Teaching English in Primary School

Interactive whiteboard resources: Topmarks

2012-02-06T15:36:00.002+01:00

Topmarks Education website includes a selection of resources suitable for using them on an interactive whiteboard. Although it is addressed to native speakers of English, many activities can be useful in the EFL primary classroom.

Songs and rhymes for very young learners

2012-01-13T14:27:00.002+01:00

Muffinsongs video channel collects a good number of children's songs and nursery to sing along.

Another collection of similar songs -this time in an interactive Java format- can be accessed from this blog.

Some online resources for young learners

2012-01-12T14:12:00.000+01:00

In this blog post there are links to a set of Flash digital activities aimed at nursery or first levels of primary education.

Some resources for promoting early reading skills

2012-01-07T21:11:00.005+01:00

Reading is Fundamental web site includes a set of resources (readings, games, songs, colouring images...) aimed at pre-school children. Some of them can be also useful in the primary EFL classroom. These are a couple of examples:

Caterpillar, Caterpillar song.

House for Sale story.

Language activities related to football

2011-12-27T16:00:00.000+01:00

Soccerlingua presents a set of five games aimed at practising some basic vocabulary and structures through games based on football.

Merry Christmas

2011-12-16T21:18:00.004+01:00

Some nursery rhymes

2011-12-13T12:49:00.003+01:00

This website includes links to a set of traditional nursery rhymes displayed in sequences of four pictures that can be used as a poster on the interactive whiteboard (and listen to or read along a particular rhyme) or can be printed out (and make booklets, reading cards...)

Storybird

2011-12-07T15:25:00.004+01:00

Storybird allows the user to choose from a set of pictures drawn by a professional artist in order to create thir own stories. It somehow reverses the process of visual storytelling, i.e. from words to pictures, and requests the creator of a new story to start with the image and "unlock" the story inside.

This video explains the process

A couple of examples of books created by Storybird users:

Two Ways on Storybird
Colors Of The Rainbow on Storybird

Eurolib

2011-12-01T15:43:00.005+01:00

"The European Children’s Travelling Language Library, is a European Union funded project. It is targeted at motivating children that have recently started to learn a foreign language to:
Exposure them to the rich heritage of European languages and cultures
Be motivated to learn languages
Build a love of reading as the best form of autonomous lifelong learning
Reinforce emerging literacy.

(...) illustrated children's books in six European languages will travel from school to school across Europe. Each school has the library for a period and has to carry out a number of educational and collaborative activities (...) The target group for the project is students in their first year of learning a foreign language (...) Initially the libraries will be available in Czech Republic, Finland, Italy, Spain, Turkey and the UK and later in other countries".

Further information

An online activity to practise numeracy skills

2011-11-24T17:03:00.004+01:00

Ann and Addem's Dartboard Game allows children to reinforce oral identification of numbers while practising mental arithmetic.

CLIL resources

2011-11-23T16:57:00.004+01:00

The Andalusian educational authorities have just published on the Internet a set of teaching units aimed at working on different topics from different subjects in English.

Several activities created with LIM

2011-11-22T17:07:00.000+01:00

LIM (Libros Interactivos Multimedia) is a free authoring tool that allows the creation of activities for the classroom. Some teachers of English have shared their outcomes in this webpage.

Example: INVERTEBRATES

A selection of activities related to Christmas

2011-11-17T10:49:00.004+01:00

These are some ideas for celebrating Christmas in the English classroom:

LearnEnglishKids website includes a set of activities on Xmas.

Make a Snowman, for instance, can be nice for young children. It allows pupils to make decisions in order to design their own snowman. After the handicraft activity, students can be requested to describe their snowman. Alternative: children in pairs give directions to each other for creating their snowman, e.g. "It is wearing a brown hat"... Related story.

Whose Present can be a nice choice for identifying oral vocabulary related to toys and presents.

Primary Resources also collects a good number of materials about Christmas.

Christmas Around the World, for instance, is a Power Point presentation with facts about ways of celebrating Xmas around the world. It can be downloaded and edited in order to adapt the language to your students' needs.

