explore language together naturally through our reactions to the books we are all reading but provides a endless supply of spontaneous activities with which to animate our lessons and engage our students.

The class library allows us to share our reading experiences communally. This collaborative approach, where the normal, formal routines of the classroom are set aside, creates an environment where learning happens naturally through discussion, the expression of opinions and even disagreement! Extensive reading is real language in real use and demonstrates that books will always be the best and most stimulating teachers!

Some examples of practical extensive reading activities

Graded readers provide prompts for classroom activities in ways that many textbooks or undifferentiated material cannot. Books which students have chosen deliberately and are enjoying reading are self-evidently within their competence. Textbook work can never be quite as accessible or as pleasurable. Additionally, students are usually excited about sharing their current reading with the rest of the class and less able students gain confidence when they can perform and contribute in the same way as more able classmates.

Teachers can easily use the class library and students' current reading to extend and practise textbook topics. The brief 5-10 minute activities below are just a few examples of the kind of naturally differentiated tasks which can amplify and support the syllabus.

Cover Illustration Game: Ask students to look at the cover of the books they are reading. Give them thirty seconds to write down as many words as they can think of prompted by the images in the illustration. Then...

Ask students to categorise the words they have collected by word class. Do they notice any patterns? Or...

Ask if the colours they have noticed on the cover suggest anything about the story they are reading. Or...

Ask the students to use the words they have collected to write a 50 to 100-word description of a place they know well.

Ask the students to do this task with the cover of a book they have not read. After they have collected the words (without looking at the blurbs) ask them to use their collections to write 50 to 100 words predicting the story. Students can then compare predictions with the blurbs on the back.

Word Class Hunt: Ask students to find an example each of word classes (e.g. noun, verb, adjective, adverb) from the books they are reading and then:

Making a Statement: Ask students to turn a statement in the book they are reading into a question; or turn a positive statement into a negative; or change the tense or gender; etc.

Talking Text: Ask students to turn a dialogue in the stories they are reading into reported speech or vice versa. Ask them how these changes affect the way the story is told.

Five Words: Ask students to select any five words they like from a page in the book that they are currently reading and use them to write a 50-75 word opening to a new story of their own as in the example below.
Enclosed Signs Flags Meet FinishedThe flags were all hung out in the courtyard where I hoped to meet George and Freya at the end of the day. As I arrived, they had just finished their turns in the enclosed pits where the fights happen. I was worried but the signs were good. They were both smiling and waving at me. George only had a black eye and Freya a long, deep cut on her shoulder. (71 words)

Question Time: Extend this last activity by picking a good example and then asking students to use the 5 Ws and the H to ask questions about the story. For example:

Where is the courtyard?

Why are the George and Freya fighting in pits?

Who is the person telling the story?

When is this story happening: in the present, the future or the past?

What will happen next?

How can George and Freya be happy when they are quite badly hurt?

Sentence Starter: Ask students to pick a sentence at random from any page in the books they are currently reading and create as many new sentences as they can using at least the chosen words but adding more as desired.

Discuss how the sentences have developed.

Extend the task by seeing if they can change the sentence they have chosen to make it humorous, sad, frightening or unexpected.

Ask students to compare their sentences and see how they can be improved.

These are just a few examples of short activities that can be created on the spot using the readers in the class libraries as prompts. These kinds of tasks are useful because they:

Break up the monotony of lessons and create a sense of adventure and unpredictability in your classroom. The unexpected really motivates learning!

Provide a range of differentiated tasks which all students can access and enjoy.

Stimulate interest in the class libraries by getting students to share their reading experiences.

Offer a range of brief do-able activities which persuade students that writing in English is not only something which can be practised and improved but which also can be fun!

Give teachers an opportunity to observe how students are interacting with the libraries while, at the same time, getting students to extend, practice and reinforce textbook tasks with 'real' language.

Don't forget that graded readers span a wide range of ability levels and there is strong emphasis on student choice. This ensures that all students, even the least able, can easily find accessible and enjoyable books for themselves to enjoy both at home and at school.

CDs with the spoken text now accompany the majority of the readers. For students with learning difficulties trying to read in a non-phonetic language like English, this audio input provides vital support to make the decoding process more intelligible. Moreover, research shows that students who regularly listen to recordings as they read become faster and more fluent, whatever their ability level. Pronunciation also improves naturally because of the aural stimulus to word recognition.

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What's the point of Extensive Reading? - Teaching English with Oxford

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To celebrate the launch of Project fourth edition, Domino author, Nina Prentice explores the relevance of extensive reading in the upper primary classroom. School is generally about hierarchies and rules. The teacher is the authority on and dispenser of the syllabus. Students are novices. Their purpose is to consume and learn the year's programme of [...]

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In simple terms Extensive Reading is reading as many easy books as possible for pleasure, and can be contrasted with intensive reading which is slow, careful reading of a short, difficult text. Day and Bamford (1998), Day (2002), Prowse (2002), and Maley (2008 and 2009) have identified a number of key characteristics of Extensive Reading in language learning. Here is a digest of what I think are the seven most important principles for successful Extensive Reading:

1. Students read a great deal, quite quickly (at least 150-200 words a minute) and often.

2. The reading material is relatively easy for the level of the students. Too much unknown language prevents students from reading quickly and fluently.

3. It is the student, not the teacher, who chooses what to read.

4. Students have a wide variety of genres and topics to choose from.

5. Students read for pleasure, information or general understanding.

6. Reading is individual and silent.

7. The teacher asks as a guide, monitor and role model.

What are the benefits of Extensive Reading?
There is a wealth of research into the benefits of Extensive Reading for language learners. Here is a digest of what I consider to be the seven most important benefits:

It is widely accepted that people become good readers through reading, and that learning how to read should mean a primary focus of attention on the meaning rather than the language of the text. It is pretty obvious that extensive reading helps students become better readers. Research by Richard Day amongst many others shows that we learn to read by reading. The more language students read, the better readers they become. An integral part of this is learning new vocabulary.

Probably the most cited benefit of Extensive Reading is that it can extend and sustain students' vocabulary growth. We know that vocabulary is not learned by a single exposure. Experts in language and literacy development such as Harvard University Education Professor Catherine Snow believe that you need to encounter a word or phrase in different contexts between 15 and 20 times to have a high possibility of learning the word or phrase. Students are highly unlikely to encounter vocabulary sufficient times within the classroom to learn it. However, if they read extensively they are much more likely to get multiple encounters with words and phrases in a variety of contexts.

Students who read extensively also make gains in writing proficiency (Elley and Mangubhai 1981, and Hafiz and Tudor 1989). This is probably because as students encounter more language, more frequently, through extensive reading, their language acquisition mechanism is primed to produce it in writing.

Students improve overall language competence

In addition to gains in reading and writing proficiency, research demonstrates that students who read extensively also make gains in overall language competence. For example, Cho andKrashen (1994) reported that their four adult ESL learners increased competence in both listening and speaking abilities through reading extensively. So Extensive Reading would seem to benefit all language skills, not just reading and writing.

Students become more motivated to read

It is highly motivating for students to discover that they can read in English and that they enjoy it. For this reason it is essential that the books are interesting to students and at a level appropriate to their reading ability. If students find the books compelling and interesting, and can understand them, they may become more eager readers. This can also help to boost their confidence and self-esteem as language learners.

Students develop learner autonomy.

Students can read anywhere, at any time, and reading extensively helps them become more autonomous learners. To promote learner autonomy extensive reading should be a student-managed activity. That is to say that students should decide what, when, where and how often they read.

Neuroscientific and social science studies have shown that people who read literary fiction extensively are more empathic. People who read novels about other people who are very different from themselves and their backgrounds are particularly empathic.

Conclusion
There are many benefits of Extensive Reading in language learning. These include gains in reading and writing competence, oral and aural skills, vocabulary growth, and increases in motivation, self-esteem and empathy. Students who read extensively also become more autonomous learners.
Seven Extensive Reading websites:

The Extensive Reading Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation whose purpose is to support and promote extensive reading.

Extensive Reading is a repository for information on extensive reading, with an emphasis on foreign language learning.

Rob Waring's website is another repository for information on extensive reading.

