People from Amanita Design have produced a beautiful online videogame for the BBC educational website: Questionaut
Travel with a friendly voyager in pursuit of his friend’s windswept hat, and answer multiple questions from different fields in a dream-like world, flying with your balloon and winning oxygen by answering correctly. There’s fun and learning, and it’s in English! Worth a visit!
For those who think that phonetics is a way to learn how to pronounce properly, here’s Phonetics, a very good site which shows you how to articulate in order to pronounce in proper American English (Also German and Spanish) There’s sound, graphs and video… everything is very well described.
After a while without posts, here’s one with interesting websites for your lessons. They are worth a look during the coming holidays: ESL and Clil have room here… enjoy!
This website has a large list of online activities to foster reading and writing skills. Among the long list, I have chosen two applications:
Character Trading Cards is an application based upon the popular trading cards students use. Here students can customize their own cards making up different characters with their specific features: Mood, weaknesses, strengths, problems, approach to life… Students fill the card with the information required in an easy step-by-step process.
These trading cards can be printed and used in order to create stories or role play situations. Writing, reading and speaking in a bunch!
Fractured Fairy Tales helps students create brand new stories out of classical fairy tales which are fragmented and reused after changing some of its characteristic traits (part of the plot, characters, end of the story…) An easy interface with easy write and click instructions. Really catchy!
An extremely nice website for young students created by the New York Zoos and Aquarium Authority. Choose the animal parts you want to have in your own wild self, and create a new species in the animal world! Navigation is easy and the library has many different options … good fun!
The parts you have chosen will help you make up the name of this strange creature. Learn about its habitat and how it reacts to the world around it… Your students will love it!
Good website with animations and road education! Hector’s Home gives students a very good time with some very spooky short films where Hector, the main character, moves about the city and learns the most important aspects of road education.
You can watch the films and do the activities and games that appear as you move around.
Teachers can enter a special area where very useful lesson plans are provided. They’re worth a look, believe me!
A really catchy website, they learn road education as they practise their English.
New feature from Google. Go into Google Docs
and create a form for your friends… or for your students… and why not a test? It is veeeeeery easy to create and to embed in your blog. Here’s an example:
Watch the telly and learn languages! Lingorilla is a very interesting initiative where you can watch TV episodes to practise English , be part of language groups where you can talk and also keep your own folders with your favourite resources to learn English… or other languages! There are tests, quizzes and other very helpful resources. You only have to register and there you are!!
Nice and easy website for early learners. English for Little Children has a wide range of activities for the youngest ones. Lots of activities with colourful images and pictures. Very easy to navigate.
The European Schoolnet has launched a survey on the use of videogames in the classroom. They are doing it in coordination with the European Federation of Interactive Software. The idea is to see how teachers see the use of commercial videogames in the classroom: its positive and negative aspects, case studies, government policies, the view of experts…
You can see an outline of this initiative at http://games.eun.org/
They are asking teachers to complete a questionnaire on the use of these tools. It is valid for those who use them and also for those who don’t. It is important to know the reasons why they are regarded as something good or bad in the process of knowledge acquisition.
You can fill the questionnaire in English at:
http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/survey-intro.zgi?p=WEB227P9S5DYST
Also in Spanish at:
http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/survey-intro.zgi?p=WEB2285LHT63PT
Teachers filling the questionnaire may win an XBOX360 .
Why don’t you spend 10 minutes there and let European Schoolnet learn on what we think about the use of these products?
The British Council’s site Learningenglish brings us Wordshake, a nice online word game for students of all levels. With a very good interface, its easy rules will quickly motivate students in your class.