An idea for follow-up activities:

The teacher introduces the topic by eliciting information about the Xmas festivals presented in the document.
Students listen to and read the text.
Students in group prepare questions for a quizz on the information in the presentation.

Christmas Coordinates. A mathematical challenge for older students.

The Twelve Days of Christmas. A presentation to accompany the singing of the traditional carol of that name.

Woodlands Junior School website includes the following activities:

An online advent calendar to learn about country flags and Christmas traditions.

Information about British traditions.

Using mobile devices in the classroom

2011-11-04T09:51:00.002+01:00

In this post from TeachingEnglish website the following video presents some ideas about how mobile devices can be used in the EFL classroom. The topic can be debatable especially when related to some teaching contexts: wouldn't there be a risk of overusing or misusing these devices in large groups?

Voki

2011-10-17T10:08:00.002+02:00

Voki is a simple online tool often used in the EFL primary classroom. It is based on the selection of an avatar which will utter any word or sentence (up to 60 seconds long if using the free option; 90 seconds are allowed to Classroom Voki users). It works as follows:

1. Select a character

2. Change the look
3. Add voice via microphone, text to speech or upload a file.
4. Choose a background
5. Click Publish to email or get code

The Voki web site also includes a set of teaching ideas.

Pic-your-wits vocabulary games

2011-10-03T11:07:00.003+02:00

Pic-your-wits is a set of vocabulary games (actions, animals, household objects...). The goal is to identify the word represented in a picture in less than 20 seconds. It can be useful for revising vocabulary on the interactive whiteboard.

Online language exercises

2011-09-07T13:18:00.000+02:00

OUP New English File Online website includes some useful resources to practise grammar, vocabulary, listening, reading, and pronunciation.

Howjsay: a free online pronunciation dictionary

2011-09-05T12:20:00.005+02:00

Howjsay provides a list of around 150,000 English words that can be heard in a clear standard pronunciation. Although it includes quite a lot of publicity, the search is easy and quick and the quality of the sound good enough to be used in the classroom.

When the result of a search appears in pink, the word can be heard once and again just by placing the mouse over it. Furthermore, it allows to list up to 15 entries by writing them separated by semicolons: a very useful option for practising aural recognition of close phonemes.

Build Your Wild Self: a tool to create fantastic characters

2011-04-16T19:32:00.004+02:00

Build Your Wild Self allows the creation of fantastic characters made up of a variety of parts of animal or human bodies. It can be useful for working on descriptions.

Several online resources presented in a Teachers' Day in Donostia

2011-03-30T15:02:00.003+02:00

These are the links to some websites mentioned at the 2011 MacMillan Teachers' Day held in San Sebastian earlier this month: Moshi Monsters Glogster. Examples: grahamstanley, forever, blankglog. Web Tools for EFL

A TV programme aimed at learning English

2011-03-17T13:32:00.004+01:00

Play TV shows are addressed to Catalan speaking children with the aim of helping them learn English.

Online games for young learners

2011-03-16T15:50:00.002+01:00

Whiz Kid Games web site presents a set of nine interactive games that can be suitable for young learners or learner with special needs. The language is clear and the activities simple. They can be useful and fun especially when an interactive whiteboard is available.

Interactive online activities

2011-03-15T09:58:00.000+01:00

Click 'n' Learn website offers a good range of online activities aimed at learning and revising lexicon and structures. Although it is addressed to secondary education students, a good number of the activities will surely turn out useful and attractive to primary learners.

Children's books to be read and listened to

2011-03-14T16:37:00.002+01:00

MeeGenius website includes six free picture books that can be read and listened to.

Online language games

2011-03-09T12:08:00.004+01:00

From this blog I get to know about some online interactive games that can be helpful in the classroom. These are three of them:

Wheel of Fortune Revision Game Level 1
It is shaped like a team quiz competition. Useful for revising the alphabet, prepositions, greetings... with the whole class, especially with the aid of an interactive board.

Past Simple Verb Tense
Good for revising past simple forms.

Character Scrapbook
A nice tool to work on the language of descriptions.