ER-Central is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to developing an Extensive Reading and Extensive Listening approach to foreign and second language learning. There are wealth of free Extensive Reading and Extensive Listening resources for students.

is an innovative and interactive series of beginner level easy-English graded readers for all ages 11 and up. The series follows an interactive gamebook format, in which the reader takes on the role of the main character and makes plot choices at set points in the story. These choices lead to one of eight different endings.

MReader is a website designed to help schools wishing to implement an Extensive Reading program. It allows teachers and students to verify that they have read and understood their reading.

ERF Graded Reader List is a comprehensive, searchable, downloadable database of graded readers from around the world providing useful information for educators and language learners.
Seven books and articles on Extensive Reading:

1. Day, R. and J. Bamford, 1998, Extensive Reading in the Second Language Classroom, Cambridge University Press.

2. Day, R. and J. Bamford, 2004, Extensive Reading Activities for Teaching Language, Cambridge University Press.

3. Day, R. and Bamford, J. (2002) 'Top Ten Principles for teaching extensive reading.' Reading in a Foreign Language. http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl/October2002/day/day.html

1. Waring, R. The Inescapable Case for Extensive Reading. http://www.robwaring.org/papers/waring_Nova_2011.pdf

2. Maley, A 'Extensive reading: why it is good for our students... and for us.' https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/extensive-reading-why-it-good-our-students%E2%80%A6-us

Stanley, G. Extensive Reading. https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/extensive-reading

Steiner, J. Reading for Pleasure.
www.orianit.edu-negev.gov.il/english/files/reading/articles/extenrdg.doc
I hope you find the articles, websites and resources useful. Are there any other Extensive Reading resources you've used with your students? Let me know in the comments below!
References
Cho, K., & Krashen, S. D. (1994). Acquisition of vocabulary from the Sweet Valley Kids series: Adult ESL acquisition. Journal of Reading, 37, 662-667.

Day, R. (1998) Extensive Reading in the Second Language Classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Day, R. and Bamford, J. (2002) 'Top Ten Principles for teaching extensive reading.' Reading in a Foreign Language.
http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl/October2002/day/day.html
Elley, W.B (1991) 'Acquiring literacy in a second language: the effect of book-based programmes.' Language Learning. 41. 375-411

Hafiz, F.M and Tudor, I. (1989) 'Extensive reading and the development of language skills.' ELT Journal 43 (1) 4-13

Maley, A (2008) 'Extensive Reading: Maid in Waiting' in B. Tomlinson (ed) English Language Learning Materials: a critical review. London/New York.

Maley, A 'Extensive reading: why it is good for our students... and for us.'

https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/extensive-reading-why-it-good-our-students%E2%80%A6-us (accessed 23 September 2016)

Prowse, P. 'What is the secret of extensive reading?'

http://www.cambridge.org/elt/readers/prowse1.htm (accessed 23 September 2016)

photo credit: Mikhail Pavstyuk

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Seven Benefits of Extensive Reading for English Language Students - Kieran Donaghy

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What is extensive Reading? In simple terms Extensive Reading is reading as many easy books as possible for pleasure, and can be contrasted with intensive reading which is slow, careful reading of a short, difficult text. Day and Bamford (1998), Day (2002), Prowse (2002), and Maley (2008 and 2009) have identified a number ...

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An extensive reading program was established for elementary level language learners at the British Council Language Center in Sanaa, Yemen.

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Extensive Reading is often referred to but it is worth checking on what it actually involves. Richard Day has provided a list of key characteristics of ER (Day 2002). This is complemented by Philip Prowse (2002). Maley (2008) deals with ER comprehensively. The following is a digest of the two lists of factors or principles for successful ER:

1. Students read a lot and read often.

2. There is a wide variety of text types and topics to choose from.

3. The texts are not just interesting: they are engaging/ compelling.

4. Students choose what to read.

5. Reading purposes focus on: pleasure, information and general understanding.

6. Reading is its own reward.

7. There are no tests, no exercises, no questions and no dictionaries.

8. Materials are within the language competence of the students.

9. Reading is individual, and silent.

10. Speed is faster, not deliberate and slow.

11. The teacher explains the goals and procedures clearly, then monitors and guides the students.

12. The teacher is a role model...a reader, who participates along with the students.

The model is very much like that for L1 reading proposed by Atwell (2006). It has been variously described as Free Voluntary Reading (FEVER), Uninterrupted Silent Reading (USR), Sustained Silent Reading (SSR), Drop Everything and Read (DEAR), or Positive Outcomes While Enjoying Reading (POWER).

What are the benefits of extensive reading?

Both common sense observation and copious research evidence bear out the many benefits which come from ER (Waring 2000, 2006). There are useful summaries of the evidence in Day and Bamford (1998: 32-39) and The Special Issue of The Language Teacher (1997) including articles by Paul Nation and others, and passionate advocacy in Krashen's The Power of Reading. (2004). The journals Reading in a Foreign Language and the International Journal of Foreign Language Learning are also good sources of research studies supporting ER. (see references for websites) And there is the indispensable annotated bibliography, http://www.erfoundation.org/bib/biblio2.php

So what does it all add up to?
Extensive reading develops learner autonomy
There is no cheaper or more effective way to develop learner autonomy. Reading is, by its very nature, a private, individual activity. It can be done anywhere, at any time of day. Readers can start and stop at will, and read at the speed they are comfortable with. They can visualise and interpret what they read in their own way. They can ask themselves questions (explicit or implicit), notice things about the language, or simply let the story carry them along.
Extensive reading offers Comprehensible Input
Reading is the most readily available form of comprehensible input, especially in places where there is hardly any contact with the target language. If carefully chosen to suit learners' level, it offers them repeated encounters with language items they have already met. This helps them to consolidate what they already know and to extend it. There is no way any learner will meet new language enough times to learn it in the limited number of hours in class. The only reliable way to learn a language is through massive and repeated exposure to it in context: precisely what ER provides.
Extensive reading enhances general language competence
In ways we so far do not fully understand, the benefits of ER extend beyond reading. There is 'a spread of effect from reading competence to other language skills ~ writing, speaking and control over syntax.' (Elley 1991) The same phenomenon is noted by Day and Bamford (1998: 32-39) but they even note evidence of improvements in the spoken language. So reading copiously seems to benefit all language skills, not just reading.
Extensive reading helps develop general, world knowledge
Many, if not most, students have a rather limited experience and knowledge of the world they inhabit both cognitively and affectively. ER opens windows on the world seen through different eyes. This educational function of ER cannot be emphasised enough.
Extensive reading extends, consolidates and sustains vocabulary growth
Vocabulary is not learned by a single exposure. ER allows for multiple encounters with words and phrases in context thus making possible the progressive accretion of meanings to them. By presenting items in context, it also makes the deduction of meaning of unknown items easier. There have been many studies of vocabulary acquisition from ER (Day et al 1991, Nation and Wang 1999, Pigada and Schmitt, 2006). Michael Hoey's theory of 'lexical priming' (Hoey 1991, 2005) also gives powerful support to the effect of multiple exposure to language items in context.
Extensive reading helps improve writing
There is a well-established link between reading and writing. Basically, the more we read, the better we write. Exactly how this happens is still not understood (Kroll 2003) but the fact that it happens is well-documented (Hafiz and Tudor 1989) Common sense would indicate that as we meet more language, more often, through reading, our language acquisition mechanism is primed to produce it in writing or speech when it is needed. (Hoey 2005).
Extensive reading creates and sustains motivation to read more
The virtuous circle - success leading to success - ensures that, as we read successfully in the foreign language, so we are encouraged to read more. The effect on self-esteem and motivation of reading one's first book in the foreign language is undeniable. It is what Krashen calls a 'home run' book : 'my first'! This relates back to the point at the beginning of the need to find 'compelling', not merely interesting, reading material. It is this that fuels the compulsion to read the next Harry Potter. It also explains the relatively new trend in graded readers toward original and more compelling subject matter. (Moses)

So why don't teachers use extensive reading more often?

A good question. When I conducted an inquiry among teachers worldwide, the answers came down to these:

a) Insufficient time.

b) Too costly.

c) Reading materials not available.

d) ER not linked to the syllabus and the examination.

e) Lack of understanding of ER and its benefits.

f) Downward pressure on teachers to conform to syllabi and textbooks.

g) Resistance from teachers, who find it impossible to stop teaching and to allow learning to take place.

