It’s easy always been easy to find lyrics on the Internet, though often there are inaccuracies and so many lyrics sites have tons of annoying pop-up ads. I thought I’d create a “The Best…” list that shares places where there appear to be correct lyrics and no pop-ups.

You might also be interested in these other “The Best…” lists:

The Best Music Websites For Learning English
The Best Online Sites For Creating Music
The Best Online Karaoke Sites For English Language Learners

Here are my choices for The Best Places To Find Lyrics On The Web:

Lyrster is a search engine that appears to search only collections of lyrics to songs. Just type in a few words and your results show links to the complete lyrics.  It performed quite well in my tests. The sites it searches include some, but I don’t believe all, of the other sites on this list.

Lyrics Fly is one of the best sites out there for finding song lyrics. You can also use it to find music audio and videos, but I’m primarily interested in the lyrics. The Make Use Of blog calls it “lyric search on steroids.”

Lyrics On Call

Lyrics Mode

Just Lyrics

E Lyrics

I’d certainly be interested in hearing other suggestions, so please feel free to leave them in the comments section.

I’d certainly be interested in hearing other suggestions, so please feel free to leave them in the comments section.

If you found this post useful, you might want to look at previous “The Best…” lists and also consider subscribing to this blog for free.

Until last year.

I had an exceptionally challenging mainstream ninth-grade English class last year (see Have You Ever Taught A Class That Got “Out Of Control”?) and nothing I tried was successful in helping one student develop self-control. He repeatedly told me he knew he needed to make changes and that he wanted to — and I’m convinced he was sincere — but he just couldn’t do it.

As a last resort, I suggested that he go outside to read his book during our silent reading time (which began each class) and, before he began to read, close his eyes for a couple of minutes and see himself acting as the student he wanted to be — cooperative, focused, not always reacting to provocations. He was willing to give it a try, and it had an immediate positive effect and produced much better results than anything else we had tried. We continued with this daily practice for the rest of the school year and, even though he wasn’t the “perfect” student, he handled himself much, much better.

After having that experience last year, I was certainly open to a recent idea from Jim Peterson, a talented Vice-Principal at our school.

He wanted to know if I would be interested in trying out some visualization techniques with my ninth-grade class this year — not around behavior issues (I don’t have those problems with this year’s class), but with helping them use it to become better readers and writers.

So, between my positive experience with my challenging student last year and my super-duper positive experience following Jim’s advice in the past (Have You Ever Taught A Class That Got “Out Of Control”?), of course I agreed to give it a try.

I became even more enthusiastic after Jim had me do a quick and simple visualization technique to demonstrate what he was talking about. He had me stand straight with one of my arms sticking outward in front of me. Then he had keep my arm outstretched and straight, and move it to the back as far as I could without straining. Next, he asked me to note the location my hand was pointing to at its limit.

After that, he had me close my eyes and mentally visualize (without doing the physical movement) doing the same thing several times — stretching as far as I could — starting off doing it slowly and then repeating it several times faster. Each time I would move my arm back to the front and then back again. After doing that for perhaps a couple of minutes, he told me to open my eyes and physically repeat the movement. Much to my surprise, I was able to easily move my arm much farther back than I had the first time.

This was a great example of his idea for making it work in the classroom — if students could visualize becoming better readers and writers, perhaps it would help them actually become ones.

Jim came to my classroom (he’s also working with another teacher who’s trying it out) and did a short interactive presentation on the conscious and subconscious mind, and combined it with visualization exercises like the one he did with me. Students seemed pretty enthusiastic — they are priding themselves on being “guinea pigs” for lessons that get replicated by other teachers (see “I Know My Brain Is Growing…” and “I Like This Lesson Because It Make Me Have a Longer Temper” (Part One)).

Twice a day prior to beginning a writing or reading activity I’ve begun to ask students to take twenty seconds to either close their eyes or keep their eyes open and visualize themselves being excellent readers or writers in the upcoming activity. After a few days, it appears that most are taking it seriously.

I’ll be asking students to incorporate some specific reading goals in the weekly goal-setting students do (see The Best Part Of The President’s Speech & How I’ll Use It). We’ll be doing some simple assessments twice a month to see what kind of progress students are making.

There’s more to the preparation that we did for that class, but I can share those details in a later post.

I did want to say that I was so impressed with my ninth-grade students’ reaction that I tried something similar with my Intermediate English class. I was surprised to find that they were not as enthusiastic as my ninth-graders, but were willing to give it a try. Thanks to Diarmuid Fogarty, I was also able to find some intriguing literature on the use of visualization with English Language Learners (see Zoltán Dörnyei, scroll down to “Chapters in edited volumes” and look at Chapters 2-5).

