British Council
I have picked the website from British Council to write about in my Blog post. You can become a member but you do not have to. If the children become members on the page at home or in school there are “House rules”. These you need to read together with your class before you start and keep the parents informed what the rules say!I have been working with young children in grade 1-3 and I find this website perfect for them. The layout is very easy to understand, the design feels very friendly, nice pictures and funny exercises.
This is how it works
There are many different activities like games and then you have a number of activities to pick from .Here you can learn about for example “The Rainforest”, Christmas game match words and pictures.Listen &watch with a number of things to choose from like, listen to stories, tongue twister, kids talk and more.
Read &write, make things and explore works in the same ways as games and Listen & watch. At the moment they have a Christmas story that is called “Santa´s little helper”. The children can listen to the story, play language games about Christmas, practice listening, sing Christmas songs and write with help from questions that is given about their own Christmases. I find this a good balance of activities.
How can I use it working as a teacher?
I find this webpage very useful, the children can work in pair getting to know the possibilities of the page. I can connect the page to the classroom Smartboard and the whole class can sing songs together, looking at the pictures and read the lyrics. Here I can decide the speed of the song that is very good when you learn something new. We can listen to the Stories and here I can click on “next” when we are ready for the story to continue. You can listen to the story first and then the whole class can read aloud from the text.
Other options
There are also words matching with activities and the songs and these can be used as homework. At the end of the page there is a possibility to print these out that is very good.
I also thought about the children that need to listen many, many times to things, this way of working if perfect for them. Then you always have the children that is very advanced in the subject and for them working with a web page means that they can challenge themselves.
Ann-Sofie Warringer
I have had a look at the Learn English Kids site. I find the site rather enjoyable and I do agree that it can be very useful when teaching English. I particularly like the word of the week, a clever way of teaching kids the meaning of a word. The children get to hear the word a few times and then an explanation of the word is shown. As a teacher I can use this to present a word and then let the students work with the word, for example, I can let the students sit in pairs and explain the word to each other or make new sentences, I can also let them write about the word and maybe let them find synonyms for the word.
ReplyDeleteEriksson/ Tholin (2007) writes about the importance with letting the students work with the words, to let them find synonyms and play games with the words. Not just do the wordbook. There has to be a context to what's taught and the students has got to understand why they do certain things. Otherwise the exercise lacks a point.
I think it is important to point out that the teacher has to have an aim and clearly know what she/he wants to use on the site. The teacher also has to look through the site and review the contence and what the games and learners really do convey.
A really fun, interesting and usable site!
// Joy Andersson
Sometimes it can be difficult to find websites that you feel you can use in the classroom. This website was new and good information for me.
ReplyDeleteAfter looking through the British Council's website for kids I got a better sense of what it contains. I thought that some of the things were too advanced for children in Sweden in the grades 1-3 and would suit better for children who have been taught English for a longer period of time. Grade 5-6 could maybe be more suitable when the children have built up wider vocabulary. However, using the website with older children can also create some problems, because they might feel that the website is too childish.
On the website I listened to a story called "The great race". This story was short and contained a lot of animals that can be good to focus on with children in grade 1-3 but otherwise I think that the words were too difficult and the children might not understand most of them. The teacher must in this case translate and explain every sentence and every word for the children. Using exercises that are too difficult for the children can be a risk, because they might easily lose focus when they feel they do not understand anything. It is also a risk to choose exercises that are too easy though, because then they might lose focus because of that. It is always a question about having a balance between easy and difficult, no challenge or challenge.
There are a lot of things to choose from at this website and I think that a teacher does not have to do everything. He/she can pick out pieces that he/she feels can work in the class. Teachers can also get good ideas from a website like this one, for example how you can work with a theme like animals or a theme like the rainforest and use parts from the website together with other suitable information.
It is important to have in mind what the curricula and the syllabus say when working with different exercises from websites and similar. It is important that the work is done with a purpose and not just for fun.
The poster of this blog post was entirely positive to the website she described. I see the advantages in using this website and will probably visit it againg. However you must remember that this website was created for English native speakers and for British schools with a different curricula and syllabus than in Sweden. Therefore you must be careful when you choose exercises from this site. This information I think the poster has left out in her blog post.
This website has as you say a fun layout with colors and pictures, which Estling Vannestål (2010) says inspire the pupils. I also believe it is suitable for pupils from first to third grade. There are many different activities and material on this website to use in one’s teaching to teach listening, reading, speaking and writing skills. Your examples of how one can work with the website would work well in practice and you have considered the fact that the pupils have different educational needs. Some pupils need more support and some pupils need to be more challenged, which I also believe can be accomplished with this website. There is the possibility to both listen to and read the texts at the same time and the pupils are thus given extra support for their understanding. The pupils can also listen to the recordings over and over again. The teacher can also individualize his or her teaching by for instance letting the pupils continue the story before listening to all of it. Every pupil will thus write on their own level of knowledge. I also like the way you explain how to use the Smartboard when doing work together with the class. As latter mentioned there are many games and activities and therefore I believe that it is important that the teacher has a goal with using the activities.
ReplyDeleteWorth mentioned are that the website also offers examples to teachers of how to work with different activities on the site. Parents are also given a link where they can find examples on how to use the website with their children.
This is a good website that can be used for many things in teaching, though the teacher will need to have clear goals with using the website.