Oddly, the elephant in the room: the Internet culture of young people, was not mentioned. There is work on the non-linear reading required by Internet users in Murray and Macpherson (2005), and articles on hypermedia by Richards (2000), and Ferradas Moi (2008) and some interesting reflections in Johnson (2006). The 'non-reader' issue will not go away but it is too important to deal with here and needs a separate article.

Extensive Reading for Teachers

My contention is that reading extensively, promiscuously and associatively is good for teacher, and for personal development. 'The idea of the teacher having to be someone who is constantly developing and growing as a whole human being as a prerequisite for being able to truly help his or her pupils to be able to do the same, is such a core truth of teaching, yet it is typically ignored in FLT. (Peter Lutzker)

Extensive reading helps teachers to be better informed, both about their profession and about the world. This makes them more interesting to be around - and students generally like their teachers to be interesting people. For our own sanity we need to read outside the language teaching ghetto. For the sake of our students too.

It also helps teachers to keep their own use of English fresh. As we saw, the research on language learner reading shows how extensive reading feeds into improvements in all areas of language competence. (Krashen 2004) If this is true for learners, how much more true for teachers, who risk infection by exposure to so much restricted and error - laden English or who only read professional literature? Regular wide reading can add zest and pleasure to our own use of the language.

Teachers who show that they read widely are models for their students. We often tell students to 'read more' but why should they read if we do not? Teachers who are readers are more likely to have students who read too.

Furthermore, the books we read outside our narrow professional field can have an unpredictable effect on our practice within it. So much of what we learn is learned sub-consciously. Its effects spread more by infection than by direct injection. And it is highly individual. Individuals form associative networks among the books they read. This results in a kind of personal intertextuality, where the patterns form and re-form as we read more different books. This gives us a rich mental yeast which we can use to interact with others, while still retaining our individual take on the texts and the world.

So Extensive Reading has a lot to offer - both for our students and ourselves. Read on!.

References.

Atwell, Nancie. (2006) The Reading Zone: how to help kids become skilled, passionate, habitual, critical readers. New York: Scholastic

Bamford, Julian and Richard Day. (2004) Extensive Reading Activities for Teaching Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Day, Richard, R. (2002) 'Top Ten Principles for teaching extensive reading.' Reading in a Foreign Language. 14 (2)

Day, Richard, R , Omura, Carole, Hiramatsu, Motoo. (1991) 'Incidental EFL vocabulary learning and reading.' Reading in a Foreign Language. 7 (2)

Day, Richard, R and Bamford, Julian.(1998) Extensive Reading in the Second Language Classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Elley, W.B (1991) 'Acquiring literacy in a second language: the effect of book-based programmes.' Language Learning. 41. 375-411

Ferradas Moi, Claudia. (2003) 'Hyperfiction: Explorations in Texture' in B.Tomlinson (ed) (2003) Developing Materials for Language Teaching. London/New York: Continuum, pp 221-233

Hafiz, F.M and Tudor, I. (1989) 'Extensive reading and the development of language skills.' ELT Journal 43 (1) 4-13

Hoey, Michael (1991) Patterns of Lexis in Texts. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hoey, Michael (2005) Lexical Priming. London: Routledge

Johnson, Steven (2006) Everything Bad is Good for You. New York: Riverhead.

Krashen, Stephen (2nd edition. 2004 ) The Power of Reading: insights from the research. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Kroll, Barbara (ed) (2003) Exploring the Dynamics of Second Language Writing.: Chapter 10 Reading and Writing Relations. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Maley, Alan (2008) 'Extensive Reading: Maid in Waiting' in B. Tomlinson (ed) English Language Learning Materials: a critical review. London/New York: Continuum pp133-156.

Moses, Antoinette, (2004) Jojo's Story. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Murray, Denise and Pamela McPherson (eds) (2005) Navigating to Read - Reading to Navigate. Teaching in Action (series) Sydney: NCELTR, McQuarie University

Nation, Paul (1997) 'The language teaching benefits of extensive reading.' The Language Teacher. 21 (5)

Nation, Paul and Wang Ming-Tzu, Karen (1999) 'Graded readers and vocabulary.' Reading in a Foreign Language. 12 (2)

Pigada, Maria and Norbert Schmitt (2006) 'Vocabulary acquisition for extensive reading.' Reading in a Foreign Language. 18 (1)

Prowse, Philip. 'What is the secret of extensive reading?' http://www.cambridge.org/servlet/file/store7/item620590/version1/CER_LALL_ART_PhilipProwseExtensiveReading.pdf (accessed 4 April 2007)

Prowse, P. (2002) 'Top ten principles for teaching extensive reading: a response.' Reading in a Foreign Language. 14 (2)

Richards, Cameron (2000) 'Hypermedia, Internet communication and the challenge of re-defining literacy in the electronic age.' Language Teaching and Technology. 4 (2,) 59-77.

Schmidt, Ken Lower level Extensive reading Opportunities for Lower-level Learners of EFL/ESL. on http://tesl-ej.org/ej13/int.html

Waring, Rob (2000) The 'Why' and 'How' of Using Graded Readers. Oxford University Press, Japan http://extensivereading.net/docs/tebiki_GREng.pdf

Waring, Rob (2006) 'Why Extensive Reading should be an indispensable part of all language programmes'. The Language Teacher 30 (7): 44-47

Useful Websites
http://www.erfoundation.org/bib/biblio2.php
http://sdkrashen.com
http://ijflt.com
http://www.extensivereading.net

www.erfoundation.org

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Extensive reading: why it is good for our students and for us

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What is Extensive Reading (ER)? Extensive Reading is often referred to but it is worth checking on what it actually involves. Richard Day has provided a list of key characteristics of ER (Day 2002). This is complemented by Philip Prowse (2002). Maley (2008) deals with ER comprehensively.

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Memorize real English phrases and chunks of language,
make your way to becoming fluent

Phrases are constantly being collected by the Phraseum community from blog posts,
news, presentations, interviews, emails and other authentic materials and real situations.

Displaying 1-11 of 11 results.

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Phrases are constantly being collected by the Phraseum community from blog posts, news, presentations, interviews, emails and other authentic materials and real situations. Displaying 1-11 of 11 results.

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I spend a lot of time looking at different web-based tools and apps and thinking about if and how they can be used for learning. Sometimes it takes some thought and at other times it's really obvious. With Phraseum it was instantly obvious that this was a really great tool for learning.

Phraseum allows you to collect words, phrases and sentences from anywhere on the web while you you browse and organise them into social phrasebooks.

Phraseum is a browser-based tool which can be activated from your browser toolbar. Simply create an account and then drag the 'Clipping button' bookmarklet to your favourites bar on your browser.

Once that's done you can just collect any words or phrases that you find online by highlighting them and then clicking on the bookmarklet. This opens up a window where you can add tags to the phrase and add your own private notes and annotations. The tags could be a definition, translation, part of speech or something about the context in which it could be used. You can then save the phrase into one of your phrasebooks. The phrases and phrasebooks can be private or they can be made public and so shared with others.

If you want to include specific words or phrases from a word document or PDF, you can also just type in the words or phrases you want to include in your phrasebooks, but if you save them from the web then Phraseum also stores a link back to the original source, so you can go back and see how the word or phrase is used in context. You can also get a link from the phrase to a translation from Google Translate.

Phraseum is social, so you can share phrases and phrasebooks with anyone else on the site and follow other people if you like the kinds of things they are saving and sharing. You can also click on any of the tags on your phrase to find other related words or phrases which have been saved by other users and add those to your own collection.

If you use social media with your students you can post the phrases you save through various social media channels so this is a great way to feed information and activities into something like a Facebook group or page or a Twitter feed that you use with students.

All of the entries you make to Phraseum can be edited and changed, so students can always add additional tags, change them and add the same entry to multiple phrasebooks.

Phraseum also enables you to follow people in a similar way to Twitter or Pinterest. If you follow people you can see their public phrasebooks and keep up-to-date with what they are saving.

This is really useful if you are using it with students, as by following them you can easily monitor their work and use the comments feature if you need to help, support or encourage your students.

Here are a few examples of phrasebooks I've created:

How to use Phraseum with students

You could get started just by creating a few of your own useful phrasebooks and sharing them with your students.