More games

Stories read by children

2011-01-14T15:29:00.001+01:00

I learn from Teacher Training Videos about Smories, a collection of stories written for children and read out by children. Although many of them can be hard to to follow without pictures or text by young EFL students, some others can be really motivating.

An example:

Mommy! No More Singing!

Twist Our Words

2011-01-13T13:42:00.000+01:00

Channel 4 proposes to play a word game by selecting words from a given list and creating sentences with them. A short video is then generated in which some Channel 4 personalities utter the sentence word by word.

Rhyming dictionaries

2011-01-12T15:59:00.007+01:00

There are several online rhyming dictionaries that can be helpful for practising pronunciation or creating short poems in the classroom.

These are three examples:

Rhymes.net

WriteExpress Online Rhyming Dictionary

Poetry.com Rhyming Dictionary

help us find

A couple of resources to create cartoons

2011-01-07T13:45:00.006+01:00

Comic Creator allows to create short cartoons (from one to six panels) by using some simple and clear black and white pictures. Students choose characters and props, add captions and dialogues and print them out.

MakeBeliefComix has a wider range of characters and they can be chosen in a variety of moods. This site also offers some blank three-panel cartoons to be printed out and filled in on paper.

Merry Christmas

2010-12-22T15:02:00.004+01:00

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to anyone who may drop by this blog.

Christmas card on Prezi

Certificate maker

2010-11-25T15:07:00.003+01:00

Scholastic has created an online certificate maker to reward students.
Teachers can choose a body, hair, clothes, accessory..., Next they a name and then choose one of these messages:

... is working really hard
... is reading very well
... has made us happy today
... keeps on getting better and better
... is a great person to have in our class

English phonemic chart

2010-11-12T16:36:00.002+01:00

Sounds Right is the British Council's first pronunciation chart for learners and teachers of English. Each phonetic symbol is supplemented with examples and audio.

Carol Read's ABC of Teaching English

2010-11-11T09:29:00.002+01:00

Carol Read is an expert in teaching English to primary children. Some interesting contributions on issues related this area are beautifully displayed in her blog Carol Read's ABC of Teaching English.

A reading activity on the language of instructions

2010-10-27T10:43:00.004+02:00

BBC KS2 Bitesize web site offers a range of online activities to practise English, Maths and science. Click on the picture above to see an exercise aimed at thorough reading of instructions. There are further activities to work on the language of different text types.

British Council wiki

2010-10-14T10:51:00.002+02:00

The organizers of the 'British Council Teachers Conference: Celebrating 70 Years of Quality Language Teaching' have created a wiki aimed at collecting information, feedback, resources and links related to the contents of the events held in Bilbao, Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia.

Using photography in the classroom

2010-09-24T14:25:00.002+02:00

An interesting article on the use of photography to support learning.

Measuring oral production

2010-09-16T12:53:00.005+02:00

The Centre international d'études pédagogiques website includes short clips with language learners' oral productions in several languages which illustrate the different competency levels established by the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages.

European Day of Languages

2010-09-15T14:51:00.002+02:00

The European Day of Languages has been celebrated every year since 2001 on 26 September at the initiative of the Council of Europe. Its general objectives are alerting the public to the importance of language learning, promoting the rich linguistic and cultural diversity of Europe, and encouraging lifelong language learning in and out of school.

Information about events can be found in this web page.

Writing short stories

2010-09-10T11:42:00.003+02:00

Petites històries web site offers sets of 3, 6 or 9 pictures related to a topic (e.g. cats, images for fairy tales such as "The Emperor's New Clothes"...) that can be arranged in the desired order and suplemented with text. The outcome can be printed out or recorded.

Habitats and animal classification

2010-05-10T21:02:00.004+02:00

Thanks to English at Intxaurrondo Hegoa School blog, I've come across some useful and amusing online activities to practise animal classification and animal names related to different habitats.

African Savannah

African River

North American Forests

Backyard Animals

All of them are part of Sheppard Software website, a site with a good number of resources useful for CLIL lessons especially.

