Vocabulary Video Challenge
The 9th annual vocabulary video challenge hosted by The New York Times Learning Network is underway. The challenge asks middle school and high school students to create fifteen second videos about any of the nearly 2400 words on The New York Times Learning Network’s Word of the Day list (link opens a PDF). In their videos […]
A 15 Second Video Contest for Students
The New York Times is hosting a video contest called the 15 Second Vocabulary Video Challenge. The contest is open to middle school and high school students. The contest asks students to produce a fifteen second video about one of the words from The New York Times Learning Network’s word-of-the-day list (link opens a PDF). […]
Burning Vocabulary – A Chrome Extension for Expanding Your Vocabulary
Burning Vocabulary is a new Chrome extension that is designed to help users learn new words while browsing the web. Users of the Burning Vocabulary Chrome extension can mark and save any words on a page that are new to them. Definitions of saved words are provided by Burning Vocabulary too. Whenever a word saved […]
Ten Sites & Apps to Help Students Learn New Vocabulary Words – Updated for 2019-20
There was a time when I regularly published longer lists of helpful sites and apps. Over the last few years I got away from doing that with any regularity because I wasn’t sure that anyone really benefited from them. But in the last month I’ve been asked a handful of questions that could have been […]
Free PDF Containing 30 Pages of Illustrated Vocabulary Lessons
I get what feels like zillions of emails every day from companies that I have never heard of. 90% of them go straight to the trash bin after a three second glance. But then every once in a while I get one that is useful. Today’s random, but useful email came from a company called […]
DIY Emojis
Emoji Builder is a fun little site for making your own emojis. To design your own emoji on Emoji Builder you simply pick a base face then add on eyes, mouth, and accessories from menus on the site. When you’re done designing your emoji you can download it as a PNG. The site doesn’t require […]
A Good Site for Vocabulary Lists and Practice Activities
Vocabulary.com is an excellent vocabulary study service offering thousands of vocabulary practice lists and activities for students in elementary school through graduate school. In addition to lists of SAT, GRE, and other test prep words, you can find vocabulary lists that are attached to novels, historical documents, famous speeches, and current news articles. When you sign […]
Vocabulary Lists, Jazz, Grateful Dead, Conversations, and Search
On March 29, 1990 Branford Marsalis sat in with the Grateful Dead. It was an unlikely pairing. It produced amazing music! Here’s a sample to enjoy. I’m sharing this music trivia because of a conversation that I saw on Facebook this week. The gist of it was that a friend who teaches high school language […]
Showing Learning at a Higher Level Through Vocabulary
This is a guest post from Rushton Hurley, founder of Next Vista for Learning. Can exploring a single vocabulary word show learning at a higher level? One teacher in California decided to have students try focusing on a single idea from her English course, and one student decided to work with how language develops: A […]
An Easy Way to Quickly Create Vocabulary Lists from Documents – Best of 2015-16 School Year
All of this week I am on the road working with teachers in Texas, Kansas, and Arizona. Rather than scrambling to write blog posts at the end of each day, I’m taking this time to feature some of the most popular posts and new tools of the 2015-2016 school year. Last winter I was contacted […]
10 Sites and Apps for Vocabulary and Spelling Practice
Last night I watched the conclusion of the Scripps National Spelling Bee. A recap of the finals is available on the Associated Press YouTube channel. Like many others who watched the finals, I have to admit that there were some new-to-me words in the final rounds. That reminded me that I have a bunch of sites […]