Introduction, the ICT resource I have chosen is http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/. This is a website for kids between 4 and 13 years old learning English, as a second or foreign language, which contains texts, songs, games and much more. The site has pages with information for parents and teachers about how to use this site and how to navigate on the website. This site also has links to other sites by the British council for learning and teaching English.
How it works, this site has many activities for many different ages, games and painting pictures for younger children and writing activities and word of the week for older children. Overall the page is easy to navigate on, but it is good with the navigating page for parents and teachers anyway.
On this site the children can create an account and do their own character. They will need an e-mail address when signing up and maybe some help to fill in the form. Because this site is only for children between 4 and 13 years, you as a teacher cannot sign in. When you have got started it is not hard at all to use this site, the children can choose what they want to do, and there are a lot of pictures to make understanding easier for them who cannot read yet.
On this site you can find:
· Games, jokes
· Songs, listen to texts, tongue twisters
· Read and write activities, word of the week
· Make your own…, downloads
· Themes with different activities
and much more.
The activities creates good learning situations for the children, when for example playing memory, make pairs of the word and the picture of animals, the game provides a bit more information about the animal, it can be for how long a guinea pig lives or where a turtle lives.
What you need to make it work, on this website you do not need anything to do the most activities, for a few of them you will need a printer and if you are a group of children working with the site at the same time, a headset would be great so they do not disturb each other.
How to be used by teachers, for the teachers this site is good, you can get some inspiration from the activities and you can also use these activities as they are on the website. This website also has links to other pages for language teachers. I would use this site both for inspiration and use the activities as training exercises, tests and learning while having fun, a perfect site to visit when you have some time left, or as a closing activity on a Friday afternoon.
How to be used by pupils, for the children this site can be used in many ways, for fun, for practicing or for testing their knowledge. When working with this site with younger children an adult can be used for some help to start an activity, but for older learners it is easy for them to use this site on their own. This website is also good in consideration of the two-click principle; it does not take long to get to the activities you are looking for.
I think this site is very useful for teachers, pupils and parents. It is fun and easy, and provides a lot of learning opportunities. A good function that does not exist is saving the activities and results on them you have done, to compare and see your own development in the language learning.
/ Ronja Rydberg
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Hi Ronja!
ReplyDeleteYou have found a wonderful site and written a nice blog post about it. The website looks exciting and has very inviting graphics. One other aspect I like is that there are no ads on this site. The children will not risk click on anything they should not.
As you write in the beginning it is very easy to navigate this site but the information pages for teachers and parents are very helpful with short description about what the different pages contain. It took some time before I understood where I could find themes; the white square with different names in all sorts of sizes. When I discovered it I found it to be very easy to use and a great resource for me as a teacher.
As you say, the children can register and create an own account on the website but you cannot be over 13 to register. I wonder what the difference is and what advantages the account give the children? I did not find any information about that besides that you could add comments and make your own “cool character”. It would be interesting to find out if there are any other activities for members than there are for non-members. One thing I did discover though when looking at the Become a member page was that they had a very funny way of selecting a username, much like a one-armed bandit. Why do not all sites have this function?
I agree with you that this site provides lot of learning situations for children when learning English as a second language. I especially liked The Alphabet Maze in Read & Write, Practice your English, and the possibility to find different activities thru the Topics. The children can in a fun way learn English, from the very beginners to more advanced pupils. As you say though, an adult must be there to help and read instructions for the younger pupils so they can get started. One idea is to do some of the activities in class together to start with. In that way the pupils will understand what they will do on the different activities when they are sitting alone or in pairs. If one teacher is going to help 23 students one by one or even in pairs getting started it will take the whole lesson before the last one is on his or her way.
You also write about the two-click principle and that is one I found very nice. It is helping the children to not get lost.
What I did not find in this website was that the different activities should be divided into age. In that way it would be easier for me, as a teacher to find activities to fit my pupils’ age. And, as you say, it would be nice if the children could save their results to see their improvement.
I agree with you that this is a website that I will use in my future profession as a teacher. Thank you for that great tip!
/Kicki
Dear Ronja,
ReplyDeleteThis surely is a very useful site, it has almost limitless possibilities. I can only agree with your comment about this being an attractive designed website for pupils.
Some important observations made reading your blog and taking a closer look at your suggested website;
• Suitable for both young learners and those more advanced. Young learners who have problems writing can for example use Story maker in the Make your own section. They will probably also enjoy the paint game when learning colors. Like you pointed out there are several games, stories and songs available to them.
• You mentioned that the website had links to other pages for language teachers. I explored the British Council/BBC website Teaching English on this page: http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/try/teaching-kids. Teachers can find excellent tips and lesson plans for using Learn English Kids, very useful.
• I agree with you in that most pupils will initially require some help as the site contains a lot of different areas and even though it is quite easy to navigate one can get lost in the beginning. It might aid pupils if the introduction by the teacher is done using a data projector. In the beginning stories, games and songs could be done as a whole class activity.
• The square where you can choose from several different themes is a convenient feature which can be very helpful if you are looking for activities within a certain area. Something else I found appealing was the listing More about this topic, which come up on the right side of the screen and provides a choice of activities to do within the same topic.
In doing my own further exploration, I found the following;
• The short topic-based videos found in one section called Kids Talk: http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/kids-talk, where you listen to children talk about their lives could create great language activities for pupils learning a second language. If you do not have any ideas of your own you can find printable activities, scripts and questions about the video underneath.
• The illustrated short stories which range from being very simple to more challenging, can inspire to creative writing tasks. Beginners can for example use stories written in the present simple tense and for the more advanced learners there are stories written in a blend of tenses.
• Children can send in their own stories and each contribution is read by a moderator and published within 24 hours. They can also respond to activities, games and stories by posting comments. Both features I find being excellent for writing tasks. It can serve as motivation to create a story of your own or teaching pupils to express their opinion. Children have to be members to post or send in stories.
The website and noteworthy comments presented in your blog were appreciated. A valuable base has been presented for further exploration and discoveries. I am looking forward to applying various ways and methods featured on this site in my teaching. Thank you.
Helené