If you like to pre-teach vocabulary, a good way to do this would be to create a vocabulary phrasebook from a particular online article you would like your students to read. They can look at the phrasebook before they read and check they understand the vocabulary, or use it as a reference while or after they read.

You could also collect a phrasebook with a collections of more random words and phrases and see if the students can predict the genre or kind of text the phrases came from.

You can collect phrases into a phrasebook and ask students to suggest appropriate tags to add.

If you train your students to use Phraseum then they can start using it to create phrasebooks while they read. They can sort new words into specific groups. They could be grouped according to the source or topic or they could group words according to word classification such as parts of speech or types of collocation.

You can get students to share phrasebooks and crosscheck so that they share vocabulary and check that they have similar definitions or translations of the words.

You can send students on treasure hunts for specific things, for example searching for business related collocations. If they use this as the tag they will then be able to share their results together (any tag you click on shows you all other words and phrases which share that same tag).

Get students to use the phrasebooks to revise and review their vocabulary.

What I like about Phraseum

I love that it works in the browser tool bar. This makes it really easy and quick to access at any time you are online.

I really like the social aspect too. Being able to share and compare phrasebooks with other people is really useful.

It's great that it makes it easy for students to go back to the source of the word or phrase.

Saving phrases really encourages students to think about words within lexical chunks rather than as independent entities.

Phraseum can be used in multiple languages.

It's free.

I think this is a great tool to support more of a lexical approach to online learning. It can also support students digital literacy and study skills. I hope you and your students find Phraseum useful. Be sure to share in the comments any ideas you have for using it with your students.

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Creating social phrasebooks with Phraseum

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I spend a lot of time looking at different web-based tools and apps and thinking about if and how they can be used for learning. Sometimes it takes some thought and at other times it's really obvious. With Phraseum it was instantly obvious that this was a really great tool for learning.

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telescopictext.org is an experimental tool for creating expanding texts. It is based on telescopictext.com. The tools can be found by clicking Write in the navigation at the top. Texts will house an ongoing collection of selected texts. Resources provides help for using this website, and also any news, updates, guides, support and a Q&A.

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Words are like teenagers.

They are manageable individually, but once they start hanging out with each other, it can be difficult to figure out how they work as a whole.

Any parent or teacher who has taught a child to read will tell you that interpreting a text involves two steps. The first step involves decoding and defining individual words. The second (and more important) step is being able to understand what those words mean when they are grouped together as sentences and paragraphs.

Reading comprehension can certainly be difficult for kids with learning disabilities and differences, such as dyslexia, but there are plenty of students who struggle with novels and textbook chapters that are written at comprehension levels higher than their own.

The following reading tools can all be considered assistive technology for students who need them. However, they are available to all students and can be beneficial to anyone looking to gain a better understanding of a particular book, article, blog post, or any other piece of writing. These resources can also help teachers create inclusive classrooms and implement the principles of Universal Design for Learning.

One of the most innovative websites to be developed in the last several years, Rewordify.com is a free online tool that helps improve students' reading comprehension in multiple ways.

First, a user pastes or imports text into a text box on the site. Rewordify then analyzes this text, looking for words and phrases that may be difficult to understand. Once the site locates difficult or problematic language, it replaces it with simpler words to aid students' understanding. The Rewordifying Engine includes multiple settings so that users can choose from several reading levels. Users can click on the replacement words to display either the original, more difficult language or individual words' definitions (in a variety of forms - in the margins, in separate columns, or superimposed over the initial version of the text).

Students also have the option of reading the original and replaced words with built-in text-to-speech functionality for auditory reinforcement.

After Rewordify identifies the difficult words and phrases, it provides students with a series of activities to help them learn new vocabulary. One way it does this is by collecting troublesome text in a series of flashcards (which also offer integrated text-to-speech). The site can also administer quizzes in different formats (e.g., word bank, matching) to aid in the learning process.

Finally, Rewordify has a collection of classic literature (like Shakespeare's plays) and historic documents (like the Declaration of Independence) that students can access, read, and better understand by using the site's unique comprehension tools.

Created for students and teachers, Snap&Read Universal is a Google Chrome extension that reads language aloud (including text on Flash-based websites that typically can't be copied and pasted) using integrated text-to-speech with synchronized highlighting.

To aid in reading comprehension, Snap&Read allows students to use a text-leveling tool similar to the one found on Rewordify.com. Students can select text that they have a hard time understanding, and the Web browser extension will identify and replace difficult words with simpler ones. The level of linguistic complexity can be adjusted in the Options tab.

In addition, Snap&Read has a unique outlining tool that can also help with reading comprehension. After it is activated, students can highlight the main ideas of a reading, and those passages are automatically extracted and placed into an outline located in the browser's sidebar that can be easily edited. The outline can then be dragged and dropped into a word processor, like Google Docs, for students to integrate into a reading summary.

The idea behind Newsela is simple but powerful, and it can have a big impact on developing the reading comprehension of diverse learners. Newsela is a website that publishes current events articles each day on a variety of topics pertaining to most school subjects. Every article has five versions, each written for students at different reading levels. After a student reads the version that matches her skill level, she can take corresponding quizzes to test her knowledge.

A professional subscription to the site allows teachers to integrate Newsela more deeply and meaningfully into their classrooms. For example, they can gather data and track the reading progress of individual students or entire classes. They can also create and assign writing prompts based on particular articles as a means of further assessing their students' comprehension.

All told, Newsela provides a perfect platform for implementing accessible Universal Design for Learning principles - it invites users of various levels and with a range of abilities to participate fully.

Based on the idea that multisensory activities provide deeper and longer-lasting learning, Immersion Reading is an e-book technology that combines recorded audiobooks with synchronized highlighting of electronic text. The result of a partnership between Amazon.com and Audible.com, it allows students to read books with their eyes and ears at the same time, leading to better comprehension and retention of subject matter. Since it does not rely on synthesized text-to-speech and instead uses the vocal performance of a professional actor or broadcaster, it makes auditory reinforcement of written text a more authentic multisensory experience.

Currently, complete Immersion Reading is available using Amazon's Kindle Fire tablet and the Kindle for Android app. Users can also read and listen to books simultaneously on the Kindle for iOS app, but text highlighting is not supported on Apple devices at this time.

Another multisensory strategy for improving reading comprehension involves electronic graphic organizers, and Inspiration Software provides one of the best platforms for accomplishing this task. Available for both desktop computers and iOS devices, Inspiration allows students to create visual representations of the characters, themes, and plot summaries of works of fiction. It also lets them visually map the details of textbook chapters and current events articles. Any language that is included can be read aloud with text-to-speech technology. In addition, users can add links to Web-based articles and videos to provide supporting materials.

One characteristic of Inspiration that sets it apart from other mind-mapping software is its collection of readymade templates. Templates that can aid in reading comprehension include: Character Traits, Fiction Reading Notes, Plot Analysis, Compare and Contrast, and KWL Organizer (KWL is an acronym explaining what students already know, what knowledge they want to gain, and what they ultimately learned from a reading) .

It can be challenging for students to consume large amounts of written material during their academic careers. Nevertheless, getting through their reading assignments with solid comprehension is a key component of a quality education. Today, there are plenty of technology tools to help.

*Use the Noodle search tool to find a great school near you.

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5 Tech Tools To Aid Your Reading Comprehension - Noodle.com

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If you struggle to understand or remember your reading assignments, Noodle is here to help. Check out these 5 tech tools to improve your reading comprehension.

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Educational Technology and Mobile Learning

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September 27, 2014
One of the key concerns I often hear primary teachers vociferate revolves around the potential of technology in enhancing students reading comprehension skills. As a matter of fact, technology's role in this regard is phenomenal and there are now several web tools and mobile apps that are designed specifically for the improvement of students reading skills. These tools make use of a variety of activities and exercises all of which are geared towards providing students with meaningful practice in areas related to reading comprehension. Here are some of the key tools I would recommend to use with your kids and students to improve their reading comprehension skills.

Rewordify lets you read more, understand more, learn more words, and teach more effectively. It simplifies English, teaches vocabulary, creates learning materials, and lets you create documents to teach a global audience. It has many more features, and it's all free.

