Category Archives: Resources

Interesting things for the Holidays

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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!

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This website has a large list of online activities to foster reading and writing skills. Among the long list, I have chosen two applications:

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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!

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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!

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Buid Your Wild Self

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!

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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!

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Hector’s Home

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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.

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You can watch the films and do the activities and games that appear as you move around.

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Teachers can enter a special area where very useful lesson plans are provided. They’re worth a look, believe me!

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A really catchy website, they learn road education as they practise their English.

Poptropica

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poptropica2.gif This is a nice way to introduce internet guided chat in the classroom.

Thanks to amycapdet, author of the ELT blog Cloudy Seaside Mood, who has showed us this interesting website.

Poptropica is a website where young people can create a very simple character which can be customized with a few details.

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This character is taken to Poptropica, a world with different continents where he/she will be able to carry out different activities: Chatting with friends in a very guided way (the content of what is said comes out of a list offered to the player, so everything is under control as players can choose out of a limited list of possible sentences).

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As players travel to the different parts of Poptropica, they can play different games, and what is most important, pay attention to what people in Poptropica say to them, as they must gather information and objects in order to succeed in carrying out different missions across that world. Once all activities are carried out, theer’s nothing to be done. That will avoid having students constantly hooked on the game.

A nice way to introduce Primària students to the world of adventure games and quests, simple, catchy and always under your control (as long as they play in the school, of course)

www.poptropica.com

 

The Power in your Hands

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This a really nice game! It’s not a simple click and go thing, you must think as a responsible manager, a responsible mayor who wants to run a clean city with happy citizens. The main focus is the wise use of energy, but it appears together with other aspects that create an extremely catchy educational game. Take some time to learn the rules, and you’ll be able to get the most of the game with your students next school year!

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Social Network

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If you are familiar with Facebook, here’s a nice and easy way to create your own social network: Ning :

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With a few mouse clicks, you can create your network of EFL teachers, or of teachers interested in ICT, for example:

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Take part in forums, upload files, images and videos, and share all your knowledge through an easy method of communication.

We’ll be probably creating an ELT Ning shortly. If you are faster, just let us know and we’ll join your network!

On writing

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Do you remember ZimmerTwins? There’s a tutorial in this blog. It was a very good example of Internet resources that foster creativity and help students to improve their writing skills. we are going to see some other possibilities we can find in the www.

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Short Stories is a very simple application in edu365

Teachers and students upload sets of 3, 6 or 9 pictures, and they are stored for their use within the application. You only need to choose the set of pictures, and order them as you like, write the story, be it short, long, complex or simple and have it printed. It is a very simple tool basically for primary students, with direct tangible results. You ca also record voice to be played. Stories cannot be stored yet, although this feature will be available very soon.

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Bookr lets you create your own picture books out of the photographs you have previously uploaded in flickr. Even though it is more of a photo album than a book, it can be used by your students to make albums of the school trips or more visual projects they can carry out. Here’s an example from a couple of pages of a very simple but nice book:

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Bubblr creates comic strips out of the whole flickr archive. add bubbles and create the stories that your imagination can produce. Primary school students will love it. They can also upload their own pictures.

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These easy and rewarding tools show us writing activities are not only limited to pen-to-paper drills.

In plain English

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This is a good way to teach things! Visually, and with a very easy script. The Lefever brothers have created a series of videos with easy explanations on diverse issues, mostly ICT related. Information is easy and the pace is not too fast. Students will easily undertand it. You can find them in their own Youtube page

Why not trying to create similar presentations with our students?

Here’s a video on how podcasting works:

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/y-MSL42NV3c" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

This one is a very clear explanation on blogging:

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/NN2I1pWXjXI" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]