Earth Day

2010-04-29T10:00:00.005+02:00

Although a bit late to celebrate this year's Earth Day, this video can be useful to practise a simple structure such as 'I want...' and link it to environmental issues. Furthermore, it could serve as a starting point to express ideas about other environmental, social or ethical concerns within short projects or other kinds of activities that require oral or written output.

Benchmarking CLIL

2010-04-13T12:07:00.002+02:00

BeCLIL website presents and contains the outcomes of a European Comenius project carried out between 2004 and 2007. Its main objective was to identify good practice in CLIL classrooms in order to provide teachers -or other people involved in language learning through content areas- with hints and ideas to improve their teaching.

LearnEnglishKids

2010-04-13T11:23:00.004+02:00

The British Council's website for young learners of English, LearnEnglish Kids, has a new layout providing easier access to its sections and introducing some new features. It also includes direct links to TeachingEnglish and LearnEnglish (aimed at teenager and adult learners)

Bilingual education in different autonomous communities

2010-04-12T16:05:00.003+02:00

Thanks to Educantabria TV Congress Channel, we can access interesting lectures and presentations. Among the videos from the VII Jornadas Nacionales: Secciones Bilingües, we find the following two, which can be of interest to get an idea of foreign language learning project implementation in several autonomous communities in Spain:

Experiencias autonómicas en organización de programas bilingües: Educación Primaria

Experiencias autonómicas en organización de programas bilingües: Educación Secundaria

Educational videos in English

2010-04-12T15:35:00.004+02:00

NeoK12 website gives access to an organised collection of educational videos for Nursery, Primary and Secondary classes.

Videoteca educativa also presents a small selection of recommended videos to be used in the English classroom.

Drama

2010-03-09T11:32:00.004+01:00

These are some links to webstites that include advice and resources to use drama in the primary classroom:

Primary resources: Playscripts

The English e-corner: Drama activities

Tom's TELF Drama (video recordings): The Giant Pumpkin, The Scary Hike, The Gingerbread Man, The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

Learning on the Move

2010-02-23T12:10:00.003+01:00

Learning on the move (British Council resource) collects a set of activities such as comprehension games, stories, phoneme recognition activities...
Another useful tool from the British Council is this Phonemic Chart where symbols can be associated to good patterns of articulation.

A good collection of links to websites related to primary school subjects

2010-01-28T16:00:00.004+01:00

Coxhoe Primary School website displays selections of interesting websites related to a good number of curriculum subjects. Some resources can be useful if working through projects or in a CLIL approach.

Language of the Month

2010-01-27T10:01:00.000+01:00

Teachers and students at Newbury Park Primary School in Ilford carry out a project called 'Language of the Month’ to celebrate the different language backgrounds of its pupils. The scheme introduces everyone to some of the 40 languages spoken in the school community.

Turtle, tortoise, or terrapin?

2010-01-26T19:24:00.003+01:00

From Wikipedia:

"Although the word turtle is widely used to describe all members of the order Testudines, it is also common to see certain members described as terrapins, tortoises or sea turtles as well. Precisely how these alternative names are used, if at all, depends on the type of English being used.

British English normally describes these reptiles as turtles if they live in the sea; terrapins if they live in fresh or brackish water; or tortoises if they live on land. However, there are exceptions to this where American or Australian common names are in wide use, as with the Fly River turtle.
American English tends to use the word turtle for all freshwater species, as well as for certain land-dwelling species (e.g. box turtles). Oceanic species are usually referred to as sea turtles, and tortoise is restricted to members of the true tortoise family, Testudinidae. The name terrapin is typically reserved only for the brackish water diamondback terrapin, Malaclemys terrapin; the word terrapin being derived from the Algonquian word for this animal.^[11]
Australian English uses turtle for both the marine and freshwater species but tortoise for the terrestrial species."

Online stories

2010-01-20T16:22:00.002+01:00

Els contes del Tom i la Laia is a collection of six online stories in English, which can be read and listened to. They are supplemented with activities.

Searching the web for particular types of documents

2010-01-20T12:35:00.002+01:00

Juhuj is a search engine that allows refining our quest according to the type of file we are interested in. It can be useful when we are looking for presentations related to a topic, we prefer a Word document in order to edit it easily, etc.

