The British Council has produced a very good video which helps people understand the proper terms when referring to the UK, Great Britain, England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The website offers some nice follow-up activities to make sure pupils understand the concepts of nation and state within the UK.
Have a look at this site. Real English shows very nice videos covering different communicative aspects as well as some grammar elements practiced orally. It’s a free site with a great amount of videos to be freely used in your classroom… andthey are catchy, believe me!
There are exercises combined with the clips, so practice before and after the clip is granted. Definitely worth a look!
Time for an online videogame. Destination Death takes students into a scary story where they are supposed to fight some strange aliens who have taken up the city airport.
It is a game where objects must be used on other objects and the main character must ask the appropriate questions to the rest of the characters in order to save her sister from the fiendish aliens. It was created by the BBC for English speakers who learnt Spanish, French and German (Check these versions here).
A good resource for ESO 3-4 and Batxillerat students… try to have them work in groups and take decissions together… and talk about these decissions with the whole class… oral skills can be thus reinforced with a catchy tool!
Here’s a Prezi about 2.0 tools in ELT… just some thoughts and tips. Probably we’ll be posting more ellaborate ideas… hopefully 😕
Easy and simple… but very rewarding!
Pic·Lits is a very simple online application to create visual poems… choose one of the pictures, Pic·Lits gives you a set of words related to the image… choose, and simply drag and drop to create your visual poem. Once the words are there, they can be modified to fit sentence agreement.
You can also work outof your own imagination and create a visual poem choosing your own words… but don’t you think it is more challenging if your students have to create a poem out of a set of words?
Time for the youngest! Domo animate is a very beautiful site where kids can create their own animated stories, a bit like ZimmerTwins.
A very intuitive interface lets you choose characters, background, messages, music and effects. just click and place the item in the scene.
Once the item/character is in the scene, it can acquire movement, expression, it can perform actions… just click and choose!
Keep adding scenes until the story is finished, and then publish it!
It’s really easy… make sure kids think of the story before they start editing, once they are familiar with the application. You can embed it in your website, your blog, or you can email it to people… parents?
Enjoy it!!
Incredible website to enrich writing skills, even for those who want to go further into writing full length stories. Protagonize is meant for those who want to write a story and want to share it with the rest of the world, or just with a tiny bunch.
Collaborative stories have room here… start with an introduction and a first chapter, decide if this chapter can also be modified, invite people to a private writing party or just leave it open to everyone. people participating in the creative process can add their own chapters and maybe edit and modify the others… give instructions on what you want the other people (your pupils?) to do, or let their imagination wander free.
A very clear interface, maybe not very catchy for primary education, where you choose the kind of text you want to write. You can add an introduction where you can let out an idea of the story you are writing, or maybe the instructions for participants.
Decide wheter the story you are about to start is going to be your own individual work (students could create their own accounts and therefore work on their stories on their own), or you want to start a collaborative story, whereby a group of people/pupils will collaborate in the creative process chapter after chapter.
If you prefer to play as you write, if you want to create an adventure, click on Addventure and start a story which will branch out into different plots which will take the reader into different developments of the story… probably extra work, but extremely catchy and motivating!! Your pupils can make groups and each of these groups can create a development of the story you create, or each student of the group can develop the story they have begun cooperatively in a different way.
What are you waiting for? Sign up and start writing!!!
For students who only need simple texts, with brief (sometimes scarce) information and simple language, here’s a useful Wikipedia version: Simple English Wikipedia
The very same interface as an ordinary Wikipedia, but with simpler language. Short articles which can be easily read by ESO students. Not much to comment, just browse through the site. Maybe a good idea would be to ask students to enrich articles with more complex sentences or descriptions.
Geocube is a very interesting website for those who want to use English in Social Science secondary lessons or those who want to introduce concepts of Social Science in their English lessons (CLIL).
A cube you can turn with the mouse shows 6 different aspects concerning our world: Living Together, The Fascinating World, Exploring Our World, Shrinking Planet, Earth from all Angles and Useful Geographies. By clicking one of the sides, 9 different issues related to the title of the “side” appear. When you choose one of these issues, a screen appears with information related to the topic, together with illustrating images and videos.
A very engaging layout entices you quickly. The information is concise and clear. Very useful when you work with your students in cross-curricular projects… ideal for PDI’s!