ICT resource – ABC Teach (www.abcteach.com)

When I was reading Maria Estling Vanneståls book “Lära engelska på internet” I became intrigued to have a look at the website Språklänkportalen. Looking around at this website made me found this other website called ABC Teach.

So the ICT resource that I have chosen to describe is the website ABC Teach. The website can be available from any computer with an Internet connection and on this website you can find lots of free material in English that can be used by both teachers and students. The material is mostly directed towards the younger students at beginner’s level.
There is a membership payment for 40$ per year if you want to be able to get hold of all the material, but there is over 5,000 printables, interactives, custom documents, clip art, games and much more for free. The main goal and challenge for this website is “to meet the needs of a global audience” which make this site interesting for teachers and students all over the world that either educate or study the language.

On the front page there is a menu at the top of the page. When clicking on the category Directory on that menu, three sub-categories show and this is where most of the material can be found. This is a description of what you can find:

• Core subjects, here you can find material for most of the subjects such as art, handwriting, math, music, science, sports, reading, technology and testing to mention a few. In each of those subjects there are different exercises and documents in English that can be used in the classroom. A few examples of exercises can be crosswords, word search, whole projects, unscramble the words and math problems.
  
  
• Popular categories, is a menu where you can choose from popular activities such as clip art, flashcards, theme units, PowerPoint’s, interactive files, holidays and much more. There are lots of different materials based on the activity and with more or less useful content in the sub-categories depending on which you choose.
  
  
• Selected materials, here you can find material put together just for a certain age or a special need. There are five categories developed in early elementary, middle school, homeschoolers and parents, Montessori material and special needs. All categories contain materials that can be suitable for individualization depending on where that particular student’s level is and what they want/need to learn.

On the front page there is another category called Interactive. (To get the most out of this category the school or the classroom should have either a SMART Board or a Promethean activboard). When clicking on that category there will yet again emerge three sub-categories:

• Smart notebook, is a menu that can be used if the class or the school has invested in SMART Board, in other words an interactive whiteboard with lots of functions. If so, the teachers and the students can download many activities, games, puzzles, themes, math explanations and much more in this category.
  
  
• Promethean flipchart, here is lots material that can be used if the school or the classroom has a promethean activboard, also a kind of interactive whiteboard.
  
  
• Microsoft PowerPoint, this is the menu where you can find presentations, with or without audio, templates and other language presentations in for example French and Spanish.

This resource can be used by the teachers to get inspiration, concrete tips and lots of material that are mentioned above. There are for example many worksheets that can be used in the classroom working with the English language in many different approaches. Approaches like one lesson at the time, lessons over a couple of weeks, a bigger project involving and integrating more subjects, theme-based learning with other classes so there are many opportunities for the teachers to develop and work with the material on this website. There is also a category called ABCTOOLS where you can build your own material such as crosswords, sudoku, spelling, word search, handwriting and much more.

I think that students in the lower grades can find the material on this website fun to work with and that there are at least some parts of the free material that can be useful for learning English with ICT.
It is hard to say what the students are going to like and what are best for each students learning, everyone acquires different and have different interests of what they like or not like to do. This website contains much different material that can be at least tried and tested in some aspects. Lastly, the website seems to have educating people all over the world as its main criteria which at least sends a good signal.

So if you want to check it out, here is the link agian, ABC Teach