Webquests

2010-01-12T12:32:00.003+01:00

From this Matrix of Webquests we have access to some webquests in English that could give us ideas for designing projects.

Online dictionaries

2010-01-12T11:20:00.003+01:00

Browsing through some classroom blogs related to EFL in Primary, in Blogging in Arteixo I've come across a reference to these two visual dictionaries:

- Sashi, a visual dictionary that combines Wiktionary content with Flickr images.
- Moving into English e-Glossary, a collection of terms with definitions, pictures and sentences managed by Hartcourtschool Publishers.

Moreover, the following resource is also mentioned: Howjsay, a practical pronouncing dictionary.

Some CLIL tasks designed by teacher trainee students

2010-01-12T10:21:00.002+01:00

This wiki collects some tasks designed by teacher trainees as part of their course assignments.

Activities related to different subjects

2010-01-12T10:11:00.003+01:00

This webpage from the Utah Education Network site gives access to several sets of activities, some of which could be useful when working through CLIL projects.

Activities and facts about bugs

2010-01-12T09:50:00.004+01:00

Zoom in on True Bugs website includes a glossary, information and an online activity to classify some invertebrates.

The Animals Save the Planet

2010-01-09T22:43:00.003+01:00

The Animals Save the Planet website presents several short cartoons where advice to take care of our environment is given. The shorts are funny and contain just a sentence at the end of each sketch. Further explanations about the issues mentioned in the sketches can be found on the How You Can Help section.

Articles on CLIL

2009-12-02T11:11:00.002+01:00

These two educational magazines (in Spanish) have recently published articles on CLIL implementation:

Cuadernos de Pedagogía, number 395, November 2009.

Prácticas en educación bilingüe/plurilingüe (mentioned in a former post)

Creating videos from Power Point presentations

2009-12-02T11:02:00.002+01:00

Slideboom website offers a free tool to convert Power Point presentations into Flash videos. After installing the required software, presentations can be uploaded. Once the the file is converted (it maintains transitions, sound, etc.), an embedding code is provided.

EnglishSongsDVD.com

2009-11-27T10:45:00.000+01:00

A good collection of video clips aimed at young learners of English can be found in this video channel.

This is an example:

Schoolhouse Rock!

2009-11-26T20:30:00.004+01:00

I've just watched a lively video about English prepositions in a blog I follow. After browsing through the Internet for a bit more of information, I have found out that it belongs to the Schoolhouse Rock! series. Some of the clips are related to grammar and can be useful to help students revise or reinforce their knowledge of various parts of speech.

This is an example:

2009-11-12T11:38:00.003+01:00

The first issue of Prácticas en educación bilingüe/plurilingüe magazine contains a variety of school practice examples and resource recommendations related to CLIL.

Furthermore, Bilingual Education Platform - BEP Ning site pays special attention to teachers' exchange, resource organisation, news, etc... focused on CLIL as well as some other issues related to the teaching of second languages.

Free Rice

2009-11-03T22:25:00.003+01:00

I read in this post from Palabras Tendidas blog about Free Rice, a non-profit website run by the United Nations World Food Program together with the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.

You can choose a topic from a selection of subjects (Geograhy, Art, English, Spanish, etc...) and try to answer questions in a quiz. For every right answer, ten grains of rice are donated by the UN World Food Program to help fight hunger in the world.

ESL Young Learners

2009-11-03T11:25:00.003+01:00

"ESL Young Learners offers free fun materials for English language learners. These include:
- Original stories and simplified versions of classic texts
- Full PDF print-friendly short stories streamed via Scribd
- Short texts ideal for classroom use
- Glossary & activities to accompany texts
- All texts simplified and graded according to level
- Fun listening and watching materials"

Crickweb: Interactive primary activities

2009-10-28T09:26:00.007+01:00

I learn from a message in Anglès 365 distribution list about Crickweb. This site contains a good collection of primary online activities based on the British curriculum. They are classified according levels and subjects. It is worth browsing through them because many can be useful in the CLIL classroom or in other methodological approaches just to reinforce a topic from the textbook. To get an idea of the type of resources you can find there, try these two simple activities about sound recognition and instrument classification or this one, useful to practise the names of some vegetables. The range of activities is wide; some of them are open-ended, like this one where the students have to write dialogues in a story.

