I want to describe ICT resources for teachers to introduce and for pupils to use. I want to present Internet (weather sites) and FLOD (flod.nu). They give a lot of possibilities.

When I read the book “How to teach English with technology” by Gavin Dudeney and Nicky Hookly I got the idea to do a lesson/project about “weather”. They talked about the lower level grades in school and the work with weather. I got very interested because I work with children in the first, second and the third grade and we are going to learn about different kind of weathers.

I started to seek on Internet and I found a lot of different tools for this lesson. In my school we have “FLOD”(flod.nu). There I found a lot of TV-programmes and movies at “Kids English Zone” (26 different programmes and one of them about weather. FLOD is a nice tool because you can show programmes in the classroom when you want to, instead of borrow a programme a few days. I found www.weather.com and www. weather.yahoo too. I thought that I could use them all in my English lesson about weather.

In my classroom I only have one computer but I can show movies and TV-programmes and so on with a screen on the whiteboard. It is an easy technology tool for me to use. We can see and discuss the programmes together.

Back to the lesson about weather, before we look at the programme and the weather sites I want to give the pupils a comprehension in the English language about the different kind of weather we have. At the first we look outdoor throw the window and talk about the weather today. Then we talk about what different kind of weathers we have; sunny, cloudy, rainy, windy and snowy weather. I ask them if they know some of them in English. Maybe they do and we can learn from each other to.

Then we practice the new words by looking at “What the weather like?” from “Kids English Zone”. I want to show this to them because it is a funny and child-friendly program and the pupils can see and hear the perhaps new words.

Some other words we can learn for example are degrees, north, south, east and west…

Then the pupils can do their own weather report and show each other. They can practice the words by talking and showing the other pupils.

At the end of the day/lesson we look at a real weather report from for example United Kingdom. They talk very fast, but many of the words the pupils already have heard. Now they can practise listening and watching the new words they have learnt.

Then they can do exercises in pairs by the Internet weather sites from United Kingdom to get the English language. They can seek for the weather in different kind of towns or countries today or in the next week. They can seek for snow if they like skiing, they can seek for warm and sunny places if they want to bath or swim in the sea or something like this. Maybe someone in the class is going on a holiday trip and wants to know the weather. They can work in pairs and at the end of the lesson they can tell the rest of the class what they found out.

It is good idea for teachers to use Internet in the classroom. Teachers can find a lot of stuff they don’t have at the school. In the way of saving money… the teachers actually can use a lot of good stuff from Internet to show the pupils and the class can see, listen and then talk about it too. The teachers can do exercises for the pupils and they have to seek for the answers on Internet. This time the stuff came from the weather sites and weather programmes.

Internet is a precious treasure for us to dig in. It is only the time and imagination that can stop us. It is a great complement to our textbooks and workbooks and so on…

Carina Bredin