3- SpeakIt

SpeakIt reads selected text using Text-to-Speech technology with language auto-detection. It can read text in more than 50 languages.
This is how to use SpeakIt:

First select the text you want it to read.

Then click the icon to start listening.

When it is ready to read, the number of sentences is shown on the icon.

To stop listening at any time click pause

1- Reading Bear

Reading Bear is a great tool for helping kids learn to read. Reading Bear integrates both vocabulary practice (over 1200 vocabulary items) and phonetic awareness ( covering different phonetic principles and patterns of written English) into their lessons. All of these lessons are provided in the form of narrated presentations playable either as a video or as an interactive slide show. Presentations are available in seven different versions. In the fullest version, the narrator sounds out a word slowly and quickly, then blend it slowly, and finally (after an optional prompt) blend it quickly. As sounds are pronounced, the corresponding letters are highlighted. Then a picture is displayed illustrating the word, show a sentence (with the individual sounds again highlighted, karaoke style), and finally show a video illustrating the sentence.

Read with Me is a web platform that for monitoring oral reading progress on any web device. It provides students with practice fluency at home on any web device and to keep track of miscues. They can also use it to record and listen to their own reading.

5- Language Garden

Language Garden is a treasure trove of materials and resources on teaching language literacy. Using Language Garden , students will be able to learn about language plants, read and listen to narrated stories, and compose their own language plants.

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5 Great Tools to Improve Students Reading Comprehension Skills

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September 27, 2014 One of the key concerns I often hear primary teachers vociferate revolves around the potential of technology in enhancing students reading comprehension skills. As a matter of fact, technology's role in this regard is phenomenal and there are now several web tools and mobile apps that are designed specifically for the improvement of students reading skills.

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An eVoc strategy is an electronic or technology-based strategy that teachers can use to develop students' vocabulary learning and interest in words. We use the term eVoc both to highlight that the strategies rely on digital tools and resources and to suggest the evoking of learning potential that is possible when technology and media are part of the instructional mix.

As literacy educators, we need to use the tools that 21st-century technologies afford us (International Reading Association, 2009). Nearly 100% of schools in the United States have Internet access (Wells & Lewis, 2006). In 2010, we can assume that access to information and communication technologies (ICTs) will continue to improve with the increased availability of inexpensive mobile devices and the U.S. Department of Education's inclusion of technology in education reform (National Education Technology Plan, 2010).

Although the pervasiveness of ICTs in all aspects of 21st-century life is quite clear and well accepted, it is less clear how teachers might successfully integrate technology into literacy instruction and specifically vocabulary instruction. Improving students' vocabulary is an area of urgent need if we are to develop the advanced literacy levels required for success in school and beyond (Biancarosa & Snow, 2006; Graves & Watts-Taffe, 2008). Vocabulary is also an area where teachers are asking for guidance on instructional approaches, strategies, and materials (Berne & Blachowicz, 2008). We believe that digital tools and media are available in most schools that teachers could harness now to improve vocabulary learning, tools that capture the interest of students and that provide scaffolds and contexts in which to learn with, and about, words more profitably.

The purpose of this article is to highlight 10 eVoc strategies that hold promise for improving vocabulary learning in intermediate grades and that employ digital tools and resources that are readily available and feasible to implement in today's schools. Given the fast pace of technology innovation, not all of these eVoc strategies have direct research evidence; however, they are all supported by research on effective vocabulary instruction, much of it carried out with print materials (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development [NICHD], 2000; Pearson, Hiebert, & Kamil, 2007), and multimedia learning (Fadel & Lemke, 2008; Mayer, 2001).

We encourage teachers to select one or more of these eVoc strategies to try out and adapt to their particular students, curricula, and teaching context. We hope that they share their successes and limitations with their colleagues and with the broader literacy community on the Internet. In the following sections, we first summarize research on vocabulary learning and then present 10 eVoc strategies organized by three principles of vocabulary instruction applied in a digital context. Across all three areas, the role of interest and engagement with words and word learning is addressed.

What does research tell us about vocabulary learning?

Even within our increasingly visual world (Kress, 2003), words remain our pr imar y means of communicat ion. The Nat ional Reading Panel Report (NICHD, 2000) and the RAND Reading Study Group (2002) heightened the importance of vocabulary instruction for student literacy learning. Books and articles on vocabulary instruction are popular (e.g., Beck, McKeown, & Kucan, 2008; Blachowicz & Obrochta, 2005; Graves & Watts-Taffe, 2008), and research on vocabulary is enjoying renewed attention.

Why is vocabulary learning so important? To understand a text, one must understand the words that represent the ideas or concepts. Studies confirm the high correlation (0.6 to 0.8) between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension (Baumann & Kame'enui, 2004; Pearson et al., 2007). We also know that there are degrees of word knowledge, from "I've never heard this word before," to "I know this word and can apply it in multiple contexts" (Lubliner & Scott, 2008), as well as metacognitive knowledge about how to apply prior knowledge and strategies to vocabulary learning (Beck et al., 2008).

Of particular concern to educators is the development of academic language. Although we learn oral language that enables us to speak to one another fairly easily, learning academic language is more complex because it involves abstract literacy tasks and language not customarily used in oral speech (Fang, Schleppegrell, & Cox, 2006; Zwiers, 2007). Academic language is a second language, because all literate people must learn it to enable them to access academic content (Solomon & Rhodes, 1995).

For English learners (ELs), academic language may represent the task of learning a third language. Thus, special care must be taken to give them every advantage in learning academic language, particularly in content areas. For example, research suggests that Spanish-speaking students can be taught to recognize cognates (i.e., words with similar meanings that look and sound alike in two languages, such as operation [English] and operación [Spanish]) and use cognate information to comprehend English texts (Lubliner & Grisham, in press; Proctor, Dalton, & Grisham, 2007).

We know that there is a wide range in students' word knowledge and that as early as age 5, there is a 30-million-word exposure gap between "haves" and "have nots" (Hart & Risley, 1995). The results of this gap are manifested in students' literacy learning, particularly reading comprehension. The Matthew Effect, where strong readers get stronger and weak readers get weaker (Stanovich, 1986), as well as the fourth-grade reading slump (Chall & Jacobs, 2003), can be attributed, at least in part, to a less developed store of conceptual knowledge and vocabulary.

The good news is that we can improve vocabulary learning and address the gap by actively and systematically teaching vocabulary to our students (Pearson et al., 2007; Zwier s, 2007). Teaching words, morphology, and word origins is an important component in any vocabulary learning program. It is also necessary to provide multiple exposures to the word in different contexts and to teach word learning strategies, such as using context clues, cognate information, and deciding when a word is important to know and remember. Although teaching can make a real difference in vocabulary learning, explicit teaching of vocabulary is not enough; a dedicated teacher can teach perhaps 300-400 words per year (Beck et al., 2008).

Direct vocabulary instruction is essential, but research indicates that students with well-developed vocabulary learn many more words indirectly through reading than from instruction (Cunningham & Stanovich, 2001; Nagy & Herman, 1985). Two strategies that encourage children to read widely and deeply are to provide an array of reading materials that capitalize on their interests and to set aside time for reading during the school day and at home (Trelease, 2006). Conversations about their reading with adults and peers also strengthen students' word learning (Biemiller & Boote, 2006).

Whether directly teaching vocabulary and word learning strategies, or increasing students' volume of reading, an important research-based principle that applies across the board is to promote a lively interest in words through student expression and participation in a learning community that enjoys playing with words, builds on individual interests as well as curriculum needs, and emphasizes self-efficacy in word learning (Beck et al., 2008; Graves & Watts- Taffe, 2008).

These recommendations to improve vocabulary by encouraging wide reading, teaching words and word learning strategies, and promoting active learning and interest in words are not new. The purpose of this article is to encourage teachers to apply these research-based recommendations in new ways, using digital tools, media, and the Internet-that is, to deploy technology in service of vocabulary learning.

Despite the ubiquity of technology and media, it is not on teachers' priority lists of vocabulary instruction strategies and materials (Berne & Blachowicz, 2008). We address this gap by offering 10 eVoc strategies organized into three instructional areas. First, we offer strategies for teaching words and word learning strategies. Second, we focus on on-demand digital language tools to support just-in-time strategic vocabulary learning and reading. Third, we suggest ways to increase the volume of reading to support students' incidental vocabulary learning. Along the way, we offer ways to stimulate students' interest in words and self-efficacy. Technology, when used flexibly in response to students' varied needs and interests, can and should be part of the solution to the vocabulary gap.