Maths

2009-10-27T09:00:00.000+01:00

Math is Fun website offers a well-organised selection of maths activities that can be useful in the English classroom in different ways. Thus, it provides many activities with instructions and puzzles which require thorough reading, as in this game, or online exercises such as this money master, useful to reinforce skills learned in the maths lessons. Furthermore, a visual dictionary of mathematical terms is also included.

A Bilingual Project

2009-10-26T10:35:00.003+01:00

The web site of IES Sierra Morena Secondary School allows us to get to know some of the materials they use in their bilingual project. Although these online resources are addressed to compulsary secondary students, some activities can also be very useful for primary pupils working in a CLIL approach. This page gives access to several sequences of activities around diffent topics.

BBC Schools

2009-10-16T13:56:00.004+02:00

BBC Schools is a web intended to provide practice and reinforcement of school contents from the Primary and Seondary curricula in the UK. Many of its resources can be also used by students of English as a foreign language, especially in classrooms working in a CLIL approach or at home as a kind of 'voluntary homework'.

This is a selection of four activities which combine content with oral or written comprehension skills practice:

Weather Report

The Recycling Game

Plants and Animals in the Local Environment

Moving and Growing

VII Jornadas Nacionales sobre Secciones Bilingües

2009-10-16T13:26:00.004+02:00

Thanks to Fernando Trujillo via his blog De Estranjis, I've been following the contents of a Congress on Bilingual Schools that is being held these days in Santander. These are the links to a series of posts on this event: Post 1, Post 2, Post 3, Post 4, Post 5, Post 6, Post 7, Post 8.

Comic Book Creator

2009-10-02T13:31:00.003+02:00

EduComics Project is a European Comenius activity which will deal with the use of e-comics in education. They intend to use the following software for creating the classroom materials:

Comic Book Creator is a tool that allows the creation of dynamic web comic books. An author can create an e-comic book by combining images of characters, pictures, background, text in balloons which can be placed in the frames of the pages of the book in that way and style desired. The produced dynamic web comic books are highly interactive flash based books that provide a great page flipping animation control opportunity as well as features like zooming, printing and easy navigation.

Research on L2 oracy

2009-09-26T17:14:00.002+02:00

I read in this post of De Estranjis blog about a doctoral thesis on the emergence of L2 oracy in bilingual education. A short summary highlights the main advantages of teaching school subjects in a second language within a CLIL approach.

Slide presentations related to music

2009-09-09T12:12:00.004+02:00

Bulletin Boards for the Music Classroom website contains a large set of PPT files related to songs in its Downloads section.

Some of them contain lyrics, e.g. "Don't Worry, be Happy", and some other just show a sequence of pictures to help follow the song, such as this one: "I Know an Old Lady"

CLIL Practice: Perspectives from the Field

2009-09-01T14:35:00.003+02:00

CLIL Practices: Perspectives from the Field is a publication prepared by the CLIL Cascade Network (CCN), which gives an overview of CLIL developments and of the methodological approaches teachers are experimenting with in Europe.

It includes a set of 24 articles organised in three sections: Regional Features of Practice, Classroom Features of Practice, Supporting Practice through Teacher Education, and Reflection on Practice.

Teachers exchange

2009-07-15T09:51:00.002+02:00

This is just a short informative notice about the 'intercambio puesto por puesto' a project within the European Lifelong Learning Programme.

Sparklebox

2009-07-01T14:35:00.002+02:00

Sparklebox is a teaching resource website, meant as a means of sharing useful downloadable resources with other teachers. Although it is aimed at UK young school children, many of the resources collected there can be really helpful in the EFL primary classroom.

Sharing teaching tips and ideas

2009-06-16T14:38:00.004+02:00

What does work in the Primary EFL classroom? You can share your ideas by recording or typing comments around this Voicethread screen:

Assessing CLIL

2009-06-15T14:46:00.004+02:00

We can find some interesting contributions on what and how to assess in CLIL approaches in Café CLIL 06: Assessment in CLIL web page discussion.

