IWB friendly games

A three great games to practice pronunciation and spelling

Spelling

http://www.bbc.co.uk/hardspell/

All you need to do is choose which word is correct or incorrect against the clock. Pretty hard words, as developed for native speakers so best for Advanced and above.

This seems good. Click subjects at top and from here you can choose from your typical school subjects. I suppose English (grammar and spelling) and geography would be the most useful.

http://www.freerice.com/index.php

If you click on spelling it just takes you to any random word which you have to choose the appropriate synonym, however if you just quickly do the first the second page then gives you a chance to choose an appropriate level for your class. The fist level would probably suit Intermediate. Hardest is for those who find Countdown easy!!

The bonus is that for every correct answer the site donates 20 grains of rice to the UN World Food Program.


Punctuation

http://eatsshootsandleaves.com/ESLquiz.html

Based on Lynne Truss's excellent book, "Eat, shoots and Leaves". Simple sentences that you have to punctuate or not! A few tricky ones but Int and above should be ok.

Videojug - Alternative to youtube

Lesson plan robbed from here

http://www.ihes.com/bcn/tt/eltblog/blog/2008/10/videojug-cool-alternative-to-youtube.html

Videojug is not quite your standard Youtube clone, instead it host thousands of "How to do" videos nicely organised into handy categories, for example with Halloween just round the corner we have in the Halloween section "How to do trick or treat" & interestingly "How to survive a zombie apocalypse"

Interesting idea would be to choose a video that your student would have some idea how to do and obviously matches their level/interests, etc, then get them to brainstorm how they would do it. After watch the video and check if correct.

A nice follow up would be to get students to do their own with equally silly titles eg "How to cheat in your exams", etc or how to do something that they are interested in, eg pelota or playing an instrument, which could then be filmed and put online!

Punctuation Problem?

A great game linked to Lynn Truss´s Best Seller "Eat Shoots & Leaves"

http://eatsshootsandleaves.com/ESLquiz.html

Just play and add the apostrophe

Great Halloween Game

Great activity to engage students
Go to page
http://www.123bee.com/play/halloween-pumpkin-room

Elicit/explain vocabulary
Simple idea of game is to escape from the Halloween Pumpkin room. Normally this is done by clicking things and working out various puzzles.
The idea here is you give them the instructions and they themselves go through and do the activity – a nice fun reading with some great Halloween vocab, imperative and prepositions of place!
Instructions
Knife is in the eye of the fire place
H: move logs in the fireplace
A: Left hand wall, top shelf, spin middle pumpkin
L: front wall, single pumpkin on top, click stem
L: right hand wall, single pumpkin in middle top, click stem
O: left hand wall, single pumpkin above poster, nose
W: left hand wall, very bottom pumpkin, use knife to cut mouth
E: front wall, second shelf, slide second and third pumpkin
E: right hand wall, bottom shelf with 4 pumpkins, click stem of pumpkin on right
N: 3rd pumpkin down on right hand of steps
D: left box on floor
A: Puzzle above door, place round pumpkins first, then rectangles, then pear shaped. Collect pumpkin, Open middle box on floor, collect uncarved pumpkin. Place carved pumpkin on bottom shelf above fire place, click on stem.
Y: bottom right hand scroll of flashing poster

Candle: right hand wall, single pumpkin on top right

Put all letters on top of the empty shelf next to door. Click uncarved pumpkin, then use the knife to carve nose, mouth and stem. Place candle in pumpkin, then click stem to close it. Place the pumpkin on bottom empty shelf next to door. You are out!

Opps

Excellent Site For ICT Self Study

A collection of excellent teacher training videos on all the usual suspects in web 2.0 and ICT.

http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/


Clear simple instructions, something for all.

Giving Directions?

Nice interactive game - follow the instructions and get the various characters to the respective destinations.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/words/grammar/texttypes/instructions/flash0.shtml

IWB friendly

Interactive Vocabulary

Roll the cursor over the picture and hear the word...

http://www.languageguide.org/english/esp/

Lots of themes. What more could you ask for?

Perfect for IWB

Furniture Vocab Game

Help Roger decorate his room!

Nice game with plenty of furniture and descriptive language.

http://www.ur.se/sprk/engelska/inredning/

You can practice first to review the language, designing your own room which can be printed off then you can do a compare and contrast (FCE) with another student or a picture dictation.

The game is to choose the things Roger asks for to decorate his room as quickly as you can, so plenty of compettion element.

Perfect for IWB as teams race against the clock.

Karaoke Madness!

Had to post this due to popular demand!

http://www.karaokeparty.com/en/

Great and fun way to get them singing (if you can strand it!) and more importantly practicing stress and rhythm!

Thousands of songs, all that cheesy pap your students love and more - I just did Nivarna Smells Like Teen Spirit as well as a bit of Elvis!

Great thing is you score points if you get the timing and pitch right, so plenty of incentive for them to hit those notes.

Enjoy!

Yack Pack

This seems to have potential, especially for those setting up Wikis or Blogs, though as it's online it can be used by anyone.

YackPack

Hard to explain but basically so watch this Video to see it in action

Basically as you can have all your students logged on and talking in real time and everything is recorded.

Or you can just record a message for students for them to answer at homework and they themselves can leave messages for anyone else, which means it's great for collaborative tasks as part of a wiki.

Plenty of scope some great activities, for example the classic jigsaw listening; each students has part of a story and questions which can only be answered by listening to everyone else.

Or just putting on a question which students discuss online, leaving their messages for other to pick up and follow up from. Perfect chance for students to practice those discussion skills and associated language.

Please do add other ideas...