Teaching and learning vocabulary

The first five eVoc strategies focus on explicit teaching of vocabulary and helping students become independent word learners.

eVoc strategy 1: Learn from visual displays of word relationships within text

Developing breadth and depth of vocabulary depends on building connections between words and developing elaborate webs of meaning (Boulware- Gooden, Carreker, Thornhill, & Joshi, 2007). Graphic organizers and visual displays highlight the relationships between words (Baumann & Kame'enui, 2004). Two of our favorite word mapping tools that support visual representation are Wordle and Wordsift.

Wordle is a free Web application that allows you to create a word cloud based on the frequency of words in a particular text. It can be used to stimulate students' thinking about the meaning, importance, and relationship of words as they analyze, create, and publish Wordles. To create a word cloud, you paste text into the applet and then manipulate the visual display by selecting the color scheme, layout, and font. Word clouds can be used to highlight keywords and themes to prepare students for reading, as well as prompt discussion after reading.

For example, we created the word cloud in Figure 1 based on an online National Geographic Kids article about the troubling disappearance of honeybees in North America. Questions about this Wordle might include the following:

What does the word cloud suggest this article is about?

What seem to be the most important words?

How do these words go together?

Why do you think the Wordle designer chose this shape of word cloud? (Hint: Think of what bees look like when they swarm.)

Figure 1: Word cloud for bees using Wordle

Students will most likely conjecture that the article is about bees. Some students may notice the less prominent words-dead and poisons-and wonder if the bees are sick. When asked about the color choice, they may speculate that the author/designer chose bright colors to get your attention, or that black goes with poison. What is important in this kind of prereading discussion is students' close attention to the words and how they might relate to one another and to the larger text that they represent. Students actively engage with meaning as they draw on background knowledge about words and concepts as well as on visual literacy skills.

The same bees word cloud could prompt a discussion after reading the article, guided by questions such as,

Do you think the word cloud captured what was most important to learn?

Are there keywords or ideas that are left out?

What superordinate terms reflect the main ideas?

As students manipulate the word cloud's layout, color, and font, they integrate verbal and visual representations, strengthening the multimedia learning effect (Fadel & Lemke, 2008) while developing an important digital literacy skill in our visual society.

For some students, the creative design aspect serves as the hook to engage them in meaning making; for others, it is the words themselves that entice them to explore meanings and relationships. Although Wordles can be published to the public gallery and printed, another option is to use a screen capture program to save the Wordle as an image, creating a bank of images on your desktop or school server. They can then be inserted into a document, PowerPoint, class blog, or other text.

WordSift is another free word cloud tool available on the Internet. Like Wordle, a word cloud is created based on text that is cut and pasted into the application. Although WordSift does not support artistic design of the display, it offers important learning supports. Each word can be clicked on to show a collection of related images, a word map, and a listing of sentences from the text that present the word in different contexts. WordSift also sorts words by difficulty and identifies academic words. Note that both Wordle and WordSift support several different languages, a feature particularly helpful to ELs (Adesope, Lavin, Thompson, & Ungerleider, 2010).

eVoc strategy 2: Take a digital vocabulary field trip

In the original vocabulary field trip (Blachowicz & Obrochta, 2005), the teacher begins with a large poster of a topic, such as weather. Students are seated on the carpet, and the teacher leads a field trip that includes having students observe and record what they saw as they read books and other materials. As students volunteer weather words, the teacher records them on sticky notes or tag board and puts them up beside the poster. After the observations are concluded, the teacher returns the students' attention to the words, repeating them and linking them to the poster. Next, students sort the weather words into conceptually related groups and engage in other semantic activities.

Teachers can create a digital version of a vocabulary field trip using a free online program called TrackStar (trackstar.4teachers.org). Like the popular WebQuest (Dodge, 1995), TrackStar allows you to collect a series of websites and annotate them so that students follow the online journey.

On the left side of the figure you can see the questions and multiple websites that we selected to guide students in finding out about weather in Alaska, where the Iditarod takes place. We selected a context where weather is extreme to heighten students' interest and to provide a dramatic contrast to their own local weather. We begin with a website featuring photos and video of dogsledding in Alaska and asked students to respond with descriptions of the weather conditions.

Next, students visit a website on the aurora borealis and look for connections between the aurora and Alaskan weather. They complete the virtual field trip with a visit to a website on weather comparisons, where they examine the differences between local weather and Alaskan weather. Throughout this process, they visit several teacher-selected websites and gain knowledge about words through multiple exposures in different contexts and through different media, including reading, viewing, writing, and conversation.

eVoc strategy 3: Connect fun and learning with online vocabulary games

No list of technology applications for vocabulary would be complete without mention of the vocabulary games that are available for free on the Internet. We recommend two sites that offer a variety of activities to engage students in playing with words and word meanings: Vocabulary Games and Vocabulary. Games include crossword puzzles, picture-word matches, word scrambles, and 8 Letters in Search of a Word (a game that can draw you in unexpectedly as you race to create as many words as possible from eight letters within the time limit). The games are supplemented with themed word lists, test preparation items, and activities on prefixes and suffixes. These sites can be bookmarked for students' independent practice and can provide a basis for whole-group instruction.

eVoc strategy 4: Have students use media to express vocabulary knowledge

The previous eVoc strategies all require student interaction, from manipulating a visual word map to taking an online vocabulary field trip. This strategy focuses on students' vocabulary representations in multiple modes-writing, audio, graphic, video, and animation (Nikolova, 2002; Xin & Rieth, 2001). The first set of examples draws on promising research with universally designed digital text (Dalton & Proctor, 2007), suggesting the benefit of having students develop word meaning as they read a definition, view graphics, listen to the word, write or audiotape a personal connection to the word, create a caption for a graphic, and complete an interactive word map (Proctor et al., 2007; Proctor, Uccelli, Dalton, & Snow, 2009). Figure 2 illustrates how students communicate word knowledge as they create a caption for an image. These types of activities offer students different modes of representation and expression and can be created with a variety of composing tools and formats, such as digital stories, photo essays, podcasts, and so on.

Figure 2: Students create captions to illustrate their understanding of contribute

Note. From Dalton, B., Proctor, C.P., Snow, C.E., Uccelli, P., & Mo, E. (2008, September). Improving reading comprehension for struggling readers: Understanding the role of vocabulary development, guided strategy use, and Spanish language supports in a digital reading environment. Final report to the U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences.

A multimedia composing and presentation tool that is often underused is PowerPoint. We have certainly seen many poor PowerPoint examples (e.g., the ubiquitous three bullet points and silly clip art approach). However, we have found that PowerPoint can be used creatively for expression. In addition to benefiting from reading and viewing multimodal representations of vocabulary, recent research suggests that students may also benefit from creating multimedia representations of words in PowerPoint slides that are hyperlinked together (Pritchard & O'Hara, 2009). Working with fifth graders, Bridget (first author) created an example of a multimedia glossary item for camouflage, a word from the science curriculum (see Figure 3).

Figure 3: Multimedia glossary example of camouflage using a PowerPoint template

The model elaborates word knowledge in context and illustrates how design influences the message. To provide a structure to guide students in creating their own entries, Bridget created a template that students could fill in and adapt. The template includes a space for the word, a short definition, an explanation for why the word is important, a graphic, an audio recording or sound, and a source. As students create and revise their entries, they reflect on the word's meaning (What does this mean?), its representation (How does this particular graphic and sound effect illustrate this word?) and process (What images did you consider and discard?).