Subtitled videos

2009-06-03T13:23:00.003+02:00

dotSUB is a tool that allows anyone to translate and subtitle video content into multiple languages. Although at the moment there are not many suitable videos to be used in the Primary English classroom, it is worth browsing through the clip collection and try to find something useful.

See an example below. You can change the language of the subtitles from the options bar.

Getting sound files to enhance oral productions

2009-05-06T08:50:00.002+02:00

These are a couple of links to collections of sound effects that can be downloaded from the Web:

Sounddogs
Banco de imágenes y sonidos

A congress about CLIL in Barcelona

2009-05-05T21:32:00.002+02:00

It is difficult for most of us to have the opportunity to attend many of the events about topics related to the teaching of languages which could be interesting, especially when they are held far away from our home town. Fortunately, we can get some information, feedback or abstracts from the Internet. This is the case of the 'Trobada CLIL' held on 28th and 29th April in Barcelona.

Feeback on some of the lectures can be read on the following two entries in 'De estranjis' blog:

Lecciones de Barcelona: en enseñanza de idiomas, ¿hacia dónde vamos?

Lecciones de Barcelona: se puede aprender de Madrid

Further information about the contents of the lectures can be read in this book of abstracts.

Some ideas for short projects when working in a CLIL approach

2009-04-30T11:44:00.004+02:00

Looking for some ideas and resources related to CLIL in Primary, I've come across the following presentation by Nina Lauder. I find some suggestions inspirational to introduce project work related to other curricular subjects in the English classroom.

Project Work and CLIL

View more presentations from Nina Lauder.

I see that several ideas are taken from the JET series of books published by Scholastic. Some sample pages on that site can give ideas of the contents in the books, such as this mini book on Sports.

Funny English

2009-04-21T09:00:00.000+02:00

Funny English website contains many worksheets with crosswords, minibooks, cards... that can be really useful in the English classroom.

CLIL units

2009-04-20T12:17:00.002+02:00

This website gives access to a set of units to work on different topics in the English classroom. Many of them are addressed to Secondary students but there are also proposals for Primary: The Human Body, Air & Atmosphere, Ecosystems, Habitats & Ecosystems, Water in Nature , Plants, Education for Health, The Earth and Living Things, Exploring Food , Exploring Food , Growth, Sculpture , Landscapes, Understanding Comics How to draw a comic strip, Houses of the World, Exploring 2D Shapes, ICT in English, Where are you from? A country report, Living and Moving around the World,

Some useful websites to work on the universe

2009-03-23T15:03:00.003+01:00

These are some links to websites with useful resources for classes working on the universe as a topic in their English coursebooks or through projects in a CLIL approach.

- NASA for Students offers a wide range of materials sorted out according to school grades or levels. Each set contains stories, interactive activities, videos, glossaries...

- Solar System Planets are introduced in size order in a video presentation. Its author adds an imaginary planet, Tamen, and explains the impossibility of its dimeensions in the written information provided in YouTube.

- Amazing Space website's section Tonight's Sky uses images taken by Hubble Space Telescope to explain what can be seen in the night sky each month.

- Some other links and information can be found in this other blog, created some years ago to help teachers with the implementation of The Universe Unit in INEBI pilot scheme.

Power Point presentations in English

2009-03-17T10:06:00.002+01:00

A colleague emails me the reference of this collection of slide presentations related to various curricular subjects and topics, e.g. science, geography, health... it is part of Miss PopCorn's Page, a website devoted to the learning of English as a second language in primary school.

TEFL Clips

2009-03-13T09:13:00.004+01:00

TEFLclips is a site dedicated to the use of YouTube and other video sharing sites in the English classroom. They upload a new lesson plan every week.

CLIL Cascade Network

2009-03-12T09:38:00.002+01:00

Laura tells us through the chatbox in this blog about CLIL Cascade Network , a project funded with the support from the European Commission as an activity in the Lifelong Learning Programme. Registration is required in order to access this web contents.