Centre Challenge!

Can you beat my score - Geography quiz but higher the score the more cups of water they will donate. Not sure how that works but I assume they put in wells or pipe water to people... anyhow worth 5 minutes of your life!

Fun and scarily authentic computer voice

If your students have done any writings on the computer, why not get them to paste them into one of these sites...

http://text-to-speech-translator.paralink.com/

http://public.research.att.com/~ttsweb/tts/demo.php#top

and listen to their own words come alive! A little tempremental, but always works after one or two clicks. Impressive English voices - though not too sure on foreign English pronunciation (Spanish, Japanese, etc).

You can even slow down the first site without effecting the voice too much, which might be nice for dictations or dictaglosses which the students themselves could set up for each other.

Get students to Practice Questions!

Great way to get students to practice asking questions and help with listening too.

Follow LINK and get students to type in any question.

Ideas

Get students to interview her and find out as much as they can then report back to class. Could be used also to practice reported speech.

As she is pretty intelligent you could students to think of general knowledge questions to ask her, try to beat the computer. She knows where Bilbao is, who the first man on the moon was!

I'm sure there are a million and one uses so please to add more to comments as looks like a great and fun tool for students.

Become a Star!!

Robbed shamelessly from http://nikpeachey.blogspot.com/ which I do recommend people to join as he regularly has winners.

This one Fame Star allows you to create a mini reportage of your scandalous life, which I'm sure will be much to the amusement of your students!

Please do see the above blog for ideas on this and many others.

Bloggers unite!

While I think it's great that Martin has discovered wikis (see his post), don't let what he says put you off starting up a class blog. They can be great fun for you and your students if you use them for task-based work.

I always start off a task in class time and then ask students to complete it (if necessary) for homework. Then, when you next book out the CALL Room, make sure you have a new task ready for your students, so that while they get on with that one, you can talk to them individually about the problems they had with the first.

Here's some ideas for your first blog tasks:

• In pairs, students decide on song in English
  
• They look for it on youtube and then copy the code they'll find next to the video
• They create a new post on the class blog, embed the video in it (by pasting the code in Edit HTML) and then give their reason for choosing the song
• They do a google search for the lyrics and add a link to them on their post
• They then look at their classmate's postings and comment on their choice of video
• Now they go to this karaoke page (thanks to Gary for this one) and see if they can find the song they chose. They get a set a set of headphones with a mike and sing along to it. (If their song's not there, they choose another.)
• Now they check out if the singer or group they chose is on myspace and also if there's an entry on wikipedia
  
• They create a new post. Using the information they've found, they write about what they think is interesting about the history of their singer/group and say why they think they have been successful. Warn them to put it in their own words - no copying and pasting allowed!
  
• Finally, they write a comment on their classmates' postings saying what they think is interesting about the lives and music of the singers/groups they chose.

My Pre FC1 class is currently working through these on their blog, if you'd like to take a look at the results.

Teaching English Website - a must for Dip candidates?

The BCs English Teaching website has undergone radical changes recently and now has become a truly collaborative platform where teachers worldwide can join together in a wide range of debates on teaching practice.

If you're doing the Dip this year (or even if you're not), I'd recommend visiting the Think section, where you'll find some stimulating ideas on all aspects of teaching:

• articles from experienced teachers and ELT professionals
• podcasts (I found those from the BBC Word Service, Innovations in teaching series extremely interesting and informative)
• a teaching knowledge wiki providing a collection of definitions of ELT terminology
• links to top stories related to English Language Teaching
• information on upcoming conferences around the world

In the Transform section there's also a very useful series of training videos which illustrate good classroom practice from language teachers around the world.

Another new feature to the website is the Guest Contributor. At the time of writing this is Barry Tomalin and he has generated an extremely lively debate on the role of culture in ELT. I would particularly recommend watching the video interview with him where he offers up a lifetime of teaching experience and provides a clear-sighted analysis of current methodologies in the world of ELT.

Maverick ICT lesson ideas

For those of you who are fans of of James Keddie's TEFL clips (every week a new lesson plan using online video clips), here are some more regularly-updated blogs with ICT lesson ideas - this time from the maverick British Council consultant, Nik Peachy:

• Daily English activities "This site is for EFL | ESL students. Each day you can find a new simple online activity to help you improve your English."
• Quick Shout "News, Links and Opinion on Learning, Technology, Web 2.0 and EFL, ESL"
• Learning technology teacher development blog "Tips, resources and teaching materials for EFL and ESL teachers"

Well-worth a look.

More links for young learners

There's a useful review on the TESOL Newsletter of websites for young learners.

Also, you'll find a more comprehensive list on TESOL online resources .

Thinking of doing a class blog? Think again!

Well, at least consider doing a class wiki instead.

Fergus and I set up a class blog with our adult advanced 1 students last year. It was quite successful in many ways - the best bit was when they got into writing restaurant reviews. Click here to have a look.

But there are 2 downsides to the blog format. 1) Students don´t get any say in how it´s designed and organised - perhaps this is why they don´t really contribute unless really pressed 2) You´re restricted to just 1 page in effect.

I´ve decided to try doing a class wiki this year and although I haven´t met the class yet, I´ve begun setting one up using the site called ´wetpaint´. There´s not much to see at the moment apart from my corny profile but click here and have a look. The adverts are a bit annoying but it´s got so much more scope than the blog - most importantly you can add as many pages as you like. Also, by its nature it´s meant to be collaborative so I´m hoping students will feel more comfortable starting threads, discussions and creating new pages.

Any thoughts or ideas?

Let me know if you want help setting one up.