OneStopCLIL: resources and courses for CLIL teachers

Onestopclil: The Resource Bank for CLIL Teachers

You're probably already familiar with OneStopEnglish.com, the Macmillan resources site (lesson plans, worksheets, flashcards, etc...), which modestly claims to be "the world's number one resource site for English language teachers" (though you'll need to subscribe for full access, which costs €52 pa for individual membership).

OneStopEnglish has a younger sibling, one year old this month, OneStopCLIL, which also requires subscription for full access, but has sufficient free resources on it to be useful, and to tempt you (or your school) to make a small, worthwhile investment.

If you are teaching or going to be teaching CLIL [define], you may also be interested in our online CLIL course, the first edition of which starts October 19.

Sites for Teachers of (Very) Young Learners

Hi and welcome if you came to Monday's technology session on our teaching very young learners course...

The following, in alphabetical order, were some of the links I suggested to sites with either lots of resources for teachers of young learners and/or -- and perhaps more importantly -- ideas and the resources for professional development.

• British Council "Kids" site
• DLTK's Crafts for Kids
• EnchantedLearning.com
  
• First-School Preschool Activities and Crafts
• IATEFL Young Learners SIG (see also its discussion group and list of other links)
• National Geographic Kids site
• OneStopEnglish.com (subscription required for full access)
• PrometheanPlanet.com for resources to be used on interactive whiteboards (registration required)
• TeachingEnglish.org.uk (see also the Language Assistant site with its "Primary Tips", "Games" etc sections)
• Times Educational Supplement (registration required)

Great sites! But are they...?
As I suggested in the seminar, while there are undoubtedly some great resources on such sites, I'd be just a little wary about becoming a heavy user of them. The trouble with them, I would suggest, is that it may end up being the teacher not the learners using the technology, whereas I think it should in fact be the other way round.

Go for the sites that are giving you ideas, rather than printouts -- the IATEFL YL SIG, for example, rather than First School, or the community section on TES, rather than the resources section on the same site.

As my DELTA tutor, Neil Forrest once said to us: "An idea is worth a thousand photocopies".

Footnote: year groups, ages...
On some of the above, where there is so much material it may be helpful to search by age group, and on the sites not intended primarily for ELT, it maybe helpful to know how ages correspond to the years kids are in... Wikipedia tells us -- for England, Scotland and the US.

From the same seminar:

>> Stickers for your kids: print them or make them?
>> Resource books for teaching young learners

Stickers for your kids: print them or make them?

Customisable Mr Men stickers from the TES site...

One of the resources sites I suggested in the technology session on our very young learners course this week was the Times Educational Supplement (TES) site, which has over 30,000 free resources, for all subjects (not principally ELT).

From TES, I took two examples (registration required to view them): a PowerPoint Jeopardy template, and some customisable Mr Men stickers. For very young learners, note that you can edit the text, or eliminate it altogether (see image above).

Both would be huge time-savers: the former would require a minimum amount of prior knowledge of PowerPoint, but would still save you hours of work; the latter not much more than a bit of fiddling about to get them to print out on sticky labels...

But would you actually want to use them...?

That would be a very definite YES!, to judge from the comments about them on TES, but personally I have my doubts. In both cases it would the teacher using the technology, but it surely ought to be the learners doing so. You could, for example, have (older) learners write questions, which would certainly be a start, if you wanted to play Jeopardy.

As for the stickers, personally I'd either create my own (as, see image below, you did at the start of my session) or else I'd get my learners to create the labels for each other...

Mr Personal: it's so easy to make your own!

There's also the question of the time it's going to take: it was so much quicker to produce our own -- and so much more personal!

Sometimes the resources technology offers are in fact not necessarily the best solution...

Resource books for teaching young learners

Some of the excellent titles in the OUP resource book series

In the technology session we had on our teaching very young learners course this week, I mentioned the books in the superb OUP resouce book series for teachers of young learners.

Among the titles we have in the library (not quite the complete series) are the following, with the age groups they are intended for given in parenthesis:

• Art and Crafts with Children (4-12)
• Assessing Young Learners (6-12)
• Creating Stories with Children (4-14)
• Drama with Children (5-12)
• Games for Children (4-10)
• The Internet and Young Learners (7-15)
• Projects with Young Learners (5-14)
• Storytelling With Children (7-14)
• Very Young Learners (3-6)
• Young Learners (5-12)

Sample pages, activities, etc., are available online (registration required).

Clearly, not all the activities are suitable for very young learners, but I can most highly recommend the series...

Sure, you can find great things on the Internet, but you've got wonderful things in books, too!

Social Networking Conference

November 5-8, we have the Social Networking 2009 Conference. It's free, completely online and its objective is "elluminating ELT practitioners to grow in the use of social networks as learning development tools". The event is run by AVEALMEC and ARCALL, two Latin-American associations interested in promoting the use of ICT in the language classroom.

If you're interested in social networking and wonder how it could be used in ELT, it's one that definitely looks interesting.

What should you do in a private class with a kid?

Blogging: it's so easy and is not just "the usual stuff..."

You've got a private class with a 13-year-old girl, who's getting on fine in English at school, but whose Mum wants her to be really good at English, and can afford to pay for it. What do you do with her for three hours a week...?

The question came from Liza on our post-CELTA course support forum and Liza was looking for "another book we could use for the classes that covers all the usual stuff, reading, grammar etc" and she wanted "to make the classes a bit more exciting and interactive".

Now I actually happen to be myself the father of a 13-year-old girl, who's fascinating to listen to on what makes classes "a bit more exciting" (or otherwise!) and I can't help thinking that another book to cover "all the usual stuff" isn't going to have the desired effect.

I'd get the kid to blog.

I'd have her blog on whatever subject/s interest her: whatever she's into, music or dance or xtreme skateboarding, I'd get her to write about it on a blog. I'd get her to find stuff on the Internet on it; get her to talk to you about it; provide the language she needed to say what she can't yet say; and get her to write about it on a blog... which I'd make really private.

And in that way, do the reading and the grammar, and lots more besides...

It's so easy to set up a blog [video] and it's not just the usual stuff, which -- chances are -- she's probably already bored with from school...