In this page you can find information about some CLIL courses organized by the Summer University of Lapland and the University of Jyväskylä, in cooperation with the CLIL Cascade Network partnership in autumn 2009.

A couple of Easter videos

2009-03-10T11:54:00.003+01:00

Origami Easter Basket
This web page shows a video with instruction to make an origami coloured paper basket. Script is available.

This other video can be useful for practising counting and numbers with young children.

How to make a podcast

2009-03-03T11:18:00.009+01:00

Once we have decided to create a podcast, there are different ways and tools we can choose from. These are two simple ideas:

1. Using an online recorder such as Vocaroo or Clear Dropboxes (see gadget below):

2. Using Windows recorder (it creates 'wav' files) or free software such as Audacity. Recordings can be stored in sites such as Goear. Take into account that wav files should be previously converted to mp3 format.

Podcasts

2009-03-03T10:02:00.010+01:00

A podcast is an audio or video digital-media file which is distributed over the Internet and can be listened to in portable media players and personal computers. Further information can be read in these Wikipedia entries: in English / in Spanish.

Podacastsinenglish.com is an example of website focused on English learning through podcasts.

This other site collects a series of podcasts recorded by children. The result is an audiobook with a version of Homer's Odyssey in Spanish.

Simpler use of podcasts can be found in blogs. This example of a post in a classroom blog presents students' recordings in Basque about some animal categories.

This video can help us understand the characteristics and uses of podcasts:

Easter

2009-03-02T16:02:00.006+01:00

These are some websites containing facts and activities related to Easter:

Topmarks (facts, customs, a 'make a card ' activity and recipes)

DLTK (crafts, games, worksheets, colouring pages...)

The Fun Place (activities, crafts, colouring pages...)

Easter Games and activities (ideas for games, links...)

A short video with pictures related to traditional Easter celebration in the USA.

Source of the picture: www.flickr.com/photos/40221941@N00/449352012

Self-assessment

2009-02-10T12:39:00.002+01:00

Self assessment in the Primary classroom of EFL can be approached in a number of ways. Most coursebooks include sheets or boxes at the end of a unit with questions about activity preferences, sense of performace, etc. but their filling can become a kind of meaningless routine for the student. A more intregrated option can be found in portfolios following the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. Portfolios foster self-assessment and learning awareness through record sheets, questions or work collection for the dossier. This model of portfolio can be useful with that purpose.

Other resources:
Involving language learners in assessment: a new paradigm (article)

Some examples of self-assessment sheets related to the use of ICT.
Example of a sheet about work on a particular Webquest.

eTwinning

2009-02-09T11:31:00.000+01:00

We commented on eTwinning in a previous post in this blog. This service enables teachers to contact with other colleagues around Europe and participate in school projects of different kinds. You can browse through these ideas for inspiration or have a look at the 2008/09 prizes.

Converting text to speech

2009-02-03T18:05:00.004+01:00

VozMe is a Google utility that allows converting written texts in English, among other languages, to mp3 sound. Users select between feminine or masculine voice and files can be saved. Although the pace and intonation may sound a bit 'robotic', the pronunciation and stress are good enough.

How to say "coger aúpas"

2009-01-27T16:45:00.005+01:00

"Pick me up"

Source of the image: http://www.claudiampublications.com/TheCards/CardPickMeUp.shtml

Downloading videos from YouTube

2009-01-25T20:54:00.004+01:00

I read in this post about an easy way of downloading videos from YouTube. It allows two formats: flv (Flash Video), and mp4 when that second option is possible.

Fact Monster encyclopedia

2009-01-15T10:08:00.005+01:00

Fact Monster site displays a set of resources to look up for information and facts: atlas, dictionary, encyclopedia...

How to say 'espinillera' in English

2009-01-15T10:00:00.005+01:00

Spanish: espinillera
Basque: zango-babes, berna-babes
English: Shin guard

Science in English

2009-01-14T22:09:00.002+01:00

The website of CEIP ÁNGEL FRIGOLA school contains a set of units which integrate the English and Science curricula. They are aimed at Primary Year 3 students but can be useful at other levels in schools implementing CLIL approaches for the teaching of English.