Students' glossary items can be combined into a master document and sorted by word to show multiple meanings and representations (Pritchard & O'Hara, 2009). Another approach to compiling students' individual work is to teach them how to hyperlink their slides so that a view of one version of a word includes hyperlinks to others' versions of that word. Although this example uses PowerPoint as the media format, these types of vocabulary collections can be created in different modes and published online as a word wiki or word blog. This kind of collaborative publication and engagement with an external audience is characteristic of successful multimedia learning (Fadel & Lemke, 2008). There really is no end to the creative possibilities when students use media to develop and celebrate the wonder of words.

eVoc strategy 5: Take advantage of online word reference tools that are also teaching tools

Many online word reference tools are also excellent teaching resources. For example, the Visual Thesaurus website complements its fee-based content with free information such as the Behind the Dictionary and Teachers at Work columns and teacher-created themed word lists. Many use multiple distribution platforms to reach learners wherever they are. For example, the Back in School webpage of Dictionary.com (dictionary.reference.com/studenthandbook) links to Facebook, has an iPhone application, a free toolbar application, a word of the day that is communicated on Twitter or as a text message on your mobile phone, and a free weekly word explorer audio podcast on iTunes.

Develop strategic digital readers with "on-demand" vocabulary help

This section highlights two online tools that provide just-in-time support while reading. Students can develop their strategic learning repertoire as they customize their own collection of supports.

eVoc strategy 6: Support reading and word learning with just-in-time vocabulary reference support

Whether avid or reluctant reader, we all encounter unfamiliar words in our reading and need strategies for what to do when this occurs. Rather than using print dictionaries or asking the teacher, students can learn to use online dictionaries and thesauri. When they have access to word help on demand, at the point of need, both monolingual (Reinking & Rickman, 1990) and bilingual (Yoshii, 2006) students tend to use them more often than print references and improve their understanding. Many of these Internet-based tools are free (they vary in difficulty, so try out different applications to determine the best fit for your students).

Some word reference tools can be mounted on the browser toolbar, allowing you to right click on any word to look it up and have a brief definition display. More comprehensive dictionaries can be bookmarked for easy access while reading on the computer. The increasingly popular e-book readers, which are becoming more common in schools and homes, usually provide dictionary help in the form of audio pronunciations of the word and brief definitions.

Two popular free online dictionaries/thesauri are Reference.com and Merriam-Webster. Tools expressly designed for students include Word Central from Merriam-Webster , Back in School from Dictionary.com, and Yahoo Kids! American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language.

A strength of digital text is its capacity to communicate in multiple modes, enhancing understanding by providing two channels of input, visual/spatial and linguistic (Mayer, 2001). Merriam-Webster offers an online visual dictionary (visual.merriam-webster .com/index.php), and Enchanted Learning provides a picture dictionary for young children. Be on the alert for educational sites that offer specialized picture glossaries, such as NASA's online space picture dictionary. These sites can be added to your browser favorites. And, finally, it is important to teach students to notice and strategically use the vocabulary help that is offered on various sites, such as the word wizard that pops up when students are reading Scholastic News Online.

eVoc strategy 7: Use language translators to provide just-in-time help for ELLs

Successful ELs leverage first-language knowledge to develop their English (Adesope et al., 2010; Jiménez, García, & Pearson, 1996). Online dictionaries often support multiple languages (e.g., the Yahoo! Kids dictionary supports 90 languages), and EL students should be taught to look for this option. Another resource is the language translator. The value of a translator is that it supports learning words as they occur naturally in authentic text and allows students to view bilingual versions of a text side by side so that they can use their first-language knowledge to develop their English vocabulary. You can paste text into the translator field, select the input and output languages, and view the translation (see Babelfish, Google translator, and Bing Translator). You may also download a toolbar extension that translates any webpage automatically. Although these tools are not perfect (and may never be, given the nuances involved in translation), they are a good place to start for ELs. In fact, students often find the translator's mistakes both humorous and an entry point for discussing the nuances of word meanings.

Expand wide reading and incidental word learning with digital text

Reading widely and deeply is important for vocabulary development and reading comprehension. These two strategies help increase students' volume of reading and, indirectly, their incidental word learning (Cunningham & Stanovich, 2001; Nagy & Herman, 1985).

eVoc strategy 8: Increase reading volume by reading digital text

Class libraries, read-alouds, book clubs, and independent reading time during the school day can increase the amount and variety of student reading. However, it is challenging to find the resources and time required to provide up-to-date material, to be responsive to students' interests, and to accommodate readers at different reading levels. Teachers can dramatically expand text options for students by including reading on the Internet and other digital texts. A high percentage of students already use the Internet for homework; we can extend their learning and exploration of words in context as they read and view varied text genres on the Internet, or read texts downloaded onto a class computer, an e-book reading device, or a smartphone.

Increasing the reading of informational text is especially important for learning in the content areas, and informational content reigns supreme on the Internet. To use current events as one example, the currency of information and use of media to communicate the news is unparalleled. To begin, we recommend bookmarking quality sites that students read on a regular basis. Many educational publishers and organizations provide free online content, including articles and media about current events, some of which are generated by students themselves. A few of our favorites include the following:

A recent visit to some of our favorite sites included articles about the top stories in the news, a student blog about animal myths featured in the animated film Fantastic Mr. Fox, and an explanat ion of threesided snowflakes. The texts include graphics, video, and sound, along with written text, providing many ways of engaging with the content. Students can rotate taking on the role of Internet news repor ter, scanning bookmarked sites for interesting news to share with the class or post to a class blog. Students can also pursue individual interests as they read digital text during sustained silent reading.

A second example is based on literature students read in the classroom, generating interest in more reading by developing intertextual connections (Hartman, 1992). Using a digital poster or PowerPoint screen to show a splash of book cover images and screen captures of websites, movie trailers, and blogs invites students to pursue their interests in particular authors, books, genres, popular culture, and media.

For example, a screen displaying a book that the class is reading, such as Kate DiCamillo's The Tale of Despereaux, links to several screens, one featuring her website and online interviews, another to a site with video clips from The Tale of Despereaux movie, and still another highlighting other fantasy books and comics. The splash screens can be printed out to build a wall mural that students expand as they continue reading.

These examples highlight the value of teachers previewing Internet content. However, students will also need support in learning how to search and find their own reading materials on the Internet. This will necessitate teaching Internet safety, something that is now required to obtain E-Rate funding (Protecting Children in the 21st Century Act, 2009), as well as strategies for searching and evaluating Internet content (Henry, 2006).

eVoc strategy 9: Increase reading volume by listening to digital text with a text-to-speech tool and audio books

A common concern among educators is the readability of websites and Internet content. One powerful strategy is to allow students to listen to text with a text-to-speech (TTS) tool or, when available, listen to audio narration. This provides students with access to age-appropriate content and grade-level curriculum, a right mandated by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004. For struggling readers, TTS increases their reading speed, reduces stress, and for some, but not all, improves comprehension (Elkind & Elkind, 2007).

Fortunately, there are free TTS tools that can be mounted on the browser toolbar for easy access while reading, such as Click, Speak for Firefox (click speak.clcworld.net), or downloaded to your desktop, such as the NaturalReader free TTS utility. Balabolka is a PC-based TTS application that can run off a thumb drive. Some e-book readers such as Microsoft Reader are free to download and can be used with public domain content that is part of their e-book library.

There are also commercial TTS tools that range in price depending on the features, such as those from Kurzweil, Aeques, TextHELP, and Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic (RFB&D). Note that students who have a documented print disability may obtain digital versions of core curriculum texts from organizations such as Bookshare and RFB&D. To explore strategies for listening to text, check out the Learning Through Listening website. Johnson (2003) also offered suggestions for using audiobooks in the classroom in her Reading Online article, "Audiobooks: Ear-resistible!"

eVoc strategy 10: Combine vocabulary learning and social service

Many of these eVoc strategies use Web 2.0 technologies to promote social learning. They also tap into students' natural desire to create, to participate in communities, and to develop strategic competence. Recent reports on students' digital literacies highlight the importance of this kind of learning (Ito et al., 2010). This final eVoc strategy is a free online vocabulary game, Free Rice that has attracted millions of users, young and old. We believe it offers an opportunity to promote students' engagement with words while contributing to the social good.

Free Rice presents a word and four answer choices on the screen. For each correct answer, the United Nations World Food Programme donates 10 grains of rice to countries in need. The game adjusts its difficulty level based on the response, filling a bowl with rice as the player adds to his or her score. As a class activity, the teacher could project the website on screen and guide students in playing the game for 5 minutes daily, discussing choices (e.g., "I think it must be 'x' because 'y'") and strategies (e.g., "Any words we can eliminate? Does the root word give us a clue we can use?"). Students can play individually or with a partner, reporting back to class on their rice earnings and sharing intriguing new words.

