A resource I think is very useful is a website with the purpose to help children learn English and have fun. You find it at http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/
The site is organized in the following tabs: Kids games, Listen & watch, Read & write, Make and Speak & spell. When you do an exercise you also have two boxes to the right. One of them shows other exercises in the same theme, and the other shows equal exercises but in other themes. This allows you to find other exercises depending on your purpose with the training, to learn more about a topic or do similar activities.
The British Council site actually contains several sites, among them Learn English, which is for adults learning English, Teaching English, which is for teachers and Learn English Kids for children learning English.
The Teaching English site is organized in the tabs: Teaching resources, Teacher development, Training courses, Articles and Community. To be able to comment and join discussions you can register as a member. Then you also receive a newsletter which holds news on the latest content on the site. I have already found it useful and it contains a lot of interesting reading. During the autumn it has for example been lesson plans and activities about sports because The Olympic Game will take place in London next summer. You can also sign up for the monthly Learn English Kids newsletter for parents and teachers of children aged 6-12.
As an example of how pupils can use the Learn English Kids site, click on the Listen & Watch tab and then Songs. The Choose Ten little aeroplanes exercise trains a pupil to count 1-10 forwards and backwards. There is a streamed video and you can choose if you want to see the texts or not. There is also a game and the lyrics. If you log in you can also print the lyrics, the sheet music or download audio to listen without streaming.
As with many websites it is easy to get lost in cyberspace and it is hard to focus on the task, and not only for pupils … My suggestion is that the teacher links directly to the webpage. If pupils search themselves, even if only inside Learn English Kids, they may get stuck at something else. My dream is to have a class blog where I can put links to the sites I want pupils to visit. How to solve this otherwise depends on how the pupils are logged in at the school and how the computers at school are managed.
Eleonor
Hi Eleonor
ReplyDeleteI agree with you about the British council site. I really like it too. I did not know that the site existed before I started this course and thanks to you I have become a member and sign up for the monthly learn English kids for teachers, as you suggested. I had some problems with my log in, it is necessary to read the login instructions well, but now it works!
One thing that you did not mention is that it is also possible for kids to become members and then they can comment across the site and answer questions in the right turn and of course practice their reading and writing. I thought that could be something for the pupils to practice at home if they have access to a computer.
It is a very useful and fun website with a lot of useful material for pupils in different ages. It is good that the site have material for beginners too. You suggested us to listen to “Ten little aeroplanes” and I have listen to it with text and I thought about start my first English lesson this spring term with that song, I liked it! I think it is very good that it is possible to print everything out!
The website seems to be very useful for English teaching and as I visit the site I feel like I want to try almost everything with my pupils and it is easy to work with the site and find material, it is a very clear site. It is important to ask ourselves as teachers why we use the site, what do we want our pupils to learn and what the purpose with the task on the site is?
I believe it is a good idea to link the website to a class blog. If you have an active board or a projector you could always show the pupils the way they should go and show them the links on a big screen. The pupils do not need a computer each to work with the British council site. If you teach many pupils on the same time I think it is good to use some kind of a big screen so all the pupils can see the songs or stories clear in front of them.
Of course a class blog would be great, for many reasons! I hope your school has a system that can match your blog dream. Thanks to you I am a member and I have already got my first newsletter!
/ Maria Thunberg
Hi!
ReplyDeleteI really like this British Council website too! I found this site during last fall and I use it very often with my students.
Often I put together a project in a folder on the computor and then the students can work through these pages.
It is easy to work with this website and you can find many different tasks that suits most students.
I like the songs and the stories and it is easy for the students to follow beacuse of the text and the sound. If I want to I can even print out the lyrics and pictures. Wonderful!
The students likes to work with the British Council website. It is easy to follow and have fun and telling pictures.
/Anna-Maria Wennberg
After reading these comments I have to take a deeper look into it! I knew about the page but haven´t given myself time to really look at it. But with your comments that are so inspiring I feel I really have to check it out!
ReplyDeleteHi again!
ReplyDeleteIt was interesting to read how you use Br Council in class. I do not teach English this year so I have only tried it out together with my own children at home.
But something has happened with my layout and font size. Hmm... I have to keep up blogging to learn how to do it in a more readable way...and maybe learn how to add photos or print screens...:)
/Eleonor