With my Intermediate English class, I’ll be giving monthly assessments to both my class and another class using the same curriculum that will function as a control group.

We’ll see what happens. My belief is that it might very well help the students who think it will help them. And that taking a few seconds to focus more certainly can’t hurt.

Have you tried anything like this with your students?

I’ve been sending it out for three years, and have about six hundred subscribers now. You can see all the past issues here, and subscribe to it here.

Efren Peñaflorida, who started a “pushcart classroom” in the Philippines to bring education to poor children as an alternative to gang membership, has been named the 2009 CNN Hero of the Year.

For the past 12 years, Peñaflorida and his team of teen volunteers have taught basic reading and writing to children living on the streets. Their main tool: A pushcart classroom.

Stocked with books, pens, tables and chairs, his Dynamic Teen Company recreates a school setting in unconventional locations such as the cemetery and municipal trash dump.

Many English Language Learners in the United States are from Mexico. Accessible materials on any high-interest topic helps motivate students to be more engaged in learning, plus, with The Day of the Virgin of Guadalupe, students bring a whole lot of prior knowledge to make make the resources even more accessible to them.

So here’s another “The Best…” list — The Best Sites For Learning And Teaching About The Day Of The Virgin Of Guadalupe:

My top choices for materials accessible to English Language Learners are (not in order of preference):

A short article (with audio support for the text) and slideshow from Minnesota Public Radio.

An audio slideshow from a Texas newspaper that provides a good overview of the day’s history.

An article and slideshow of the Basilica de Guadalupe in Mexico City.

Another slideshow of images from various celebrations.

I want to add a slideshow from the Albuquerque Journal about a local celebration of that day to that collection. It has beautiful pictures and great music, though the narration is a bit stilted and probably not very accessible to English Language Learners. Happily, though, there’s only narration for a small portion of the show and most of it is music only.

As always, feedback is welcome.

If you found this post useful, you might want to consider subscribing to this blog for free.

I’m adding a few of them to The Best Online Sources For Images:

Stockvault

Dreamstime

Stock.xchng

This list is a little late, but these resources can be used for an engaging lesson on any day of the year! I’ve included quite an eclectic mix of sites.

Here are my choices for The Best Resources For Learning About World Toilet Day & The Issue Of Public Sanitation In The Third World:

Of course, ESL Holiday Lessons has a very accessible lesson on the day specifically geared towards English Language Learners.

Why Is World Toilet Day Necessary? has some good basic information.

Experts call for end of flushing toilets on World Toilet Day is a short article.

A Brief History Of Toilets comes from TIME Magazine.

On the lighter side:

Here’s a slideshow on strange toilet designs.

The strangest toilets from around the world is a series of images.

There’s an annual poll on the best public restrooms in the United States. You can see all the winners here.

14 of The Best Seats In The House is another series of unusual images.

As always, feedback is welcome.

If you found this post useful, you might want to explore the other 350 “The Best…” lists and consider subscribing to this blog for free.

Here’s an excerpt from that interview:

“…Pinker, the author of “How the Mind Works” and “The Blank Slate,” acknowledges that academic explainers have their own faults. “Academics lack perspective. In a debate on whether the world is round, they would argue ‘no,’ because it’s an oblate spheroid,” he said. “They suffer from ‘the curse of knowledge’: the inability to imagine what it’s like not to know something that they know. That makes them underestimate the sophistication of readers and write in motherese rather than explaining concepts from the ground up.”

That sounds like a great quality a teacher should have:

The ability to imagine what it’s like not to know something that they know.

Each year I do a unit with my students where they evaluate different neighborhoods using their own criteria. This year, I thought it might also be useful for them to see the criteria that others use to evaluate communities.

So, here are my choices for The Best Lists Of “Best Places To Live”:

World’s Happiest Places

Interactive Map On The Happiest Places In The U.S.

Best Places To Live

Another Best Places To Live

Best Counties To Live In

Countries With The Best Quality Of Life

The Ten Happiest Countries In The World

America’s Best Places To Live

World’s 20 Best Places To Live

World’s Friendliest Countries

As always, feedback is welcome.

If you found this post useful, you might want to explore the other 350 “The Best…” lists and consider subscribing to this blog for free.

However, even though I’ve added to each of the lists, and tried to remove sites that no longer exist, I haven’t adjusted any of the rankings on many of them since they were first posted — I’ve just added new ones to the bottom of each post.

So, in 2010, I’ll be revisiting many of them and revising the rankings. Stay tuned for many new and improved “The Best…” lists!