In closing, we invite you to go digital with word learning. These 10 eVoc strategies use technology to support the wide reading, direct instruction, active learning, and interest in words that we know are essential to vocabulary development. In a digital world, knowing how to use the tools and resources available online is part of becoming a strategic learner. We hope that this list provides a useful and evocative jumpingoff point for integrating technology and media into your students' vocabulary learning experience.

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10 Ways to Use Technology to Build Vocabulary

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Drawing on research-based principles of vocabulary instruction and multimedia learning, this article presents 10 strategies that use free digital tools and Internet resources to engage students in vocabulary learning. The strategies are designed to support the teaching of words and word learning strategies, promote students' strategic use of on-demand web-based vocabulary tools, and increase students' volume of reading and incidental word learning.

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Best 25+ Storyboard template ideas on Pinterest | Storyboard online, Storyboard pdf and Storyboard

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Find and save ideas about Storyboard template on Pinterest. | See more ideas about Storyboard online, Storyboard pdf and Storyboard.

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Cartoon Brew

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A new piece of software - both free and open source - wants to upend the market for digital storyboarding applications. Meet Storyboarder.

Storyboarder is intended to be a fast and simple tool, with six drawing tools and easy-to-rearrange panels. The app is also integrated with external software, allowing for the ability to do roughs in Storyboarder, and with the click of one button, refine the artwork in Photoshop.

Other capabilities including an option to import storyboards drawn on paper by taking a photo of the panels with your phone, and the Shot Generator, which allows the user to type a description in the sidebar and instantly get properly positioned 3D models, over which details can be added.

Boards can be exported to Premiere, Final Cut, Avid, PDF, and animated GIF formats.

Wonder Unit, the small design studio that developed Storyboarder, explains on their website why they made it free:

Wonder Unit's primary objective is to develop great stories and produce movies. For the past few years, we've been developing software tools for internal use. The development and use of processes and technology is incredibly important for creativity. Because we are just one studio, we feel that it would be a waste for only us to benefit from these tools. Creativity shouldn't be a competitive sport. We believe a rising boat should lift all tides - or at least try to. If we share our tools and processes, ideally, the creative ecosystem will benefit. There is no competitive advantage to keeping tools and tech private - at least for us.

Storyboarder is available for Mac, Windows, and Linux, and can be downloaded HERE.

If you have used Storyboarder already, feedback in the comments would be welcome on how it compares to industry-standard Toon Boom Storyboard Pro as well as online tools like Boords.

Amid Amidi is the publisher and editor-in-chief of Cartoon Brew. Read his full bio HERE.

Latest News from Cartoon Brew

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This New Storyboarding Software Is Both Free And Open Source

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A new piece of software - both free and open source - wants to upend the market for digital storyboarding applications. Meet Storyboarder. Storyboarder is intended to be a fast and simple tool, with six drawing tools and easy-to-rearrange panels.

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Storyboard templates

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75+ Storyboard Templates - PDF, PPT, DOC, PSD | Free & Premium Templates

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Free StoryBoard Template Download. Use Free Samples, Examples in Word, Excel, PDF & Printable Format.

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Storybird - Read, write, discover, and share the books you'll always remember.

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Become a better writer with Storybird's creativity tools. Online courses, challenges, and reader feedback will help you improve your writing.

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Rostering

Compatible with popular learning management systems such as Google Classroom, Clever, Canvas, ClassLink, and Schoology, Storyboard That makes organizing your students, classes, and assignments a breeze. In addition, sharing assignments with students and keeping track of their progress is as easy as clicking a button.

Real Time Collaboration

Knowing how to work together is an important part of a child's education. Students will love working in pairs and in small groups on the same storyboard!

Want your students to add writing to their storyboards? We've got tons of options for speech and text.

The storyboard creator free trial for teachers allows you to try out all of the premium features for two weeks. Thousands of copyable activities, worksheets, and posters are yours to use and keep in your storyboard library. Educators love Storyboard That because it helps students process and understand the information in a deep, meaningful way. When students storyboard, they are actively engaged in the learning process and can make connections between the text and their own lives.

Storyboards also promote higher-level thinking by encouraging students to synthesize information and think critically about what they have read. Finally, storyboards are a great way to assess student understanding because they provide a visual representation of student learning.

Storyboard That is the perfect tool for novel lesson plans and activities because it's so easy to use and extremely versatile. With Storyboard That, you can create a wide variety of storyboards such as the story from the main character's perspective, or any other character's point of view.

By combining the storyboard maker with your lesson plans, you can adhere to the curriculum and required standards, while ensuring that your students will be engaged and excited to learn. Another added bonus is that our premade lesson plans are aligned with the Common Core!

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Free Storyboarding Software - Online Storyboard Creator | StoryboardThat

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Create storyboards with our free storyboard software! ⚡ Try 1 month for $1 ✩ Filmmakers, teachers, students, & businesses all love using ❰Storyboard That❱ for storyboarding & comics online!

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Storyboards raise the visual bar. Projects that include a storyboard are more likely to side-step the blunders that can result from miscommunication during production.

More...

In this post, we'll discuss the latest storyboard software, storyboard apps and iPad styli. Plus we'll provide you with a bunch of storyboard templates for free.

There's a variety of storyboard software on the market, ranging from software with preset characters to professional storyboard software that requires drawing skills. You can find everything from traditional licensed software to web-based solutions to mobile apps. There is something for everyone here. Alternatively, you could download your own storyboard templates.

StudioBinder is an intuitive, online storyboard software solution. It provides robustness and ease of use to fit most creatives. Simply upload images and you've got a storyboard!

Customize the layouts, shot list details, and aspect ratios. You can also view your storyboard as a fullscreen slideshow, which makes it ideal for presentations. StudioBinder's storyboard software features are just $20/mo.

Out of the UK comes Moviestorm. Promoted as "a filmmaking tool for everyone," so you don't need to be an artist. You can create everything from storyboards to full pre visualization, and various theme-based add-ons provide additional robustness. Pricing starts at $225.

FrameForge offers various bundles, each with increasing complexity and price points. All levels include optically accurate virtual cameras. The highest-end packages allows users to define exact equipment specs for dollies & cranes, precise lighting, calculations for sun positioning, reports and more. Software ranges from $399-899.

Power Production provides a few storyboard solutions, each with varying complexity. It offers customizable characters and presets for locations and props. They offer script imports, character animations and other integrations. Power Production's software starts at $190 for Storyboard Quick while the more robust StoryBoard Artist Studio sells for $900+.

StoryboardPro is a professional web application from Toon Boom. Tailored specifically for commercial storyboards artists, the software includes animated and live boards with all the bells and whistles a serious storyboard artist would need. They offer permanent access for $999 and a monthly subscription for $58.

This is a combo solution. Boardo is an After Effects plugin for adding cool storyboard animations and effects to existing images, but you'll need to create your images in outside software. We recommend using vector-based drawing apps on an iPad such as Paper (free), Astro Pad ($30) and Noteshelf ($9).
Afterwards, you can combine the finished sketches in After Effects/Boardo to create animated boards you can export as videos. Boardo starts at $30.

No matter the software you go with, there's nothing that can beat the precision of drawing a sketch by hand and importing the results. If you have an iPad handy (no pun intended), we suggest purchasing a stylus for sketching your storyboards by hand. Here's our top 5 picks for best stylus for storyboard artists. All of these stylus were designed for iOS devices and all include palm rejection options.

Here's a video from Indy Mogul, covering the basics and importance of storyboards and shooting boards with examples from a short film script.

Once you receive your storyboard from an artist, make sure to include a copies in your final production wrap binder. Storyboards and revisions can be easily backed up and shared electronically these days with solutions like Dropbox or Hightail.

If you're looking for a more A-to-Z production management solution, StudioBinder makes it easy to manage your production files online, in addition to managing crew, creating schedules, and sending out call sheets. Plus it's free to get started.

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That's the basics on storyboard software and templates. We hope you found this post and the free downloads helpful.

Now, if you have decided the sketching is a little too much and you want to hire a storyboard artist for a more polished presentation, check out our article on 8 Websites to Find & Hire a Storyboard Artist.

What storyboard software do you use? Did we miss anything? Leave us a comment below

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